CAREER: Integrating Genomic, Paleoclimatic, and Morphological Approaches to Unravel the Evolutionary History of Fossil and Extant Marine Fishes Over Time

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This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Understanding the evolutionary history of life on earth requires comprehensive documentation of both living and fossil species. For example, our understanding of the effects of ancient events on morphological diversity is stymied by the limited inclusion of fossils, paleoclimatic data layers, and understanding of genome size evolution over time. To address this knowledge gap, this project will analyze morphological evolution using extant and fossil pufferfishes, boxfishes, ocean sunfishes, and allies (Order Tetraodontiformes), as well as its links to changes in paleoclimate, body size, and genome size. By investigating the complex interplay between ancient climatic events, rates of morphological evolution, and convergence at the phenotypic and molecular levels, this project will yield a new comparative synthesis of the tempo and mode of diversification in this group and, more generally, advance our understanding of vertebrate diversification. An integrated education plan extends the impact of this research by training the next generation of evolutionary biologists. Educational activities include workshops at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Puerto Rico, the creation of museum exhibitions, and research training for undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. This project centers on an integrative macroevolutionary investigation of morphological diversity using whole-genome sequencing data coupled with state-of-the-art approaches for the study of morphological, paleoclimatic, and paleontological data to elucidate the drivers of phenotypic diversification in a mostly marine fish clade (tetraodontiforms). The project will address three main questions: (i) Are ancient climatic events associated with an increase in rates of morphological evolution? (ii) Is genome size evolution correlated with higher rates of morphological and lineage diversification? (iii) Is phenotypic convergence in body size correlated with patterns of molecular convergence? Results will establish new research directions for understanding how other marine groups have evolved and adapted to abrupt climatic changes. They will also enhance our understanding of the relationships between phenotypic and genotypic predictability using whole-genome sequencing and morphological data in a macroevolutionary context, and create new ways of exploring evolution through novel comparative analyses based on a variety of rich layers of data. The educational plan of this proposal includes a new ichthyology course, coding summer workshops, and a variety of museum exhibitions and outreach activities, presenting fishes as an excellent system to understand morphological evolution.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.