Origin and diversification of evolutionary novelties: insights through the study of beetle horns, insect wings, and bilaterian heads

了解新的复杂特征，如眼睛、羽毛或发光器官是如何起源的，这是生物科学的基本目标。这项工作将通过将昆虫作为模式生物，并通过评估两种提出的获得新颖性的替代途径的重要性，来研究自然是如何创新的。第一条路线假设，许多创新是通过重复使用和重新组合已经存在的生物特征来实现的，从基因到组织类型再到器官，这与乐高创造的原有构件如何重新组装和重组以产生新结构没有什么不同。第二条路线则强调了新奇的特征是如何从头开始，随着时间的推移，一件一件地产生的。最终，这项工作将对比通过这两条路线进行创新的机制、效率和后果，以及它们如何帮助我们了解地球上的生命为什么以及如何以这种方式创新和多样化。这项工作还将被用来进一步扩大与一家儿童博物馆现有的、非常成功的合作，培训支持印第安纳州科学教学标准的科学教师，并为特殊教育和ESL学生开发教学资源。同样，这项工作将通过研究小组参加三个获奖的暑期项目和招募少数族裔高中生加入小组进行个性化的暑期研究，来加强代表不足的少数群体对科学的参与。最后，这项工作将培训至少六名科学家进行跨学科研究。新的、复杂的特征是如何起源的，它们如何不受干扰地融入先前存在的环境，以及促进它们随后多样化的发展特性，这些都总体上仍然知之甚少。这项工作利用有角甲虫和不同类型的角所体现的不同的创新路线来应对这些挑战。第一个主要目标集中在前胸角，初步证据有力地表明，前胸角是通过改变翅膀系列同源物的用途而进化的，并探索如果依赖于重复使用预先组装的形态结构、其发育基础和基因网络，创新可能如何被促进和偏向。这一努力的结果将与第二个主要目标的结果形成对比，第二个主要目标探讨在无法大规模削减现有模块的情况下如何实现和引导创新。第二个目标将利用角甲虫的头角作为焦点特征，这种特征与其他昆虫结构甚至没有一点同源性，初步数据表明，这种特征是在没有大规模重新调整用途的情况下进化出来的。对比这两个目标的结果将评估两条创新路线在偏见、约束和由此产生的开发架构方面的区别和共性。这项工作将使用比较RNA测序和基因功能调查来执行，这些基因功能是根据物种的系统发育地位和重点试验所体现的创新程度而选择的。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Understanding how novel complex traits such as eyes, feathers, or light-producing organs originate is a fundamental goal of the biological sciences. This work will investigate how nature innovates, by using insects as model organisms, and by assessing the significance of two proposed, alternative routes to novelty. The first route posits that much innovation is made possible through the re-use- and re-combination of already existing biological features, from genes to tissue types to organs, not unlike how the pre-existing building blocks of Lego creations can be reassembled and recombined to generate novel structures. The second route in turn emphasizes how novel traits may originate from scratch, piece by piece over time. Ultimately, the work will contrast the mechanisms, efficiency, and consequences of innovation via these two routes, and how they may help us understand why and how life on earth has innovated and diversified the way it has. This work will also be leveraged to further expand an existing, highly successful collaboration with a children's museum to train science teachers in support of Indiana Science Teaching Standards, and to develop teaching resources for special education and ESL students. Similarly, this work will be used to enhance the participation of underrepresented minorities in science through the research team's participation in three award winning summer programs and the recruitment of minority High School students into the group for individualized summer research immersion. Lastly, this work will train at least six scientists in interdisciplinary research.How novel, complex traits originate, how they integrate into preexisting contexts without disruption, and the developmental properties that facilitate their subsequent diversification, all remain overall poorly understood. This work utilizes horned beetles, and the disparate routes of innovation exemplified by different types of horns, to address these challenges. The first major objective focuses on prothoracic horns, which preliminary evidence strongly suggests have evolved through the repurposing of wing serial homologs, and explores how innovation may be facilitated and biased if it relies on the re-use of preassembled morphological structures, their developmental underpinnings and gene networks. The outcomes of this effort will be contrasted to those of the second major objective, which explores how innovation is enabled and directed in circumstances when large scale exaptation of pre-existing modules is not an option. This second objective will utilize the head horns of horned beetles as a focal trait, which lack even remote homology to other insect structures, and which preliminary data show evolved in the absence of large scale repurposing. Contrasting the outcomes of both objectives will afford assessment of the distinctness and commonalities of both routes of innovation with respect to biases, constraints, and resulting developmental architectures. This work will be executed using comparative RNAsequencing and surveys of gene function across multiple species selected based on their phylogenetic positions and the degree of innovation embodied by their focal traits.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.