Muscoid Diptera biodiversity

当前的生物多样性危机是一种全球现象，北极等某些地区正面临着快速环境变化的最直接风险。因此，了解过去和现在的生物多样性资源对我们评估生物群落近期变化的程度和预测未来趋势的能力至关重要。虽然昆虫在丰度和物种丰富度方面主导大多数陆地生态系统，但对其多样性和生态学的了解远远落后于植物和脊椎动物，特别是在北部栖息地。在加拿大，与许多其他国家一样，这种知识差距主要是由于物种数量过多，在很大程度上无法与分类学专业知识相匹配，这种情况严重妨碍了我们评估环境变化对昆虫动物群的入侵和本地组成部分的多样性、分布和群落组成的影响。****这里提出的工作将有助于扭转这一趋势，通过(1)生产关于蝇类的分类工具和数据，这一群体以其许多害虫物种而闻名，如家蝇和各种根蛆，也是北极地区物种最多，数量最多和生态多样性最大的物种之一；(2)近红外光谱技术的发展和整合，这一技术有可能大大加快蝇类和其他昆虫的标本鉴定和物种发现；(3)气候快速变化的北极高纬度地区15年的蝇类表型、羽化物候和物种组成变异性研究。＊＊＊＊＊＊＊＊

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. ********