Dimensions: Collaborative Research: A community level approach to understanding speciation in Hawaiian lineages

生物多样性研究的最新进展导致了两个不同方向的进展，第一个方向是生物如何随时间变化，第二个方向是生物多样性在给定时间的空间格局。拟议的研究将这两种方法结合在一起，以在动态的背景下理解生物多样性。基本的研究问题是：(1)不同生物体群体的多样化速度和顺序是如何由它们所生活的群落决定的，以及(2)多样化的顺序如何决定由此产生的群落组成？这项研究的重点是昆虫和蜘蛛，并利用夏威夷群岛年轻岛屿的已知动态地质，其中不同的当代地点代表着地质序列中的各个阶段，作为检查适应、种群分化和相关群落演替之间的反馈的系统。方法包括：(1)基因组和其他分子工具，以衡量最近到达这些新栖息地的相互作用的物种群体的活跃多样性，以及(2)生态和计算方法，以衡量物种组成随时间的变化。研究将确定随着种群随着时间的推移而分化并在空间聚集时，物种在群落中角色变化的重要性，以及动态群落在促进多样性方面的作用。这项工作还通过测试优先级、顺序和相关相互作用强度的重要性，向入侵和保护生物学以及恢复生态学的应用领域提供信息。该项目将在进化生物学和生态学的交叉点培养多名本科生和研究生以及博士后。

Recent advances in biodiversity research have led to progress in two separate directions that focus first on how organisms change over time, and second on spatial patterns of biodiversity at a given time. The proposed research brings together these two approaches to understand biodiversity in a dynamic context. Fundamental research questions are: (1) how are the rate and order of diversification in different groups of organisms determined by the community in which they live, and (2) how does the sequence of diversification dictate the resulting community composition? The research focuses on insects and spiders and uses the known dynamic geology of the young islands of the Hawaiian archipelago, where different contemporary sites represent stages in a geological sequence, as a system for examining feedbacks between adaptation, population divergence, and associated community succession. Methods include: (1) genomic and other molecular tools to measure active diversification of interacting groups of species that are recent arrivals to these novel habitats, and (2) ecological and computational approaches to measure changes in species composition over time.The research will determine the importance of changing roles of species within communities as populations diverge over time and assemble in space, and the role of that dynamic community in fostering diversification. The work also informs applied areas of invasion and conservation biology, and restoration ecology, by testing the importance of priority, sequence, and associated interaction strengths. The project will train multiple undergraduate and graduate students as well as postdocs in research at the intersection between evolutionary biology and ecology.