Collaborative Research: Ants of the World

蚂蚁是大多数陆地生态系统的主导成分。它们在农业环境中具有突出的作用，要么控制害虫，要么本身就是害虫。自然栖息地中的蚂蚁占动物总生物量的很大一部分，具有捕食者、食腐动物和土壤搬运者的重要作用。许多蚂蚁物种搭乘人类的便车进入了新的环境，成为可能损害农业和自然生态系统的入侵物种。蚂蚁也以其复杂的社会而闻名。由于蚂蚁对人类利益和福利的总体重要性，它们是各种学科的科学研究对象，包括行为学、机器人学、免疫化学、神经生物学、发育、群落生态学、入侵物种生物学和社会生物学。蚂蚁物种(“蚂蚁生命树”)之间的进化关系的知识为蚂蚁研究成果增添了巨大的价值。DNA测序技术的进步极大地加速了植物和脊椎动物之间进化关系的发现。这些知识目前对蚂蚁来说是不完整的，阻碍了研究进展。世界蚂蚁项目将提供一棵全面的蚂蚁生命树和蚂蚁分类。这些结果还将解决生命如何在地球上传播和多样化的基本问题。一种揭示动物之间进化关系的强大新方法使用基因组缩减技术和高通量测序来获得数千个被称为“超辐射元素”(UCES)的基因座。基于UCE的进化树可靠地揭示了所有时间深度的关系。世界蚂蚁计划将获得4,500个蚂蚁标本的UCE数据，将测序物种的比例增加到334个属的96%和13,500个描述物种的约45%。选择的标本将包括几乎所有陆地生物群的主要物种群。其结果将是一棵全面的蚂蚁进化树，描绘出最小的分枝尖端。该树将通知对所有属属边界的修订，并交付长期寻求的稳定属属分类的目标。这棵树还将与地理、形态特征和气候数据相联系，从而能够探索基本的进化和生态过程。世界蚂蚁项目也将成为蚂蚁课程的主要组成部分，蚂蚁课程是一项关于蚂蚁多样性和识别的简短但密集的实地培训计划。世界蚂蚁项目将支持喀麦隆、越南和澳大利亚的三个新的蚂蚁课程。这些课程的一个新组成部分将是增加科学传播方面的本科生培训：每门课程将包括一名本科生，他将记录该领域的活动并磨练他们的科学传播技能。该奖项反映了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。

Ants are dominant elements of most terrestrial ecosystems. They have prominent roles in agricultural environments, controlling pests or being pests themselves. Ants in natural habitats comprise a major fraction of the total animal biomass and have important roles as predators, scavengers, and soil movers. Many ant species have hitchhiked into new surroundings with humans, becoming invasive species that can harm both agricultural and natural ecosystems. Ants are also renowned for their complex societies. Because of their overall importance to human interest and welfare, ants are the subjects of scientific research on a wide variety of subjects, including behavior, robotics, immunochemistry, neurobiology, development, community ecology, biology of invasive species, and sociobiology. Knowledge of the evolutionary relationships among ant species (the "ant tree of life") adds great value to ant study findings. Advances in DNA sequencing technology have dramatically accelerated the discovery of evolutionary relationships among plants and vertebrates. Such knowledge is currently incomplete for ants, hampering research progress. The Ants of the World project will provide a comprehensive tree of life and classification of ants. The results will also address basic questions about how life spreads and diversifies across the planet.A powerful new approach for revealing evolutionary relationships among animals uses genome reduction techniques and high-throughput sequencing to obtain thousands of loci called "UltraConserved Elements" (UCEs). Evolutionary trees based on UCEs reliably uncover relationships at all time depths. The Ants of the World project will acquire UCE data for 4,500 ant specimens, increasing the portion of sequenced species to 96% of the 334 genera and about 45% of the 13,500 described species. Specimens will be selected to include nearly all major species groups from all terrestrial biomes. The result will be a comprehensive evolutionary tree of ants delineated to the smallest branch tips. The tree will inform a revision of all generic boundaries and deliver the long-sought goal of a stable generic classification. The tree will also be linked to geography, morphological characters, and climate data, enabling exploration of fundamental evolutionary and ecological processes. The Ants of the World project will also become a major component of Ant Course, a brief but intensive field training program in ant diversity and identification. The Ants of the World project will support three new Ant Courses, in Cameroon, Vietnam, and Australia. A novel component of these courses will be the addition of undergraduate training in science communication: each course will include an undergraduate trainee who will document activities in the field and hone their science communication skills.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.