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

了解诸如眼睛、羽毛或发光器官等新的复杂特征是如何起源的，是生物科学的一个基本目标。这项工作将通过使用昆虫作为模式生物，并通过评估两种提出的替代创新途径的重要性，来研究大自然是如何创新的。第一种观点认为，通过对已有生物特征（从基因到组织类型再到器官）的再利用和重新组合，许多创新都成为可能，这与乐高积木中已有的积木可以重新组装和重新组合以产生新的结构没什么不同。第二条路线反过来强调新的特征是如何从零开始，随着时间的推移一点一点地产生的。最终，这项工作将通过这两种途径对比创新的机制、效率和后果，以及它们如何帮助我们理解地球上的生命为什么以及如何以它的方式创新和多样化。这项工作还将进一步扩大与儿童博物馆的现有的、非常成功的合作，以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团队参与三个获奖的暑期项目和招募少数族裔高中学生加入个性化的暑期研究浸入式小组，来提高代表性不足的少数族裔对科学的参与。最后，这项工作将培养至少六名从事跨学科研究的科学家。新奇的、复杂的性状是如何产生的，它们如何在不被破坏的情况下融入到先前存在的环境中，以及促进其随后多样化的发育特性，这些都是人们知之甚少的。这项工作利用角甲虫和不同类型的角所代表的不同创新路线来解决这些挑战。第一个主要目标集中在前胸角上，初步证据强烈表明，前胸角是通过翅膀系列同源物的再利用而进化的，并探讨了如果依赖于预先组装的形态结构、它们的发育基础和基因网络的再利用，创新是如何促进和偏向的。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了在大规模扩展现有模块无法实现的情况下，如何实现和指导创新。第二个目标将利用角甲虫的头角作为焦点特征，这与其他昆虫的结构甚至缺乏遥远的同源性，并且初步数据显示在没有大规模重新利用的情况下进化。对比这两个目标的结果将提供关于偏见、约束和最终发展架构的创新路线的独特性和共性的评估。这项工作将通过比较rnas测序和对多个物种的基因功能调查来完成，这些物种是根据它们的系统发育位置和它们的核心特征所体现的创新程度而选择的。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。

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.