RUI: The Meaning of Morphology: Source Hierarchy for Phenotypic Variation of Skeletal Hard Parts (Bryozoa)

Morphology的含义：苔藓虫属硬部表型变异的来源层次（英语：Source Hierarchy of Phenotypic Variation of Skeleton Hard Parts（Bryozoa））（Steven J. Hagemanovirus-0073648）化石物种的识别标准主要基于古老生物体的可分解的硬部。 这与活物种的分类不同，活物种的分类除了骨骼硬部分外，还可能包括软组织、行为、生物化学和遗传组成的数据。 生物体的遗传特征与其形态特征之间关系的不确定性可能会引起对化石物种生物学意义的质疑。 由于古生物学有能力记录时间的变化，它对回答进化生物学的基本问题做出了重大贡献。 然而，在我们能够证明生物体骨骼硬部变异的遗传成分与环境成分的相对重要性之前，这些都不能有把握地解决。 此外，关于环境变化的规模和幅度的差异如何影响骨骼硬部形态（即，通过测量在受控实验室实验中作为克隆复制生长的现代殖民海洋无脊椎生物（苔藓虫）的骨骼特征，骨骼硬部分的变化可以在数学上分离为它们的遗传和环境来源。 这是一个自然系统，类似于克隆数百只绵羊，并在不同的环境中培养相同的克隆体，以确定环境对它们最终形态的影响。 苏格兰加蒂海洋实验室的研究人员已经在几种受控环境条件下培养了潮间苔藓虫Electra pilosa遗传不同菌落的克隆复制品。 该项目将把这些标本的遗传变异与环境变异分开。 在这项研究的第二部分，标本将收集从野生环境，已分层细分，以确定是否可以区分信号在一个真实的世界的例子。 这项研究的结果将有更广泛的适用性领域的进化生物学，生物地层学，古地理学，和化石谱系之间的关系。

The Meaning of Morphology: Source Hierarchy of Phenotypic Variation of Skeletal Hard Parts (Bryozoa)Steven J. HagemanEAR-0073648Criteria for the recognition of fossil species are based largely on preservable hard parts of the ancient organism. This is in contrast to the classification of living species, which in addition to skeletal hard parts, may include data from their soft tissue, behavior, biochemical and genetic composition. Uncertainty about the relationships between genetic characteristics of an organism relative to its morphological characteristics can raise questions about the biological significance of fossil species. Because paleontology had the ability to document change through deep time, it has a significant contribution to make toward answering fundamental questions of evolutionary biology. These can not be addressed with confidence however, until we can document the relative importance of the genetic versus environmental components of variation in the skeletal hard parts of organisms. In addition, little is known about how differences in the scale and magnitude of environmental variation may affect skeletal hard part morphologies (i.e., microscale spatial variation within an environmental setting could induce more morphological change than between two similar settings many kilometers apart, or vice versa).By measuring features on the skeleton of modern colonial marine invertebrate organisms (Bryozoa) that are grown as clonal replicates in controlled laboratory experiments, the variation in the skeletal hard parts can be separated mathematically into their genetic and environmental sources. This is a natural system analogous to cloning hundreds of sheep and growing sets of identical clones in different environments to determine the environment's influence on their final morphology. Researchers at Gatty Marine Laboratory, Scotland have already grown clonal replicates of genetically different colonies of the intertidal bryozoan Electra pilosa under several controlled environmental conditions. This project will separate genetic from environmental variation in these specimens. In the second part of this study, specimens will be collected from the wild from environments that have been hierarchically subdivided in order to determine whether signals can be differentiated in a real world example. Results from this study will have broader applicability to the fields of evolutionary biology, biostratigraphy, biogeography, and relationships among fossil lineages.