Earth Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Award

EAR-9515216利伯曼，布鲁斯S。这项拟议的研究解决了生态群落在控制地球上生命进化中所扮演的基本角色这一根本问题。寒武纪辐射非常适合作为研究这一过程的古生物系统，因为它的多样化速度很快，而且它标志着海洋群落和包含各种动物的复杂生态系统的首次出现。为了探索寒武纪期间古生态和演化模式和过程之间的关系，该研究员将把这些模式与后来时期记录的模式进行比较，同时考虑伴随辐射的环境变化。具体地说，当复杂的社区消失时，管理寒武纪快速辐射的进化规则与后来社区建立起来时运行的规则有根本区别吗？这位研究员将利用自己在泥盆纪化石谱系研究中的专业知识；他将应用古环境分析和物种分布数据的多元统计分析来识别古群落和重复组合，并确定它们是稳定的还是随时间波动的。这项研究将增加对地球历史上动物开始多样化的独特事件的理解，并将阐明群落在物种多样化和灭绝中所起的作用。

EAR-9515216 Lieberman, Bruce S. The proposed research addresses the fundamental problem of the role that ecological communities play in governing the evolution of life on earth. The Cambrian radiation is ideally suited as a paleontological system for studying this process because of the rapid pace of diversification, and because it marks the first appearance of marine communities and complex ecosystems containing diverse animals. To explore the relationship between paleoecological and evolutionary patterns and processes during the Cambrian, the Fellow will compare those patterns with those documented from later time periods while considering the environmental changes that accompanied the radiation. Specifically, did the evolutionary rules governing the rapid Cambrian radiation when complex communities were absent differ fundamentally from rules that operated later when communities were well established? The Fellow will draw upon his own expertise from the study of Devonian fossil lineages; he will apply paleoenvironmental analyses and multivariate statistical analyses of data on species distributions to identify paleocommunities and recurrent assemblages, and determine if they are stable or fluctuating with time. The study will increase understanding of the unique event in Earth history when animals began to diversify, and it will elucidate the role communities play in diversification and extinction.