EAGER: DISENTANGLING THE EFFECTS OF ECOLOGICAL CLADE SORTING AND ADAPTIVE DIVERSIFICATION TO THE ASSEMBLY OF REGIONAL BIOTAS

南美洲热带安第斯山脉地区是地球上物种最丰富的生物多样性热点地区之一。例如，15%的植物物种（45000种）生长在这个仅占地球陆地面积1%的地区。为了解释这种意想不到的高物种多样性，该研究小组将调查与安第斯山脉形成相关的环境变化如何影响该地区热带树种的分布、多样化和进化。了解山脉隆起、环境变化和物种分布之间的关系不仅对确定安第斯山脉显著多样性的原因很重要，而且还有助于了解物种如何应对环境条件的大规模变化。反过来，这些信息可以指导旨在保护多样性和弹性生物群落的区域保护和管理。这个项目是独一无二的，因为它是在广阔的地区和深刻的进化时间尺度上进行的。由于范围广泛，项目结果可能会显著促进对新环境出现对生物多样性群落形成和组织的长期影响的理解。本项目将通过整合植物物种分布、功能性状和进化关系的数据集，测试海拔梯度对形成群落组成的重要性。在山地隆起之后，不同海拔的新环境可能会促进(1)进化支的快速适应多样化，(2)预适应进化支的迁移和生态分选，或(3)这两个过程的结合。本研究将同时探索这些机制，并理清它们对超多样性区域植物区系组合的相对贡献。该项目利用了马迪迪项目的数据，该项目已经记录了玻利维亚安第斯山脉树种的海拔分布。分布和海拔数据将与横跨新世界的植物标本的综合数据库和10种植物功能性状的海拔调查相结合。所有种子植物的大系统发育将被开发并用于研究不同海拔和新热带不同生物地理区域植物群落之间的物种和功能更替。这个项目有一定的风险，因为数据库的不确定性可以在过程建模中传播，但是采样的地理密度可以排除这样的问题。然而，在不断变化的环境梯度中揭示社区聚集的新见解是很有潜力的。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The tropical Andes region of South America is among earth's most species-rich biodiversity hotspots. For example, 15% of all plant species (45,000 species) occur in this region that covers only about 1% of the planet's land surface. To explain this unexpectedly high species diversity, this research team will investigate how environmental changes associated with the formation of the Andes Mountains influenced the distribution, diversification and evolution of tropical tree species in the region. Understanding the relationships between mountain uplift, environmental change, and species distributions is not only important to identify the causes of the remarkable Andean diversity, but also provides insight into how species respond to large-scale changes in environmental conditions. This information, in turn, can guide regional conservation and management aimed at conserving diverse and resilient biological communities. This project is unique because it is conducted over vast areas and deep evolutionary time scales. Because of the broad scope, project results are likely to significantly advance understanding of the long-term consequences of the emergence of novel environments for the formation and organization of biologically diverse communities. This project will test the the importance of elevational gradients for shaping community composition by integrating datasets on plant species distributions, functional traits and evolutionary relationships. Following mountain uplift, new environments at different elevations are hypothesized to promote (1) rapid adaptive diversification of clades, (2) immigration and ecological sorting of pre-adapted clades, or (3) a combination of both processes. This study will simultaneously explore these mechanisms and disentangle their relative contributions to the assembly of a hyper-diverse regional flora. This project leverages data from the Madidi Project that has already documented the elevational distribution of tree species in the Bolivian Andes. Distributional and elevation data will be integrated with a comprehensive database of plant-specimens for across the New World and elevational surveys of 10 plant functional traits. A large phylogeny of all seed plants will be developed and used to study turnover in species and functions among plant communities at different elevations and among biogeographic regions across the Neotropics. The project is somewhat risky because database uncertainties can be propagated in process modeling, but the geographic density of sampling could preclude such problems. However, there is high potential for revealing new insights into community assembly across shifting environmental gradients.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.