Bees: Biodiversity, biogeography

蜜蜂：生物多样性、生物地理学

• 批准号: RGPIN-2015-03764
• 负责人: Packer, Laurence
• 金额: $ 4.3万
• 依托单位: York University
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2018-01-01 至 2019-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=661382
• 关键词: Bees; Biodiversity; biogeography

Bees are essential components of almost all terrestrial environments through their pollinating activities, including many agricultural crops. Gaining an understanding of the taxonomy, ecology and evolutionary history of bees is important. We investigate these topics in a variety of ways.***1. The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the oldest and driest deserts in the world: over large areas, rainfall is measured in mm per decade and often does not reach double digits. Even on the edge of the absolute desert there are plants and bees, and one particular genus predominates, yet most of its species remain undescribed. We will describe these species and assess the degree to which they specialize on single species of host plants (some seem to). The adaptations of bees to their floral hosts is indicated by extreme modifications of their mouthparts, with these unusual characteristics arising independently multiple times seemingly to permit access to nectar from nectaries that are deep, presumably to avoid evaporation in the arid environment.  We will compare the patterns of speciation of the bees and the plants and interpret both with dated evolutionary trees which will enable us to assess the impact of past geological events and palaeoenvironmental conditions upon the mutualisms.***2. Cuckoo bees lay eggs in the nests of other bees and might be expected to be more sensitive to a deteriorating environment because they, in effect, occupy a higher trophic level. However, they are usually taxonomically difficult. We will use integrative taxonomy on New World species of the genus Epeolus, produce identification keys for all North America species and perform morphological and molecular phylogenetic studies of the genus and its hosts and use dated phylogenies to assess the extent to which speciation of the hosts impacted that of the cuckoos. We will investigate the extent to which host chemicals are matched by the cuckoos so as to decrease the chances their activities are detected. This chemical matching would place constraints on cuckoos that switch-hosts and we will assess this with our evolutionary trees.***3. Evolutionary trees for bees based upon morphology often conflict in fundamentally important ways from those obtained from DNA sequence data. We will try to resolve this conflict by assessing the impact of taxonomic outliers (rogues).  We will also amalgamate all available morphological data for the first time - surprisingly, this has not been done previously.  We will analyse the resulting data exhaustively and combine it with molecular data.  This work is facilitated by the enormous research collection we have built up - ~30% of the world's 20,000+ species of bee and 90% of the 482 genera.  We will add data from the bee's closest wasp relatives.***Students working in my laboratory will be exposed to an enormous diversity of bee research and collaborate with experts within the department, nationally and internationally and use state.**

蜜蜂通过授粉活动是几乎所有陆地环境的重要组成部分，包括许多农作物。了解蜜蜂的分类、生态学和进化史是很重要的。1.智利的阿塔卡马沙漠是世界上最古老和最干旱的沙漠之一：在大片地区，降雨量以毫米/十年为单位，通常不会达到两位数。即使在绝对沙漠的边缘，也有植物和蜜蜂，有一个特定的属占主导地位，但它的大多数物种仍然没有被描述。我们将描述这些物种，并评估它们专门研究单一寄主植物的程度(有些似乎如此)。蜜蜂对花卉宿主的适应表现为其口器的极端修改，这些不同寻常的特征多次独立出现，似乎是为了从深处的蜜腺中获取花蜜，想必是为了避免在干旱环境中蒸发。我们将比较蜜蜂和植物的物种形成模式，并用过时的进化树来解释两者，这将使我们能够评估过去地质事件和古环境条件对相互作用的影响。*2.杜鹃蜜蜂在其他蜜蜂的巢中产卵，可能会对不断恶化的环境更加敏感，因为它们实际上占据了更高的营养水平。然而，它们在分类上通常是困难的。我们将对Epeolus属的新世界物种进行综合分类，为所有北美物种制作识别检索表，并对该属及其宿主进行形态和分子系统发育研究，并使用过时的系统发育图来评估宿主的物种形成对杜鹃的影响程度。我们将调查杜鹃与寄主化学物质匹配的程度，以降低其活动被检测到的机会。这种化学匹配将对交换宿主的杜鹃施加限制，我们将用我们的进化树来评估这一点。*3.基于形态的蜜蜂进化树经常与从DNA序列数据获得的进化树在根本上重要的方式冲突。我们将试图通过评估分类离群值(无赖)的影响来解决这一冲突。我们还将首次合并所有可用的形态数据-令人惊讶的是，这是以前没有做过的。我们将对结果数据进行详尽的分析，并将其与分子数据相结合。这项工作得益于我们建立的庞大的研究收藏--约占世界20,000多种蜜蜂的30%，占482个属的90%。*我们将添加来自蜜蜂最亲密的黄蜂亲戚的数据。*在我的实验室工作的学生将接触到极其多样化的蜜蜂研究，并与系内、国内和国际的专家合作，并使用国家。**