EAGER: The evolution of cranial spines in sculpin fishes (superfamily Cottoidea)

许多脊椎动物群体都保护了自己的头骨，其中哺乳动物的角和鹿角引起了进化生物学家的最大关注。该项目通过将对动物武器的研究扩展到一种名为雕塑鱼的未被探索的鱼类群体来促进科学进步。雕像有巨大的、可变的头部脊椎。据推测，它们用它们来战斗和争夺配偶，或者保护自己不被捕食者吃掉。后者已被假定，但从未经过测试。这个项目将是第一次在水生系统中进行此类研究，它将有助于确定脊椎的进化是否遵循陆地系统中发现的相同规则和模式。该项目将通过提供大量的教育经验来造福社会，包括为研究生和本科生提供研究机会，一个以前成功的培训研讨会的新版本，以及一个使用动物武器的3D可视化来激发大学预科学生对生物学的兴趣的旅行课程。它还将通过公开和免费提供近1000个CT扫描的鱼类标本的骨骼3D重建来开放获取科学数据的途径。由于其学科和方法的新颖组合，该项目有可能开创一种可能成为新的社区标准的科学方法。一个由鱼类学、比较系统发育分析、宏观进化、生物力学和3D形态计量学领域的专家组成的团队将联合这些学科，以发现为什么雕像的头部具有令人印象深刻的可变的盖骨前棘突。这些鱼是否进化了它们的武器，以升级和加强雄鱼与雄鱼的竞争？或者，这些脊椎是为了保护它们的持有者不被张口受限的捕食者吞没吗？为了回答这个问题，该项目将把150多个物种的显微CT扫描、合成系统发育和功能特征多样性数据库联系起来，重建这些鱼类的脊椎进化史。此外，它将阐明这些鱼类颅骨附属物进化规律的共性，这些规律遵循在陆地系统中发现的那些。

Many vertebrate groups have protected their skulls, with the horns and antlers of mammals having attracted the most attention from evolutionary biologists. This project promotes the progress of science by expanding research on animal weaponry into an unexplored group of fishes called sculpins. Sculpins have large and variable head spines. It is assumed that they use them to fight and compete for mates or to defend themselves from being eaten by predators. The latter has been assumed, but never tested. This project will be first study of its kind in an aquatic system, and it will help determine whether the evolution of spines follows the same rules and patterns discovered in terrestrial systems. The project will benefit society by offering numerous educational experiences, including research opportunities to graduate and undergraduate students, a new version of a previously successful training workshop, and a travelling class that uses 3D visualization of animal weapons to excite precollege students about biology. It will also open access to scientific data by making 3D reconstructions of the skeleton of nearly 1000 CT scanned fish specimens publicly and freely available. Because of its novel combination of disciplines and methods, the project has the potential to pioneer a scientific approach that may become a new community standard. A team of experts in ichthyology, comparative phylogenetic analysis, macroevolution, biomechanics and 3D morphometrics will unite these disciplines to discover why the heads of sculpins bear impressively variable preopercular spines. Have these fishes evolved their weapons to escalate and enhance male-male competition? Or, do the spines defend their bearers from engulfment by gape-limited predators? To answer that question the project will link microCT scans of more than 150 species, synthetic phylogenies, and databases of functional trait diversity to reconstruct the history of spine evolution in these fishes. Further, it will shed light on the generality of rules governing the evolution of cranial appendages in these fishes follows those discovered in terrestrial systems.