EAPSI: Comparative Biodiversity and the Hermit Crab Tree of Life: An East Meets West Approach

在墨西哥湾发生深水地平线漏油等环境灾难之后，记录海底动物群落组成的全面调查观察到了螃蟹、虾和龙虾的健康和多样性的变化。该项目的主要目标是利用DNA序列确定西太平洋寄居蟹物种的真实数量，并了解它们之间的遗传关系。西太平洋这一项目的结果将与墨西哥湾类似研究的结果相结合，以确定寄居蟹多样性的任何趋势，这可能与环境影响有关。由于缺乏对西太平洋寄居蟹物种数量的了解，阻碍了对海底动物群落健康的更广泛研究，进而阻碍了对该区域整体生态系统健康的研究。研究表明，基于DNA序列确定物种身份提供了对物种多样性的最高敏感标准。在新加坡国立大学Peter Ng教授和经验丰富的研究人员的指导下，将使用现代实验室技术收集保存在新加坡李江钦自然历史博物馆的大量西太平洋标本的DNA序列。由此产生的DNA序列将被算法分析，以建立样本的物种身份和样本之间的遗传关系。拟议研究的主要影响是它将增加我们对世界范围寄居蟹多样性的了解，以及关于西太平洋海洋寄居蟹之间的地理分布、多样性和进化关系之间的对应关系的信息。另一个成果是成立了一个多国工作组，该工作组将结合申请者和来自新加坡和美国的该领域主要作者的努力。这一合作努力的建立是增加国家科学基金会资助在国际科学界的影响的机会。该奖项由东亚和太平洋暑期学院项目资助一名美国研究生的暑期研究，由NSF和新加坡国家研究基金会共同资助。

In the wake of environmental disasters such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, thorough surveys documenting the makeup of sea-floor animal communities have observed changes in the health and diversity of crabs, shrimp, and lobsters. The primary objective of this project is to use DNA sequences to determine the true number of hermit crab species in the western Pacific and understand the genetic relationships among them. The results from this project in the West Pacific will be combined with results from similar studies in the Gulf of Mexico to identify any trends in hermit crab diversity that may be related to environmental impacts. Lack of knowledge about the number of hermit crab species in the West Pacific prevents broader study of the health of sea-floor animal communities and, by extension, overall ecosystem health in the region. Studies show that determinations of species identity based on DNA sequences provides the highest standard of sensitivity to species diversity. With the guidance of Professor Peter Ng and experienced researchers at the National University of Singapore, DNA sequences for numerous West Pacific specimens stored in the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum in Singapore will be collected using modern laboratory techniques. The resulting DNA sequences will be analyzed algorithmically to establish both the species identity of the specimen, and the genetic relationships among specimens. The primary impact of the proposed research is that it will increase our understanding of world-wide hermit crab diversity and information about the correspondence between geographical distribution, diversity, and evolutionary relationships among marine hermit crabs in the western Pacific. An additional outcome is the formation of a multinational working group that will combine the efforts of the applicant and key authors in the field from Singapore and the United States. The establishment of this collaborative effort represents an opportunity to increase the impact of National Science Foundation funding within the international science community. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the National Research Foundation of Singapore.