Evolutionary and developmental drivers of phenotypic variation

这项研究计划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。主要目标是建立一个严格的解剖学特征的基础，以从进化生物学家目前使用的描述性和劳动密集型方法过渡到一种可以利用新的发育和功能信息进行扩展并容易从一个分类学组转换到另一个分类学组的方法。这一转变对于继续扩大对解剖进化和发育的研究是必要的。具体地说，它将探索始祖龙骨骼发育和进化变异之间的相互作用。始祖龙是一群动物，包括鳄鱼和鸟类的最后共同祖先，包括恐龙在内的整个中生代的不同辐射，以及鳄鱼和鸟类的活辐射。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。一系列免费项目旨在搭建一个广泛的跨学科项目之间的桥梁，该项目研究的范围包括发育生物学、比较解剖学、生物成像、基因组学和定量表现学。项目的第一阶段将汇编一个关于始祖龙骨骼变异的全面解剖数据库。这将通过组合现有的和新的解剖学角色来完成。选定标本的表面扫描也将用于检查形状变化与离散的解剖变化如何对应。该计划的一个基本目标是推动解剖学进化的研究与研究分子进化的复杂方法并驾齐驱。这将通过创造新的方法来使用一个新兴的解剖本体论概念来编码解剖角色来实现。这种方法结合了发育和功能的生物学过程，以创建更复杂的解剖字符集。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是如何进化的，以及发育生物学如何影响大规模进化变化。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影响。

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.