AIT-CCNAA Cooperative Research: Altitudinal Variation in Metabolic Physiology of Brown Frogs, Rana sauteri

这是马萨诸塞大学的Warren Burggren博士、Scranton大学的Daniel Townsend博士和台湾大学的林耀松教授在AIT.CCNAA合作科学计划的支持下进行的为期两年的合作研究项目。这项提案计划研究生理学在近亲物种生殖隔离中的潜在作用。他们计划使用从台湾三个不同海拔地区收集的棕色青蛙来研究生理在生殖隔离中的潜在作用，以阐明物种形成和生殖隔离机制之间的关系。这一建议解决了生态学和进化生物学中的一个重要问题。这些发现可能在进化理论中具有重要意义，并可以促进我们对物种形成一般机制的理解。实验设计简单，所确定的物种特别适合作为本研究的动物模型。台湾是这项研究的绝佳地点，因为这是为数不多的发现棕蛙分布在如此大范围和不同海拔的地方之一。

This is a two.year collaborative research project between Dr. Warren Burggren, University of Massachusetts, Dr. Daniel Townsend, University of Scranton and Professor Lin Yao.Sung, National Taiwan University supported by the AIT.CCNAA Cooperative Science Program. This proposal plans to study the potential role of physiology in >reproductive isolation between closely related species. They plan to use brown frogs, >Rana> >sauteri>, collected from three distinct altitudes in Taiwan to examine the potential role of physiology in reproductive isolation to elucidate the relationship between speciation and reproductive isolating mechanisms. This proposal addresses an important problem in ecology and evolutionary biology. The findings can have significant implications in evolutionary theory and can advance our understanding of general mechanisms of speciation. The >experimental design is simple and the species identified is uniquely appropriate to serve as an animal model for this study. Taiwan is an excellent site for this study, since this is one of the few places where brown frogs are found distributed over such a large area and at different altitudes.