PRF: The Evolution of Parental Care, Mating Systems, and Associated Morphological Characters in Neotropical Cichlid Fishes

几乎所有的亲代抚育行为和交配系统都出现在姬蝇科中，姬蝇科是一个以这些特征的多样性而闻名的科。两个线粒体基因（细胞色素氧化酶II和另一个）的序列将被确定为地鼠碱物种和外群代表，并用于推导系统发育。随着系统发育的发展，以下问题将得到解决：1)各种亲代抚育行为是按照什么顺序进化的？它们的进化稳定性如何？是特定的亲代养育模式先于特定的交配系统，还是相反？3)新的行为特征是否总是先于相关形态特征的进化？4)与其他新热带鱼类群相比，土碱的区域谱系图如何？5)在慈鲷中细胞色素氧化酶II基因进化的加速速率有多普遍？有了这个单一的系统发育，那些在行为生态学、分子和形态进化、鱼类系统分类学和新热带生物地理学等不同领域工作的人将会有很大的兴趣来回答问题。

Almost all of the parental care behaviors and mating systems seen in the Cichlidae, a family noted for its diversity in these characters, are present in the subfamily Geophaginae. Sequences of two mitochondrial genes (cytochrome oxidase II and one other) will be determined for geophagine species and outgroup representatives, and used to derive a phylogeny. With the phylogeny, the following questions will be addressed: 1) In what sequence do the varied parental care behaviors evolve and how evolutionarily labile are they? 2) Do particular modes of parental care precede particular mating systems or vice-versa? 3) Do novel behavioral traits always precede the evolution of related morphological characters? 4) How does the area cladogram for geophagines compare to those of other neotropical fish groups? 5) How general among cichlids is the accelerated rate of cytochrome oxidase II gene evolution seen in Geophagus steindachneri? With this single phylogeny, questions of great interest will be answered to those working in such diverse fields as behavioral ecology, molecular and morphological evolution, fish systematics, and neotropical biogeograhy.