Understanding temperature adaptation in tropical Andean butterflies

了解热带安第斯蝴蝶的温度适应

• 批准号: 2302726
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Sheffield
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2302726
• 关键词: Understanding; temperature; adaptation; tropical; Andean

Understanding organisms' adaptation to their thermal environment is important for predicting responses to climate change. Tropical insects make up around half of all species on Earth, and yet very little is known about their thermal ecology. Butterflies are one of the best-studied insect groups with respect to thermal adaptation, but relatively little is known about the responses of tropical species to climate change. The Heliconius butterflies have been extensively studied and there is good information about the distributions of species in this genus, but very little is known about what determines species ranges (e.g. temperature versus rainfall), or how ranges have shifted. Many of the species in the genus are found in and around the Andes and it seems likely that thermal adaptation plays a role in delimiting niches in this area, and in driving distributions to shift uphill, but this has not previously been investigated. Excellent genomic resources are available for Heliconius, which have been used to investigate genes underlying adaptation and speciation. This provides the opportunity to investigate thermal adaptation in this group at multiple levels, from genes to populations, species and communities, to investigate and predict responses to climate change.

了解生物体对其热环境的适应对于预测对气候变化的反应非常重要。热带昆虫约占地球上所有物种的一半，但人们对其热生态知之甚少。蝴蝶是在热适应方面研究得最好的昆虫类群之一，但人们对热带物种对气候变化的反应知之甚少。赫利康蝴蝶已被广泛研究，并且有关于该属物种分布的良好信息，但对于决定物种范围的因素（例如温度与降雨量）或范围如何变化知之甚少。该属的许多物种都在安第斯山脉及其周边地区发现，热适应似乎在界定该地区的生态位以及驱动分布上坡方面发挥了作用，但此前尚未对此进行过研究。 Heliconius 拥有优秀的基因组资源，这些资源已被用于研究适应和物种形成的基因。这提供了从基因到种群、物种和群落等多个层面研究该群体的热适应的机会，以调查和预测对气候变化的反应。