RII Track-4: Enhancement of technical and analytical skills for the application of genomics to research in molecular ecology and comparative phylogeography

非技术描述：由于气候变化，生物多样性或生态系统中物种的多样性在世界许多地区正在下降。关于生态系统如何应对不断变化的环境条件，包括气候变化，以及生物多样性如何受到大规模环境变化的影响，还有许多悬而未决的问题。该奖学金将使研究利用遗传技术来研究生物体如何对过去和最近的环境变化作出反应。PI将与俄亥俄州立大学的同事合作，了解在阿巴拉契亚南部森林中发现的四种无脊椎动物的数量和遗传变异是如何随着环境的变化而变化的。PI获得的新技能将为研究员、所在机构（密西西比大学）和所在州带来长期利益。该奖学金还将为与主办机构（俄亥俄州立大学）的持续合作创造新的机会。研究结果将促进对整个群落是否有能力共同应对环境变化的理解，或者作为单个物种。这些信息将有助于美国森林动物的保护和管理。技术描述：了解不同的历史事件和反复出现的微进化过程对共同分布的物种如何对环境变化表现出协同或独立的反应的影响，可以更有力地预测生态群落将如何应对未来的变化。这种比较方法可以探索物种之间的生态联合强度在限制或促进它们的反应中的重要性。作为这项研究的一部分，将生成和分析阿巴拉契亚南部森林中四种无脊椎动物的种群基因组数据，这些数据可以共同评估生态共同关联强度对系统地理一致性的影响。主办机构（俄亥俄州立大学）将与PI合作进行测序简化表示库，执行下游生物信息学处理的计算方法，以及建立和新兴的系统地理分析的实施。PI和宿主还将合作开展分析，扩展比较系统地理学推断的范围。

Non-technical description:Biodiversity, or the variety of species in an ecosystem, is declining in many areas of the world due to climate change. Many unanswered questions remain as to how ecosystems respond to changing environmental conditions, including changing climates, and how biodiversity is affected by large scale environmental changes. This fellowship will enable research using genetic techniques to study how organisms have responded to past and recent environmental change. The PI will collaborate with colleagues at the Ohio State University to understand how the numbers and genetic variability of four invertebrate species found in southern Appalachian forests change as their environment changes. The new skills gained by the PI will provide long-term benefits to the fellow, the home institution (University of Mississippi), and home state. The fellowship will also generate new opportunities for sustained collaboration with the host institution (Ohio State University). Findings will advance understanding of whether whole communities have the ability to respond to environmental change together, or as individual species. This information will aid in conservation and management of US forest fauna.Technical description:Understanding the impact of different historical events and recurrent microevolutionary processes on how co-distributed species show concerted versus independent responses to environmental change allows stronger predictions about how ecological communities will respond to future change. Such a comparative approach can probe the importance of the strength of ecological co-associations among species in constraining or facilitating their responses. As part of this fellowship, population genomic data will be generated and analyzed for a set of four southern Appalachian forest invertebrate species that together enable the impact of strength of ecological co-association on phylogeographic congruence to be assessed. The host institution (Ohio State University) will work with the PI in sequencing reduced representation libraries, computational approaches for performing downstream bioinformatics processing, and implementation of established and emerging phylogeographic analyses. The PI and host will also collaborate on developing analyses that extend the scope of comparative phylogeographic inference.