Major evolutionary events in ancient Lake Ohrid as indicators for its origin and limnological history

巴尔干湖奥赫里德湖是欧洲最杰出的古湖，如果考虑到湖泊的大小，它的特有生物多样性程度是世界上所有古湖中最高的。虽然盆地的地质和湖泊的水文研究得相当好，但奥赫里德湖的湖湖学历史和时代在很大程度上是未知的。例如，文献中对年龄的估计从2岁到10岁不等，相关数据大多非常古老。事实上，基本上所有关于现存奥赫里德湖起源的假说都是在近100年前建立的，这些假说都没有在现代科学框架内进行过检验。此外，关于奥赫里德湖特有的突出程度是假定的长期环境稳定的结果，还是由于主要的地质、水文或气候变化导致湖泊环境的快速破坏的结果，还存在争议。当前提议的主要目标是使用来自几个无脊椎动物群体的独立的系统地理数据：a)解开现存的奥赫里德湖动物群的起源，从而获得关于湖泊湖沼学历史的信息，b)提供奥赫里德盆地触发物种形成爆发的重大进化事件的时间，并导致许多分类群中的异常多样性和特有现象，c)测试这些数据与重大地质/湖泊/环境变化的相关性，以及d)了解地质、物理化学和/或环境停滞与变化对湖泊演化史的影响。拟议的项目具有普遍和理论上的重要性，因为推断奥赫里德湖重大演化事件的时间不仅有助于揭示该湖不确定的湖湖学历史，也将是分子进化生物学家试图结合国际大陆深部钻探计划(ICDP)揭开古代湖泊重大湖沼学事件的首批实例之一。

The Balkan Lake Ohrid is the most outstanding European ancient lake with the highest degree of endemic biodiversity of any worldwide ancient lake when taking lake size into account. Whereas the geology of the basin and the hydrology of the lake are fairly well studied, the limnological history and age of Lake Ohrid are largely unknown. Age estimates in the literature vary, for example, from 2-10 My with the relevant data mostly being very old. In fact, basically all hypotheses for the origin of extant Lake Ohrid were established almost 100 years ago and none of these hypotheses has been tested within a modern scientific framework. Moreover, there is controversy about whether the outstanding degree of endemism in Lake Ohrid is the result of presumed long-term environmental stability or rapid breaks of the lake’s environment due to major geological, hydrological or climatic changes.The main goals of the current proposal are to use independent phylogeographical data from several invertebrate groups: a) to unravel the origin of extant Lake Ohrid faunas, thus yielding information on the lakes limnological history, b) to provide a timing of major evolutionary events in the Ohrid Basin triggering bursts of speciation and leading to the extraordinary diversity and endemism in many taxa, c) to test for a correlation of these data with major geological/limnological/environmental changes, and d) to understand the effect of geological, physico-chemical, and/or environmental stasis vs. changes onto the evolutionary history of the lake.The proposed project is of general and theoretical importance as inferring the timing of major evo-lutionary events in Lake Ohrid will not only help to shed light onto the uncertain limnological history of the lake, it would also be one of the first instances where molecular evolutionary biologists attempt to unravel major limnological events in ancient lakes in combination with an International Continental Deep Drilling Project (ICDP).