NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: A synthetic biogeographic history of iguanian lizards

这一行动为NSF 2021财年生物学博士后研究奖学金提供了资金，综合研究调查了支配基因组、环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则。该奖学金支持研究员的研究和培训，这些研究员将以创新的方式为生活规则领域做出贡献。科学家通过研究生物如何相互联系(系统发育)以及它们在时间和空间上的地理分布(历史生物地理学)来评估生物多样性。尽管灭绝物种(通常从化石中得知)的地理分布可能与现存后代的分布不同，但大多数生物地理推断都是从活着的物种做出的。这位研究员将利用数据集来研究鬣蜥的系统发育和生物地理，鬣蜥是一个多样化的、众所周知的、全球分布的蜥蜴种群。该项目将示范一种综合的生物地理学方法，这种方法可以应用于任何一类有遗传数据和化石可用的生物体。此外，研究鬣蜥的历史分布对于了解目前的分布和预测这些蜥蜴的未来分布也很重要。该研究员将指导来自不同背景的本科生，并培训这些学生收集形态数据。结果将通过外展活动、会议和出版物公布。该项目的目标是：1)推断蜥蜴之间的系统发育关系和分化时间；2)在概率框架中估计蜥蜴的生物地理史。该研究员将收集约200种现存鬣蜥的系统基因组和形态数据，以及30种灭绝物种的形态数据，利用博物馆藏品中的化石、骨骼、酒精保存的标本和组织样本。这项研究将使用一个特别适合于推断鬣蜥系统发育的系统基因组标记集(179个长且快速进化的外显子)，以及一个专门为该群体构建的由150个骨骼和软组织形态特征组成的已公布的系统发育矩阵。综合证据数据集的时间校准的系统发育将被估计并用于生物地理分析，这将推断伊瓜尼亚约1.5亿年历史上各种蜥蜴支系的祖先范围。这项研究将探讨特定的气候和地质事件是否可以解释蜥蜴在白垩纪和新生代的地理范围变化。这位研究员将接受下一代基因组数据集测序和生物信息处理方面的培训。该研究员将创建一个在线模块，将生物地理发现传达给本科生，包括那些在生物科学中代表性不足的学生。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。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2021, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. Scientists evaluate biological diversification by studying how organisms are related to one another (phylogeny) and their geographical distributions through time and space (historical biogeography). Although the geographical distributions of extinct species (which are generally known from fossils) can be dissimilar to the distributions of living descendants, most biogeographical inferences are made from living species. The fellow will employ datasets to study the phylogeny and biogeography of Iguania, a diverse, well-known, and globally distributed lizard group. The project will exemplify an integrative biogeographical approach that can be applied to any group of organisms for which genetic data and fossils are available. Additionally, studying the historical distributions of iguanians is important for understanding present distributions and projecting future distributions of those lizards. The fellow will mentor undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds and train those students in the collection of morphological data. Results will be presented via outreach events, conferences, and publications.The goals of the project are to 1) infer phylogenetic relationships and divergence times among iguanian lizards, and 2) estimate a biogeographic history of iguanian lizards in a probabilistic framework. The fellow will collect phylogenomic and morphological data from ~200 living iguanian lizard species, and morphological data from 30 extinct species, leveraging fossils, skeletons, alcohol-preserved specimens, and tissue samples in museum collections. The study will employ a phylogenomic marker set (179 long and rapidly evolving exons) particularly well-suited for inferring the phylogeny of Iguania, and a published phylogenetic matrix of 150 skeletal and soft-tissue morphological characters specifically constructed for the group. Time-calibrated phylogenies of the combined-evidence dataset will be estimated and used in biogeographic analyses, which will infer the ancestral ranges of the various iguanian lizard clades across the ~150 million-year history of Iguania. The study will address whether specific climatic and geologic events can explain geographic range changes in iguanian lizards during the Cretaceous and Cenozoic. The fellow will receive training in next-generation sequencing and bioinformatic processing of genomic datasets. The fellow will create an online module to communicate the biogeographic findings to undergraduate students, including those underrepresented in the biological sciences.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.