BoCP-Implementation: US-China: Trait innovations in the fig mutualism and their contributions to increased patterns of biodiversity

相互依存以求生存和繁殖的相互作用的物种，如植物和它们的传粉者，在地球上生命的多样化中发挥了重要作用。这个项目的一个广泛目标是了解这些相互作用的物种是如何变化的，并受到气候变化的影响。研究人员将研究最具生态意义且高度多样化的相互作用物种之一：无花果，为它们授粉的小黄蜂，以及依赖无花果生存但在大多数情况下不会给它们带来好处的各种寄生黄蜂。他们将研究物种相互作用和对当地条件的适应如何在地理上发生变化，这些变化如何受到无花果不同繁殖特性的影响，以及与无花果相互作用所必需的一组新颖和多样化的形态和生理属性是如何进化的。这项研究将通过与当地少数民族服务高中的公立学校教师合作，在K-12学生和教师培训中产生教育影响。此外，该项目将对农业和粮食生产产生重要影响，因为影响该系统应对全球变化的相同过程也在作物-传粉者和作物-害虫的相互作用中发挥作用。这项研究有四个目标：1)对雌雄同株榕树物种进行大规模的地理研究，以对榕树寄主以及相关的授粉和非授粉的榕树寄主的空间遗传结构、局部适应和物种分化的种群遗传学进行比较基因组分析；2)研究寄主吸引机制，以了解它们对榕树多样性和空间遗传结构的影响；3)测试环境变化和片断化对相互作用和拮抗作用稳定性的影响；以及4)研究该系统中涉及协同和拮抗作用的新性状的遗传机制。这项拟议的研究不仅将对寄主交配系统如何限制共同进化差异和对环境退化的反应的理论进行关键测试，还将有助于揭示无花果与它们的授粉和非授粉的Was之间协同和拮抗相互作用所涉及的性状的遗传结构。这一奖项反映了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。

Interacting species that depend on each other for their survival and reproduction, like plants and their pollinators, have played major roles in the diversification of life on Earth. A broad goal of this project is to understand how those interacting species change and are being affected by the changing climate. The researchers will study one of the most ecologically important and highly diverse group of interacting species: figs, the small wasps that pollinate them, and the diverse group of parasitic wasps that depend on figs for survival but that in most cases do not provide benefits to them. They will study how species interactions and adaptation to local conditions change geographically, how those changes are influenced by different reproductive characteristics of the figs, and how a group of novel and diverse morphological and physiological wasp attributes that are necessary for the interaction with figs have evolved. This research will have educational impacts in K-12 student and teacher training via collaboration with public school teachers from local minority-serving high schools. Moreover, the project will have important implications for agriculture and food production because the same processes influencing this system’s responses to global change also play a role in agricultural crop-pollinator and crop-pest interactions. The research has four objectives: 1) Conduct large scale geographic studies of monoecious and gynodioecious fig species to conduct comparative genomic analyses of spatial genetic structure, local adaptation, and the population genetics of species divergence on fig hosts and associated pollinating and non-pollinating fig wasps; 2) Study mechanisms of host attraction to understand their effects on fig diversification and spatial genetic structure; 3) Test the effects of environmental changes and fragmentation on the stability of mutualistic and antagonistic interactions; and 4) Study the genetic mechanisms underlying novel traits involved in synergistic and antagonistic interactions in this system. The proposed research will not only generate critical tests of theory about how host mating system constrains coevolutionary divergence and responses to environmental degradation, but will also help uncover the genetic architecture of traits involved in synergistic and antagonistic interactions between figs and their pollinating and non-pollinating wasps.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.