Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Biology for FY 2009

这一行动为NSF 2009财年博士后研究奖学金提供了资金。该奖学金支持罗伯特·派伦的一项研究和培训计划，该计划的标题是“生物多样性的历史原因：进化、生态和时间对纬度物种丰富度梯度的影响”。这项研究的主办机构是石溪大学，赞助科学家是约翰·维恩斯。生物学最明显和最重要的方面之一是在世界各地观察到的大量生物多样性，这些生物多样性集中在热带地区。物种丰富度的纬度梯度(即较高的热带生物多样性)是生态学和进化生物学中最古老和最有争议的模式之一，已经提出了数十种假说来解释它。然而，许多假说忽略了直接改变离散区域物种数量的过程(即物种形成、灭绝、扩散)，而且没有一种单一的解释能够令人满意地解释分类群之间的梯度。这项研究通过使用基因组、博物馆和环境生物信息学数据库来量化生态、时间和进化因素对全球生物多样性格局的贡献，研究了两个最多样化的脊椎动物群体--有鳞爬行动物(蜥蜴和蛇)和两栖动物(青蛙、火蜥蜴和线虫)--纬度多样性梯度的根本原因，并试图开发新的统计方法来研究这些模式。鉴于我们目前面临的生物多样性灭绝危机，了解物种丰富度发展和分布的原因是至关重要的，特别是在两栖动物中。该奖学金的培训目标是加强与使用大型生物信息学数据库进行计算分析有关的技能，以及增加对全球生物多样性模式的知识，特别是在鳞片类和两栖类中。计算生物信息学和生物系统发育学的整合也将允许与世界各地的研究人员进行跨学科合作。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship for FY 2009. The fellowship supports a research and training plan entitled "Historical causes of biodiversity: the effects of evolution, ecology, and time on latitudinal species richness gradients" for Robert Pyron. The host institution for this research is Stony Brook University, and the sponsoring scientist is John Wiens.One of the most obvious and fundamentally important aspects of biology is the vast amount of biodiversity observed worldwide, which is concentrated in the tropics. A latitudinal gradient in species richness (i.e., higher tropical biodiversity) is one of the oldest and most debated patterns in ecology and evolutionary biology, and dozens of hypotheses have been proposed to explain it. However, many hypotheses ignore the processes that directly change the number of species in discrete areas (i.e., speciation, extinction, dispersal), and no single explanation has been able to satisfactorily explain the gradient across taxa. This research examines the underlying causes of latitudinal diversity gradients in two of the most diverse vertebrate groups, squamate reptiles (lizards and snakes) and amphibians (frogs, salamanders, and caecilians) by using genomic, museum, and environmental bioinformatic databases to quantify the contributions of ecological, temporal, and evolutionary factors to global patterns of biodiversity and attempts to develop new statistical methods to study these patterns. Understanding the causes of the development and distribution of species richness is crucial given the current biodiversity extinction crisis we now face, particularly in amphibians.The training objectives of this fellowship are to strengthen skills related to both computational analysis using large-scale bioinformatic databases, as well as an increased knowledge of global biodiversity patterns, specifically in squamates and amphibians. The integration of computational bioinformatics and organismal phylogenetics will also permitinterdisciplinary collaborations with researchers worldwide.