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

许多生物群包含密切相关的物种，它们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演变的，对于理解地球上生命的进化史至关重要。它还提高了对正在进行的全球变化的未来结果的预测。一些植物群包括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生殖事件的时间安排有关。Montiaceae是一年生和多年生草本植物约250种的植物科，其多样性中心位于澳大利亚和北美西部和南美洲。它们在生态和形态上是多样化的，在高山、地中海和沙漠环境之间有多种过渡。大多数被研究的物种还拥有一种特殊的光合作用形式，当参与时，它们可以更有效地生长。这个项目将为这组植物建立一个完整的家系树。由此产生的历史将被用来重建这个植物家族如何反复适应不同的极端环境。研究将特别侧重于光合作用生理的变化如何与寿命和生殖的其他变化相结合。该项目将提供从本科生到博士后的特殊培训。培训活动将包括虚拟混合研讨会系列和学士学位后学者方案。该项目加强了与美国、阿根廷、智利和秘鲁参与者的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-圣马科斯国立大学举办标本地理参考和标本馆数据管理培训研讨会，进一步使全球能够获取这些重要的收藏品。研究人员将进一步将蒙铁科植物发展为植物进化生物学的模式支系。该项目将集中于一年和多年生活史症状的进化组装，光合作用生理学如何更好地整合到这些症状中，并将新提出的特征进化模型(胁迫诱导进化创新，SIEI)扩展到植物。这项工作将包括对干旱反应、基因表达分析和光合作用生理学的广泛野外采集和温室研究。他们将生成一个完整的Montiaceae的系统发育样本，重点放在分类上困难的Cistanthe-Calyptridium-Montiopsis支系上，并启动对Cistanthe Sensu Stricto的全面分类修订工作。在此过程中，他们将开发一种新的生物信息学管道，该管道将优化新的和历史基因组规模的数据集的合并，用于后续的系统发育分析。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。

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.