Systematics and Biogeography of the Family Cicadidae Worldwide: Subsampling the Tree of Life

美国国家科学基金会的生命之树项目为建立可追溯到数亿年前的生命之树的主要分支做出了重大贡献；该项目将侧重于最近的分支。目前提案的主要目标是重建和解释蝉科在世界范围内的进化，作为过去6500万年来昆虫生物多样性起源和跨洲传播的模式。今天生活在地球上的大多数动植物都是在这个时代出现的。遗传数据将被用来检验关于这个由3000多种昆虫组成的非凡群体的时机和多样性的五个假设。为了实现这一新的分子和分析工具，建立系谱树，生物地理学和物种形成/灭绝研究将被纳入其中。化石和地质校准将应用于以前没有人尝试过的群体。蝉具有天然优势，因为它们分布在世界各地，它们的自然历史创造了强大的遗传/地理模式。在我们的研究过程中，将培训新一代系统学家，并将创建树、地图、关键字、照片和数据库，并通过万维网提供。一支由研究人员和合作者组成的强大的国际团队已经组成，他们在自然历史、声学分析、形态分类学和分子分类学以及对当地生物地理区域的详细知识方面具有互补的专业知识。产生的系统发育将帮助系统学家将形态特征难以捉摸或相互矛盾的未描述的物种和属归类。新的生物多样性肯定会被发现。被混淆了100多年的更高级别的分类学将根据新的分子和形态数据进行重新评估。

The NSF Tree of Life project has made substantial contributions to establishing the major branches of the tree of life dating back hundreds of millions of years; this project will focus on the most recent branches. The major goal of the current proposal is to reconstruct and interpret the evolution of the family Cicadidae worldwide as a model for the origin and transcontinental spread of insect biodiversity over the last 65 million years. Most of the plants and animals populating the earth today arose during this era. Genetic data will be used to test five hypotheses concerning the timing and diversification of this remarkable group of more than 3000 insect species. To accomplish this new molecular and analytical tools for genealogical tree building, biogeography and speciation/extinction studies will be incorporated. Fossil and geological calibrations will be applied to groups that no one has previously attempted to date. Cicadas have natural advantages because they are distributed worldwide and their natural history creates strong genetic/geographic patterns. In the course of our research a new generation of systematists will be trained and trees, maps, keys, photographs, and databases will be created and made available through the worldwide web. A strong international team of researchers and collaborators with complementary expertise in natural history, acoustic analyses, morphological taxonomy, and molecular systematics as well as detailed knowledge of local biogeographic regions has been assembled. The phylogenies produced will help systematists to group undescribed species and genera for which morphological characters are elusive or contradictory. New biodiversity is guaranteed to be discovered. Higher-level taxonomy that has been confused for more than 100 years will be re-evaluated in light of new molecular and morphological data.