Phylogeography of a Regional Fauna: Rocky Shores of the North Pacific

岩岸生态学为生物与其环境之间的相互作用提供了许多重要的见解。尽管对岩石海岸上形成当代社区结构的过程有深刻的机械理解，但对这些社区的长期持久性和历史聚集却知之甚少。本研究的重点是利用遗传数据重建岩岸海洋生物对第四纪气候变化的纬度和人口响应。由于遗传数据可以从所有类型的生物体中收集，并且物种地理范围的长期持续产生的遗传多样性地理格局与最近范围扩张的地理格局根本不同，因此系统地理数据可以用于重建整个群落的最近人口统计和纬度历史。这项工作将在以前的努力的基础上进行系统地理学调查，具有足够的分类学和生态学的广度，以解决有关社区对环境变化的反应的基本问题。该研究将验证栖息地差异可以解释物种对气候变化的纬度差异反应的假设，从而揭示哪些类型的物种对气候变化最敏感。更广泛的影响包括为研究生和本科生以及博士后研究员提供支持和培训。该项目还将延伸到加州的一所小学：该研究的一小部分将与一名教师合作，该教师将把该项目纳入科学课程，为学生提供实际的科学经验，并接触假设检验、科学方法和生物地理学。

Rocky-shore ecology has provided many important insights into the interactions among organisms and their environments. Despite a deep mechanistic understanding of the processes shaping contemporary community structure on rocky shores, comparatively little is known about the long-term persistence and historical assembly of these communities. The focus of this research uses genetic data to reconstruct the latitudinal and demographic responses of rocky-shore marine organisms to Quaternary climate change. Because genetic data can be collected from all types of living organisms and long-term persistence of a species geographic range generates a fundamentally different geographic pattern of genetic diversity than a recent range expansion, phylogeographic data can be used to reconstruct the recent demographic and latitudinal histories of entire communities. This work will build significantly on previous efforts by conducting a phylogeographic survey with sufficient taxonomic and ecological breadth to address fundamental questions about community-wide responses to environmental change. The research will test the hypothesis that habitat differences can explain differential latitudinal responses of species to climate change, thereby revealing what types of species are most sensitive to changes in climate. The broader impacts include providing support and training for graduate and undergraduate students and a postdoctoral researcher. This project will also provide outreach to a grade school in California: a small component of the research will be a collaborative effort with a teacher who will incorporate the project into the science curriculum to provide students with hands-on science experience and exposure to hypothesis testing, scientific methods, and biogeography.