Evolutionary and developmental drivers of phenotypic variation

该研究项目将研究脊椎动物骨骼在大规模进化变化中的发育和进化生物学。其主要目标是建立一个严格的解剖学表征的基础，从目前进化生物学家使用的描述性和劳动密集型方法过渡到一个可以扩展新的发育和功能信息，并很容易从一个分类组转换到下一个。这种转变对于继续扩大解剖进化和发育的研究是必要的。具体来说，它将探索发展和进化变化之间的相互作用在骨骼的初龙，一组动物，其中包括鳄鱼和鸟类的最后共同祖先，一个不同的辐射在整个中生代，包括恐龙，和生活辐射的鳄鱼和鸟类。这种辐射开始于大约2.5亿年前，记录了许多大规模的进化转变，包括鸟类的起源。一套免费的项目旨在弥合广泛的跨学科计划，研究范围包括发育生物学，比较解剖学，生物成像和定量表型学。项目的第一阶段将建立一个完整的原始龙类骨骼变异解剖数据库。这将通过组装当前和新的解剖特征来完成。所选标本的表面扫描也将用于检查形状变化如何与离散的解剖学变化相对应。该计划的一个基本目标是将解剖学进化的研究与研究分子进化的复杂方法相提并论。这将通过创建新的方法来使用解剖本体的新兴概念来编码解剖特征来完成。这种方法结合了生物发育和功能过程，以创建更复杂的解剖特征集。第二阶段将研究发育过程如何作用于前一阶段确定的解剖学变化的“热点”。这项工作将测试组织水平的发育变化如何影响解剖学的进化。这项研究将得出骨骼发育和进化的工作模型。这些结果将有助于我们理解生物系统如何进化，以及发育生物学如何影响大规模的进化变化。其他应用是开发用于成像、量化和比较解剖数据的高效工作流程。这对于客观地估计进化关系、描述发育变异和生物成像具有巨大的意义。

This research program will examine the developmental and evolutionary biology of the vertebrate skeleton across large scale evolutionary change. The primary goal is to create a foundation of rigorous anatomical characterization to transition from the current descriptive and labour-intensive methods used by evolutionary biologists to one that can expand with new developmental and functional information and be easily translated from one taxonomic group to the next. This transition is necessary to continue scaling up research on anatomical evolution and development. Specifically, it will explore the interplay between developmental and evolutionary variation in the skeleton of Archosauria, a group of animals that includes the last common ancestor of crocodiles and birds, a diverse radiation throughout the Mesozoic Era that include dinosaurs, and the living radiations of crocodiles and birds. This radiation began about 250 million years ago and records many large-scale evolutionary transitions, including the origin of birds. A set of complimentary projects are designed to bridge a broad interdisciplinary program that researches a spectrum including developmental biology, comparative anatomy, biological imaging, and quantitative phenomics. The first phase of projects will assemble a comprehensive anatomical database of skeletal variation in Archosauria. This will be done by assembling current and novel anatomical characters. Surface scans of selected specimens will also be used to examine how shape changes correspond with discrete anatomical changes. An underlying goal of this program is to move the study of anatomical evolution on par with the sophisticated methods studying molecular evolution. This will be done by creating novel methods to code anatomical characters using an emerging concept of anatomical ontologies. This method incorporates biological processes of development and function to create more sophisticated anatomical character sets. The second phase will examine how developmental processes are acting on `hotspots' of anatomical change identified in the previous phase. This work will test how tissue-level developmental changes influence the evolution of anatomy. This research will derive a working model of skeletal development and evolution. The results will have application to our understanding of how biological systems evolve and how developmental biology influences large scale evolutionary change. Other applications are the development of an efficient work flow for imaging, quantifying, and comparing anatomical data. This has enormous implications for objectively estimating evolutionary relationships, describing developmental variation, and biological imaging.