Macroevolution of squamates (reptilia): intergrating developmental physiological and historical approaches

环境在发育和生理创新进化中的作用尚不清楚。发育研究提供了现存分类群个体发生和身体计划组织的数据，生理学研究考察了生物体与习性之间的关系，但只有化石记录提供了发育和生理学起源的历史数据。本研究计划将发育和生理数据与有鳞爬行动物（蜥蜴和蛇）的化石记录相结合，以发现过去环境变化对身体计划进化和代谢的影响。几何形态计量学和组织学分析技术应用于近代和化石鳞片骨学，以研究鳞片体表进化中调控基因表达的系统发育历史，异时解离在鳞片颅骨进化中的作用，蛇类起源中体型和摄食生态的进化以及环境对这些创新的影响。高级蛇类衍生生理（包括进化）的进化以及衍生类群在新近纪多样化过程中对气候变化的生理适应关系。这些项目旨在让学生在所有学术水平上参与，将提供适用于人类健康和医学的数据，并将具有广泛的公众利益。

The role of environment in the evolution of developmental and physiological innovation are poorly understood.  Developmental studies provide data on ontogeny and body plan organization in extant taxa and physiological studies examine the relationship between organism and habit, but only the fossil record provides historical data on the origins of development and physiology.     This research proposal integrates developmental and physiological data with the fossil record of squamate reptiles (lizards and snakes) in order to discover the past influences of environmental change on body plan evolution and metabolism. Geometric morphometric and histological analytical techniques are applied to recent and fossil squamate osteology to examine the phylogenetic history of regulatory gene expression in the evolution of squamate body plans, the role of heterochronic disassociation in cranial evolution of squamates, the evolution of body size and feeding ecology in snake origins and the environmental influences on these innovations, and the evolution of derived physiology (including evenomation) in advanced snakes and the relationship of physiological adaptations to climate change during the Neogene diversification of derived taxa.  These projects are designed to include student participation at all academic levels, will provide data that is applicable to human health and medicine, and will have broad public interest.