Collaborative Research: From demography to diversification: population-level drivers of phylogenetic speciation dynamics across squamate reptiles

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Species diversity varies dramatically across the tree of life: some groups of organisms, such as beetles and flowering plants, contain far more species than most other groups of organisms. Understanding how and why some groups have come to be more species-rich than other groups is a central and unsolved problem in the life sciences. One class of explanations for these differences in species numbers involves the rate at which new species arise. Using tools from genome biology and computational data science, this project will identify the mechanisms that lead to different rates of species formation and quantify their importance in a major group of vertebrate animals. The project will provide training in genomics, geographic information systems, computational biology, and biodiversity science for students and researchers at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral levels. Genomic resources and new scientific software developed for the project will be made publicly available, and a museum exhibit will highlight the ways in which genomics and computer programming are changing the way scientists study and understand the diversity of life forms on Earth.This project will produce a novel synthesis between population biology and large-scale patterns of species diversity by integrating next-generation population genomics with a phylogenetic comparative perspective on lineage diversification rates. The project will quantify the genomic signal of several population processes to address how rates of population splitting and persistence influence speciation rates as measured on time-calibrated phylogenetic trees. These objectives will be supported by estimating phylogeographic and population genomic parameters across many species of squamate reptiles that vary in rates of speciation, and by developing new methods to link these parameters to diversification rates on phylogenetic trees. The project will also assess how organismal traits (life history, dispersal biology, population size) contribute to demographic processes that can influence the formation and persistence of incipient species. The project will provide a bridge between biological processes that occur at two very different timescales and will provide an understanding of how changes in populations at ecological timescales affect changes in biological diversity at deep (million-year) timescales.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.