Molecular Phylogeny of the Crustacea Based on 18s rRNA

甲壳类动物包括各种节肢动物，它们几乎栖息在地球上所有可能的栖息地，从山地土壤到深海。劳伦斯·阿贝尔博士利用光学显微镜和电子显微镜观察到的整个生物体和组织薄片的形态学数据，研究了它们的进化和生态学。最近，他学习了最新的分子技术来揭示不同甲壳类动物群体之间的进化关系。Abele博士建议分析每个主要甲壳类动物（包括甲足类、支足类、头足类、介形虫类和螃蟹等）的代表性物种的核糖体RNA序列。从这些序列数据中重建进化关系，并与从形态学数据中推断的关系模式进行比较。拟议中的研究将对众多不同的生物学家产生重大影响。甲壳类动物已经进化出了一系列广泛的形态、行为和生态习惯，对它们进化历史的分子研究将为理解这些不同特征是如何、何时以及多久出现的提供一个框架。这些新的和独立的数据将开辟新的研究领域，并将加深我们对甲壳类和进化过程的理解。

Crustaceans comprise a diverse arrray of arthropods that have come to inhabit nearly all possible habitats on earth, from mountain soils to the deep sea. Dr. Lawrence Abele has studied their evolution and ecology using morphological data from whole organisms and thin sections of tissue, as seen with light and electron microscopy. More recently, he has learned the most current molecular techniques for unravelling the evolutionary relationships among different crustacean groups. Dr. Abele proposes to analyze ribosomal RNA sequences of representative species from each of the major crustacean groups (including remipedes, branchiopods, cephalocarids, ostracodes, and crabs, to name a few). Evolutionary relationships will be reconstructed from these sequence data, and compared with patterns of relationships inferred from morphological data. The proposed research would have significant impact on a large and diverse audience of biologists. Crustacea have evolved a wide array of morphologies, behavior, and ecological habits, and the molecular study of their evolutionary history will provide a framework for understanding how, and when, and how often these various traits have appeared. These new and independent data will open new areas of research, and will deepen our understanding of the Crustacea and of the evolutionary process.