Phylogeny and Evolution of Ranunculales: An Integrative Approach

毛茛目植物是一个高度多样化的开花植物群，分布于世界各地。它包括罂粟（罂粟科），小檗（小檗科）和毛茛（毛茛科）等重要的科，其中许多具有不同的园艺和药用用途。了解毛茛目中的进化关系尤其重要，因为它们是一个大型而重要的开花植物群的基础，称为真双子叶植物。该提案要求提供资金，为毛茛目相对广泛的采样建立一个形态数据集，特别强调那些最有可能保存在化石记录中的特征（以便整合化石数据）。同时，将进行必要的DNA测序，以确保匹配物种的完整分子数据集，为形态学工作提供可靠的框架。这种形态和分子数据的结合和比较将用于探索与化石数据的整合，形态特征如何演变，以及化石校准的分子测年相关的问题。将化石数据整合到进化树中将有助于确定更准确的谱系年代估计和这些估计的地理学意义。 拟议的工作将产生新的形态学（特别是微形态花粉，毛状体，气孔模式）和分子数据，并将提供良好解决和支持的进化树，这将在许多生物学领域（例如，古植物学、生态学、民族植物学、植物地理学）。分子数据将存入基因库，由此产生的进化树将存入树库，从而使全世界都可以通过网络查阅。将探讨和比较整合化石数据的各种技术。将建立一个可靠和可完全检索的形态学数据库，专业人员和公众均可通过网络查阅。该数据库将包括图像、进化树、数据矩阵、描述、词汇表和参考文献。博士后研究人员将接受形态学和分子系统发育学工作的培训（此时很少组合）。在这个项目的时间内，几个本科生将被雇用，获得宝贵的实验室经验，以及对科学家如何工作的更深入的了解。

The order of plants, Ranunculales, is a highly diverse group of flowering plants found throughout the world. It includes such important families as the poppies (Papaveraceae), barberries (Berberidaceae), and buttercups (Ranunculaceae), many of which have diverse horticultural and medicinal uses. Understanding evolutionary relationships in the Ranunculales is especially important as they are at the base of a large and important group of flowering plants called the eudicots. This proposal requests funding for the construction of a morphological data set for a relatively extensive sampling of Ranunculales, with a special emphasis on those traits most likely to be preserved in the fossil record (to allow for the integration of fossil data). Concomitantly, the DNA sequencing necessary to ensure complete molecular data sets for matching species will be done, providing a reliable framework for the morphological work. This combination and comparison of morphological and molecular data will be used to explore questions related to the integration of fossil data, how morphological characters evolved, and molecular dating with fossil calibrations. The integration of fossil data into evolutionary trees will be helpful in determining more accurate estimations of the dating of lineages and the biogeographical implications of those estimates. The proposed work will result in new morphological (especially micromorphological pollen, trichomes, stomatal patterns) and molecular data and will provide well resolved and supported evolutionary trees that will be useful in numerous biological fields (e.g., palaeobotany, ecology, ethnobotany, biogeography). The molecular data will be deposited in GenBank and the resulting evolutionary trees in TreeBase, thus making them available throughout the world via the web. Various techniques for integrating fossil data will be explored and compared. A reliable and fully searchable morphological database will be constructed and will be accessible via the web to both professionals and the public. The database will include images, evolutionary trees, data matrices, descriptions, a glossary, and references. A postdoctoral researcher will be trained in both morphological and molecular phylogenetic work (a rare combination at this time). Over the time of this project, several undergraduates will be employed, gaining invaluable lab experience as well as a deeper understanding of how scientists work.