RCN: Mammal diversification in relation to dynamic landscapes

这个项目将解决这样一个问题：为什么物种多样性往往在地理复杂的地区更大，比如山脉，这种模式在许多不同的群体中都有发现，比如哺乳动物、鸟类和开花植物。研究将集中在过去3000万年中北美西部现代和化石啮齿动物的生态和进化过程。该项目将建立一个生物学家和地球科学家的合作网络。活动将包括跨学科小组的年度讲习班以及对学生和其他早期职业科学家的培训。研究结果除了有助于了解生物多样性的成因外，还可用于山区生物多样性的保护。网络参与者将向科学和普通受众公布他们的成果，为大学生开发教学模块，并为参与者所属的自然历史博物馆设计展品。该项目将重点关注造山和气候历史在促进多样性变化（通过物种形成、适应性进化和灭绝）、推动地理范围变化和分类当地社区物种生态特征方面的相互影响。由于啮齿类动物的多样性高、化石记录丰富、生物和化石类群的系统发育得到了很好的解决，以及它们作为猎物物种和环境变化指标在生态系统中的重要作用，因此将重点研究啮齿类动物。它将使用来自北美西部的数据，因为它分别包含了山间地带西部和大平原地形复杂性高低对比的景观。研究目标包括：重建适合生物地理学分析的景观历史方面，测试物种起源和灭绝的模型，以及测试生态性状在时间和空间变化中对谱系和动物群的选择性。分析结果将表明，与单独研究现代或历史数据相比，整合新学、古生物学和地理历史数据可以获得更大的见解。了解长期以来啮齿动物多样性的地理变化也与山区的保护工作有关，山区在全球变暖期间提供了气候避难所。

This project will address the question of why species diversity tends to be greater in regions that are geographically complex, such as mountain ranges, a pattern that is found in many different groups such as mammals, birds, and flowering plants. Research will focus on ecological and evolutionary processes in modern and fossil rodents of western North America over the last 30 million years. The project will create a collaborative network of biologists and earth scientists. Activities will include annual workshops of interdisciplinary groups and the training of students and other early-career scientists. Besides gaining understanding of the causes of biodiversity, the results can be used for conservation of biodiversity in montane regions. Network participants will publicize their results to both scientific and general audiences, develop teaching modules for college students, and design exhibits for natural-history museums affiliated with the participants.The project will focus on the interactive influences of mountain-building and climatic history in stimulating changes in diversity (through speciation, adaptive evolution, and extinction), driving geographic-range shifts, and sorting the ecological traits of species in local communities. The research will focus on rodents due to their high diversity, strong fossil record, well-resolved phylogenies for living and fossil groups, and vital roles in ecosystems as prey species and indicators of environmental change. It will use data from western North America because it contains landscapes of contrasting high and low topographic complexity in the intermontane west and the Great Plains, respectively. The research goals include: reconstructing aspects of landscape history suitable for biogeographic analyses, testing models of origination and extinction of species, and testing for selectivity of ecological traits during changes over time and space in lineages and faunas. Analyses will demonstrate that the integration of neontological, paleontological, and geohistorical data can achieve greater insights than studying modern or historical data alone. Understanding geographic changes in rodent diversity over deep time is also relevant for conservation efforts in montane regions, which provide climatic refugia during periods of global warming.