CAREER: Integrating causal evolutionary processes into phylogenetic comparative biology

对“行动中的进化”的研究揭示了许多关于进化变化的原因，包括为什么它有时会失败。然而，当这些原因也导致了百万年时间尺度上的灭绝和适应--这一时间尺度主要与生物多样性的进化和维持有关--时，并不总是显而易见的。随着全球变化速度的加快，了解物种如何适应并生存，或未能适应并灭亡是至关重要的。该项目为生物学研究和教育提供了一套新的计算工具和资源，在短期内研究的进化原因和现有进化多样性明显的长期结果之间建立了一座桥梁。新的模型将把田野、遗传和实验研究与生命之树上的特征变化模式结合起来。这项研究将把这些模型应用于哺乳动物和鱼类的综合数据集，以更好地理解百万年时间尺度上特征变化的原因。这项研究还将开发和实施免费可用的课堂资源，专门解决短期和长期进化时间范围内的规模和因果关系问题--教育下一代公民和科学家预测当前全球变化将如何影响生物多样性的长期前景这一紧迫挑战。最近的争议表明，仅从宏观进化数据就可以做出什么推断是有很大限制的。解决这些局限性的一种方法是将我们所知道的关于进化的原因和限度的知识从实地研究和实验研究综合到宏观进化方法中。该项目确定了三个“注入点”，这些信息可以被整合到比较模型中，以阐明宏观进化的原因。这项研究将开发新的模型，将遗传变异、自然选择和种群数据的测量与宏观进化规模数据相结合。它还将使基于性状功能知识的生物力学模型集成成为可能。通过将宏观进化模型与关于微观进化数据如何影响进化过程的知识和数据相结合，这项研究将为研究宏观进化的原因开辟新的途径。这些模型将进一步与因果推理领域联系在一起--因果推理通过重新思考统计方法如何表示因果关系，已经给人工智能带来了革命性的变化。最后，这项研究将通过开发和调查如何在生物学课程中从孟德尔遗传学到宏观进化的非直觉转变来解决生物学教育学中尚未填补的空白。这将通过在多个机构中开发和实施新颖的、基于软件的开放教育资源来实现。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。

Studies of “evolution-in-action” have revealed much about the causes of evolutionary change, including why it sometimes fails. However, it is not always obvious when these causes are also responsible for extinction and adaptation over million-year timescales--the timescale primarily relevant to the evolution and maintenance of biodiversity. With increasing rates of global change, it is vital to understand how and why species either adapt and survive, or fail to adapt and perish. This project builds a bridge between the causes of evolution studied over short timescales and the long-term outcomes evident from existing evolutionary diversity with a new set of computational tools and resources for biology research and education. New models will integrate field, genetic and experimental studies with patterns of trait change from across the tree of life. The research will apply these models to comprehensive datasets in mammals and fishes to better understand the causes of trait change over million-year timescales. The research will also develop and implement freely available classroom resources that specifically address issues of scale and causation over short and long evolutionary timescales--educating the next generation of citizens and scientists to the pressing challenge of predicting how current global change will affect the long-term outlook of biodiversity. Recent controversies suggest strong limits on what inferences can be made from macroevolutionary data alone. One solution to these limitations is to synthesize what we know about the causes and limits of evolution from field and experimental studies into macroevolutionary methods. This project identifies three "injection sites" where such information can be integrated into comparative models to elucidate the causes of macroevolution. The research will develop new models that integrate measurements of genetic variation, natural selection and population data with macroevolutionary scale data. It will also enable integration of biomechanical models based on knowledge of trait functions. By uniting macroevolutionary models with knowledge and data on how microevolutionary data affect the evolutionary process, this research will open new paths for studying the causes of macroevolution. These models will be further connected to the field of causal inference--which has revolutionized artificial intelligence by rethinking how statistical methods represent causation. Finally, the research will address unfilled gaps in biology pedagogy by developing and investigating how to make the non-intuitive shift from Mendelian genetics to macroevolution in biology curricula. This will be accomplished by developing and implementing novel, software-based Open Education resources across multiple institutions.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.