The evolution of Montiaceae: integrating phylogeny, life history, and physiology to understand a global ecological radiation

许多生物群体包含密切相关的物种，这些物种专门生活在非常独特和具有挑战性的环境中。了解这些适应是如何随着时间的推移而进化的，对于理解地球上生命的进化史至关重要。它还改进了对正在发生的全球变化的未来结果的预测。一些植物群包括在极端沙漠和山地栖息地之间的多次过渡。这些转变与个体寿命的变化以及生长和繁殖事件的时间有关。山铁科是一个植物科，大约有250种一年生和多年生草本植物，分布在澳大利亚和南北美洲西部。它们在生态和形态上具有多样性，在高山、地中海和沙漠环境之间多次过渡。大多数被调查的物种还拥有一种特殊形式的光合作用，当它们参与其中时，可以使它们的生长效率更高。这个项目将为这组植物建立一个完整的家谱。由此产生的历史将用于重建这个植物家族如何反复适应不同的极端环境。研究将特别关注光合生理的变化如何与寿命和繁殖的其他变化相结合。该项目将提供从本科生到博士后水平的特殊培训。培训活动将包括虚拟混合系列研讨会和学士学位后学者计划。该项目加强了与美国、阿根廷、智利和秘鲁参与者之间高度协作的国际伙伴关系。研究人员还将在秘鲁最大的植物标本馆——圣马科斯国立大学市长植物标本馆举办标本地理参考和植物标本馆数据管理培训讲习班，进一步使全球能够获得这些重要的收藏。研究人员将进一步发展山铁科作为植物进化生物学的模式分支。本项目将重点关注一年生和多年生生命史综合征的进化组合，光合生理学如何更好地整合到这些综合征中，并将新提出的特征进化模型（应激诱导进化创新，SIEI）扩展到植物中。这项工作将包括广泛的野外收集和干旱响应的温室研究，基因表达分析和光合生理学。他们将生成Montiaceae的完整系统发育样本，重点研究分类困难的Cistanthe- calyptridium - montiopsis分支，并开始对严格意义的Cistanthe sensu stricto进行完整的分类修订。在此过程中，他们将开发一个新的生物信息学管道，将优化新的和历史基因组学规模数据集的合并，用于随后的系统发育分析。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Many groups of organisms contain closely related species that are specialized to live in very distinct and challenging environments. Understanding how these adaptations have evolved over time is critical to understanding the evolutionary history of life on Earth. It also improves predictions of future outcomes of ongoing global change. Some plant groups include multiple transitions between extreme desert and mountain habitats. These transitions have been correlated with shifts in individual lifespan and the timing of growth and reproductive events. The Montiaceae is a plant family of ~250 species of annual and perennial herbs with centers of diversity in Australia and Western North and South America. They are ecologically and morphologically diverse, with multiple transitions between high mountain, Mediterranean, and desert environments. Most investigated species also possess a special form of photosynthesis that, when engaged, allows them to be more efficient in their growth. This project will build a complete family tree for this group of plants. The resulting history will be used to reconstruct how this plant family repeatedly adapted to different extreme environments. Investigation will particularly focus on how changes in photosynthetic physiology are integrated with other shifts in lifespan and reproduction. The project will provide exceptional training from the undergraduate to the post-doctoral levels. Training activities will include a virtual hybrid seminar series and a post-baccalaureate scholars program. The project strengthens a highly collaborative international partnership with participants in the United States, Argentina, Chile, and Peru. The researchers will also run a training workshop in specimen georeferencing and herbarium data management at Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos Herbarium, the largest herbarium in Peru, further enabling global access to these important collections.The researchers will further develop the Montiaceae as a model clade for plant evolutionary biology. This project will focus on the evolutionary assembly of annual and perennial life history syndromes, how photosynthetic physiology may be better integrated into these syndromes and extend a newly proposed model of character evolution (stress-induced evolutionary innovation, “SIEI”) to plants. This work will include extensive field collections and greenhouse studies of drought response, gene expression analyses, and photosynthetic physiology. They will generate a completely sampled phylogeny for Montiaceae, focusing efforts on the taxonomically difficult Cistanthe-Calyptridium-Montiopsis clade and initiating work on a full taxonomic revision of Cistanthe sensu stricto. In the process, they will develop a new bioinformatics pipeline that will optimize the merging of novel and historical genomics-scale datasets for subsequent phylogenetic analysis.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.