Muscoid Diptera biodiversity

当前的生物多样性危机是一种全球现象，某些地区，如北极，面临着环境快速变化的最直接风险。因此，了解过去和现在的生物多样性资源对于我们评估生物群落最近变化的程度和预测未来趋势是至关重要的。虽然昆虫在丰富度和物种丰富度方面主导着大多数陆地生态系统，但对昆虫多样性和生态的了解远远落后于植物和脊椎动物，特别是在北方栖息地。在加拿大，就像在许多其他国家一样，这种知识差距主要是由于绝大多数物种的数量在很大程度上是分类学专业知识无法匹配的，这种情况严重阻碍了我们评估环境变化对入侵和本地昆虫动物群的多样性、分布和群落组成的影响的能力。*这里提出的工作将通过以下方式帮助扭转这一趋势：(1)关于蝇类的分类工具和数据的产生，这一类以其许多害虫物种而闻名，如家蝇和各种根蝇，但也是北极最特殊、最丰富和最具生态多样性的昆虫之一；(2)近红外光谱学在分类学工作流程中的发展和整合，这项技术有可能极大地加速蝇类和其他昆虫的标本鉴定和物种发现；以及(3)在经历快速气候变化的北极高海拔地区调查15年期间的蝇类表型、羽化物候和物种组成的变异性。********

The current biodiversity crisis is a global phenomenon, and certain regions such as the arctic are at most immediate risk from rapid environmental changes. Consequently, knowledge of past and present biodiversity resources is essential to our ability to evaluate the extent of recent changes in biological communities and forecast future trends. While insects dominate most terrestrial ecosystems in terms of abundance and species richness, knowledge of their diversity and ecology lags well behind that of plants and vertebrates, especially in northern habitats. In Canada, as in many other countries, this knowledge gap is primarily due to overwhelming species numbers largely unmatched by taxonomic expertise, a situation that seriously hampers our ability to assess the impacts of environmental changes on the diversity, distribution and community composition of both invasive and native components of our entomological fauna.****The work proposed here will help reverse this trend through (1) the production of taxonomic tools and data on muscoid flies, a group best known for its many pest species such as the house fly and various root maggots, but also one of the most speciose, abundant, and ecologically diverse in the arctic; (2) the development and integration in the taxonomic workflow of near infrared spectroscopy, a technique with the potential to greatly accelerate specimen identification and species discovery in muscid flies and other insects; and (3) the investigation of muscoid phenotype, emergence phenology and species composition variability over a 15 years time period at a high arctic locality undergoing rapid climatic changes. ********