IRFP: Climatic Niche Evolution in South American Trees and its Consequences

国际研究奖学金项目使美国科学家和工程师能够在国外进行9至24个月的研究。该计划的奖励为联合研究提供了机会，并利用独特或互补的设施、专业知识和国外的实验条件。该奖学金资助凯尔·德克斯特博士与利兹大学的奥利弗·菲利普斯博士和爱丁堡皇家植物园的托比·彭宁顿博士进行为期24个月的研究。该项目的重点是调查南美树木的气候生态位随时间的演变。三方合作利用了南美洲不同气候带的几个现有的大型树木分布区网络、Phillips博士的生态专业知识、Pennington博士的系统发育专业知识和Dexter博士在整合生态和系统发育方法方面的专业知识。更具体地说，研究计划是综合在不同气候生物群系（如雨林、干燥森林、草原）中发现的样地网络的分类，然后构建样地网络中存在的所有属被子植物和所有种豆科植物的系统发育或进化树。这将使研究人员能够研究进化谱系，无论是家族、属还是物种，是如何随着时间的推移在气候生物群系中变化的。该项目将阐明气候偏好转换在驱动树木物种形成中的作用，并为气候变化下南美森林的未来提供见解。例如，研究人员将能够评估哪些谱系在未来不同的气候情景下更脆弱，以及如果特定的气候生物群系消失，可能会损失多少进化史。

The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct nine to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This fellowship funds Dr. Kyle Dexter to spend 24 months conducting research with Dr. Oliver Phillips, of Leeds University, and Dr. Toby Pennington, of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.The focus of the project is to investigate the evolution of climatic niches through time in South American trees. The 3-way collaboration takes advantage of several existing large-scale networks of tree plots in diverse climatic zones of South America, the ecological expertise of Dr. Phillips, the phylogenetic expertise of Dr. Pennington, and the expertise of Dr. Dexter in integrating ecological and phylogenetic approaches. More specifically, the research plan is to synthesize taxonomy across the plot networks, which are found in different climatic biomes (e.g. rainforest, dry forest, savannah), and to then construct phylogenies, or evolutionary trees, for all genera of angiosperms and all species of the Leguminosae present in the plot networks. This will allow the investigators to examine how evolutionary lineages, be they families, genera, or species, have shifted among climatic biomes through time. This project will elucidate the role of climatic preference switching in driving speciation of trees and give insights into the future of South American forests under climate change. For example, the investigators will be able to assess which lineages are more vulnerable under alternative future climatic scenarios and how much evolutionary history may be lost if specific climatic biomes disappear.