EAPSI:Evolutionary Dynamics of Mesozoic Dinosaur and Mammal Ecomorphology

EAPSI:中生代恐龙和哺乳动物生态形态的进化动力学

• 批准号: 1714036
• 负责人: Jacob Gardner
• 金额: $ 0.54万
• 依托单位: Gardner Jacob
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-06-01 至 2018-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1714036&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAPSI; Evolutionary; Dynamics; Mesozoic; Dinosaur

Dinosaurs and mammals have many similarities, including warm-bloodedness, a global distribution, and diverse body forms and lifestyles. This project will explore the ways in which these two animal groups became diverse and widespread across the globe. The results of this analysis will yield insights into why different animal groups dominate the world's ecosystems and adapt to a large variety of lifestyles. The fellow will measure Mesozoic dinosaur and mammal fossils and calculate muscle lever arms, an indicator of general movement capability. These data will be used to model the rates and patterns of lever arm change over time and test for associations with environmental change. The fellow will visit the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing to work with Dr. Xu Xing, one of the leading experts on vertebrate paleontology, and collect data from Chinese dinosaur and mammal species.The origins of biological innovations, such as terrestrial colonization and powered flight, are pivotal events in vertebrate evolution, and are often coupled with changes in locomotor morphology. Yet, little is known about how the rate of such changes are due to trait-environment interactions. The overall objective of this project is to quantify the rate of locomotor change in Mesozoic mammals and dinosaurs. The fellow hypothesizes that high rates coincide with shifts in physiology and the environment. Dinosaur locomotion has remarkable parallels with mammal locomotion and thus provides a natural experiment for investigating how trait-environment interactions influence biological innovation. We will collect morphological data on the locomotor lever-arms from Mesozoic mammal and dinosaur fore- and hind-limbs. The simplicity of these parameters allows rate shifts to be modeled across clades that would be undetectable using species-specific models.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 China's Ministry of Science and Technology.

恐龙和哺乳动物有许多相似之处，包括温血、全球分布、不同的身体形态和生活方式。这个项目将探索这两个动物群体在地球仪上变得多样化和广泛传播的方式。这项分析的结果将有助于深入了解为什么不同的动物群体主导着世界生态系统，并适应各种各样的生活方式。该研究员将测量中生代恐龙和哺乳动物化石，并计算肌肉杠杆臂，这是一般运动能力的指标。这些数据将用于模拟杠杆臂随时间变化的速率和模式，并测试与环境变化的关联。研究员将访问北京古脊椎动物与古人类研究所，与古脊椎动物领域的权威专家徐星博士合作，收集中国恐龙和哺乳动物物种的数据。生物学创新的起源，如陆地殖民和动力飞行，是脊椎动物进化的关键事件，通常与运动形态的变化相关联。然而，很少有人知道这种变化的速度是如何由于特质-环境的相互作用。该项目的总体目标是量化中生代哺乳动物和恐龙的运动变化率。这位研究员假设，高发病率与生理和环境的变化相吻合。恐龙的运动与哺乳动物的运动有着显著的相似之处，因此为研究特征-环境相互作用如何影响生物创新提供了一个自然的实验。我们将从中生代哺乳动物和恐龙的前肢和后肢收集有关运动臂的形态学数据。这些参数的简单性使得速率变化可以跨进化枝进行建模，而使用物种特异性模型是无法检测到的。该奖项是东亚和太平洋夏季研究所计划的一部分，支持美国研究生的夏季研究，由NSF和中国科技部共同资助。