DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Evolutionary Diversification and Community Assembly in Melanesian Forest Frogs: Testing the Hypothesis of Replicated Adaptive Radiation

了解产生和调节生物多样性模式的机制可以为了解生物群落如何在不同的时间尺度上聚集和多样化提供广泛的见解。在孤岛系统中，进化过程对生物多样性产生的重要性已得到充分证明。然而，问题仍然存在：在岛屿上生物群落聚集的过程中，物种形成和适应等过程能否导致可预测的结果？本研究旨在通过研究西南太平洋美拉尼西亚群岛青蛙多样性的模式来解决这个问题。美拉尼西亚森林蛙为研究适应多样化过程提供了一个理想的系统，因为它们分布在多个岛链上，并表现出一组相似的栖息地专家（生态形态），这些栖息地专家对每个岛群来说都是独一无二的。这项研究将验证这样一个假设，即这些生态上相似的青蛙群落在每个群岛上独立进化，导致整个物种群落的收敛。该项目将记录一个显著的趋同进化案例，为世界范围内生物群落的进化和聚集提供额外的证据。这项研究的部分内容还将包括高级本科生科学指导，包括基因组序列捕获数据收集和分析。此外，这个项目的结果将被整合到课堂学习模块中，旨在向堪萨斯州的高中生教授进化论概念。本研究的主要目的是利用外显子捕获测序方法解决美拉尼西亚森林蛙属的进化关系。系统基因组学数据将与美拉尼西亚群岛上所有物种的形态测量学和生态学数据相结合，以测试(1)青蛙生态形态群落是通过独立的适应性辐射在每个群岛上进化的，(2)生态形态只进化一次，随后分散在各个群岛上，还是(3)两者兼有。然后将使用宏观进化模型来评估每个群岛的青蛙群落是否在生态形态上或多或少地像偶然预期的那样趋同，这可能表明美拉尼西亚森林青蛙的适应性多样化和群落组装是非随机的。本研究将为生物多样性和群落聚集过程的各种概念进化研究提供另一个丰富的、多方面的适应性辐射模型系统。

Understanding the mechanisms that generate and regulate biodiversity patterns can provide broad insights into how biological communities assemble and diversify over different timescales. The importance of evolutionary processes for the generation of biodiversity in isolated island systems is well documented. However, the question remains: can processes like speciation and adaptation lead to predictable outcomes during the assembly of biological communities on islands? This study aims to address this question by examining patterns of frog diversity in the Melanesian island archipelagos of the Southwest Pacific. Melanesian forest frogs provide an ideal system to study adaptive processes of diversification because they are distributed across multiple island chains and exhibit a similar set of habitat specialists (ecomorphs), which are unique to each island group. This study will test the hypothesis that these ecologically similar frog communities evolved independently in each archipelago, resulting in the convergence of entire species communities. This project will document a remarkable case of convergent evolution that could provide additional evidence bearing on the evolution and assembly of biological communities worldwide. Portions of this research will also include advanced undergraduate mentoring in science, including genomic sequence capture data collection and analysis. Additionally, the results of this project will be integrated into a classroom learning module geared toward teaching evolutionary concepts to Kansas high school students.A major goal of this study is to resolve the evolutionary relationships among Melanesian Forest Frogs of the genus Cornufer using an exon capture sequencing approach. Phylogenomic data will be integrated with morphometric and ecological data from all species throughout the Melanesian archipelagos to test whether (1) frog ecomorph communities evolved in each archipelago through independent adaptive radiations, (2) ecomorphs evolved only once and subsequently dispersed across archipelagos, or (3) a combination of both. Macroevolutionary models will then be used to evaluate whether frog communities in each archipelago are more or less ecomorphologically convergent that expected by chance, which may suggest that adaptive diversification and community assembly has been nonrandom in Melanesian Forest Frogs. This study will promote the development of another rich, multi-faceted model system of adaptive radiation for a variety of conceptual evolutionary studies on the process of biological diversification and community assembly.