Biodiversity and evolution of Malagasy stick insects: Ancient lineages or recent adaptive radiation?

马达加斯加是地球上主要的生物多样性热点地区之一，展示了非常独特和多样的生物群落，但也严重濒危。它的动物群的许多元素都没有得到很好的记录，而且大部分还没有被探索过。例如，马达加斯加竹节虫（竹节虫目）的进化史就完全不为人知。竹节虫是大型陆生节肢动物，分散能力有限，在马达加斯加形成至少四个不同的分类类群，即地方性科和亚科，与大陆谱系的系统发育亲缘关系完全未解决。广泛的多基因系统发育分析和分子钟方法应该推断出(i)马达加斯加相matodean动物群是否可以用生物地理学解释（形成gondwana碎片的遗迹），（ii）如果它是单一的后gondwanan殖民的产物，或者（iii）最近多次海洋扩散事件的结果。本项目还旨在研究马达-加斯嘎上phasmatodeans的适应性分支多样性和微特有性。通过贝叶斯重建方法，结合定量形态学特征和离散解剖学特征，该项目旨在显著提高我们对岛屿上不同生态形态的系统地理学和进化的理解，例如地面栖息和冠层栖息，飞行和无飞行形式。

Madagaskar is one of our planet’s leading biodiversity hotspots exhibiting an extraordinarily distinct and diverse, but also severely endangered biota. Many elements of its fauna are poorly documented and remain largely unexplored. For example, the evolutionary history of the Malagasy stick insects (order Phasmatodea) is entirely obscure. Stick insects are large terrestrial arthropods with limited dispersal abilities, forming at least four distinct taxonomic groups on Madagascar, i.e., endemic families and subfamilies with completely unresolved phylogenetic affinities in respect to continental lineages. An extensive multigene phylogenetic analysis and molecular clock approach is supposed to infer whether (i) the Malagasy phas-matodean fauna can be explained by vicariance biogeography (forming relics of the Gond-wana fragmentation), (ii) if it is the product of a single post-Gondwanan colonization, or (iii) the result of multiple recent oceanic dispersal events. This project is also designed to investi-gate the adaptive clade diversifications and microendemism of phasmatodeans on Mada-gascar. By using Bayesian reconstruction methods in combination with quantitative mor-phometric and discrete anatomical characters the project is aimed to significantly advance our understanding of the phylogeography and evolution of distinct ecomorphs of stick insects on islands, e.g., ground-dwellers and canopy-dwellers, flying and flightless forms.