DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Untangling history and ecology to reconstruct the assembly of an iconic avifauna

这项研究将通过研究所罗门群岛鸟群的进化历史和生态过程的作用，制定和测试一个概念框架，以了解混合物种鸟群的集合和物种组成。长期以来，所罗门群岛的鸟类一直是发展群落集合理论的天然实验室。这项研究的结果将成为理解更复杂的自然系统的基础。通过了解社区集会的历史，就有可能寻找历史对当代系统属性的影响。例如，如果物种进入群落的顺序影响了物种在群落中的功能角色，那么就有可能利用群落组装历史来预测当代系统的生态学。这种联系表明，群落的其他属性，如稳定性或对灭绝的抵抗力，可能会受到组装历史的影响。此外，这项研究将成为当地社区国内培训的基础，以发展调查生物多样性所需的技能，培养对群岛多样性的全球意义的认识，将有助于编制越来越多的针对所罗门群岛的开放获取教育材料，并将在纽约市地区对一名学生进行统计学和形态学方法的培训。为了重建所罗门群岛混种觅食鸟群的聚集历史，这项研究将使用新一代的测序技术，对来自新鲜组织和古代DNA的超保守元素进行测序。历史地理学和人口统计学将被用来揭示序列的殖民化，祖先的人口规模，和人口之间的基因流的六个谱系的鸟类，形成的核心混合种群在所罗门群岛。这些数据将与形态学和生态学数据相关，以测试岛屿组装历史对当代形态学和生态学的信号。虽然组装历史可能出现随机的生态时间尺度，它假设在进化尺度的可预测性程度。这项研究将测试这些可预测的大规模模式是否会影响社区的生态。最终，通过重建指导群落组装的过程，不仅有可能开始描述生物多样性的历史，而且有可能根据历史重建对生态学做出预测性陈述。

This research will develop and test a conceptual framework for understanding the assembly, and species composition, of mixed-species flocks of birds by studying the roles of evolutionary history and ecological processes of flocks in the Solomon Islands. The birds of the Solomon Islands have long served as a natural laboratory for the development of community assembly theory. The results of this research will form the basis of understanding in more complex natural systems. By understanding community assembly history, it becomes possible to search for the effects of that history on attributes of contemporary systems. For example, if the order of species arrival into a community influences the functional roles of species in a community, it may be possible to use community assembly history to make predictions about the ecology of contemporary systems. Such a connection would suggest that other attributes of communities, such as stability or resistance to extinction, might be influenced by assembly history. Additionally, the research will form the basis of in-country training for local communities to develop skills necessary to survey biodiversity, build an appreciation for the global significance of the Archipelago's diversity, will contribute to a growing body of open access educational materials tailored to the Solomon Islands, and will train a student in the New York City area in statistical and morphological methods.In order to reconstruct the assembly history of mixed-species foraging flocks in the Solomon Archipelago, this research will use next generation sequencing of ultraconserved elements from fresh tissues and ancient DNA. Historical biogeography and demography will be used to reveal the sequence of colonization, ancestral population sizes, and gene flow between populations for six lineages of birds that form the nucleus of mixed-species flocks in the Solomon Islands. These data will be related to morphological and ecological data to test for the presence of a signal of island assembly history on contemporary morphology and ecology. While assembly history may appear stochastic at ecological timescales, it assumes a degree of predictability at evolutionary scales. This study will test whether these predictable larger scale patterns influence the ecology of communities. Ultimately, by reconstructing the processes that guide community assembly, it may not only be possible to begin to characterize the history of biotas, but potentially to make predictive statements about ecology based on historical reconstructions.