Meeting: Linking and uniting micro and macroevolution; September, 2016, Santa Barbara, CA

进化生物学家已经确定，物种形成和灭绝速度的变化是导致整个生命树上物种丰富程度截然不同的因素。例如，2000多种慈鱼的多样性部分归因于非洲和南美洲几个谱系群体内物种形成率的变化，但生命树的其他部分(例如腔棘鱼)几百万年来几乎保持不变。物种多样性研究的成功反映了系统发育比较生物学在过去二十年中的发展。尽管取得了这一成功，但在造成物种不平等和物种灭绝率不平等的人口一级机制方面，仍然存在重要问题。这次研讨会将汇聚具有一系列进化和生态学科专业知识的生物学家，就物种多样性格局如何跨越广阔的时间和空间尺度演变提出新的观点。科学家们将综合当前关于种群水平的过程如何扩大规模以产生物种丰富模式的想法，并确定新的研究方向，以了解物种形成、生殖隔离和种群的持久性如何影响生物多样性模式。这一领域的新合成对于刺激新理论的发展是必要的，新理论可以更好地将生物学的各个分支联系起来，这些分支在很大程度上是相互独立的。这项工作将为理解过去的进化提供重要的洞察力，也将为理解生命的未来提供工具。这项提议将支持举办一次研讨会，重点是查明在我们对构成系统发育规模生物多样性格局基础的微观进化过程的理解方面存在的主要差距。这次研讨会的主要成果将是一次回顾，既阐明了推进宏观进化研究需要回答的主要问题，又确定了回答这些问题的富有成效的前进途径。这篇综述将有助于推进比较生物学、种群生物学、物种形成、集合种群动态、进化和古生物学等领域的研究。讲习班的参与者将涵盖职业生涯早期、中期和晚期的科学家，其中包括女性科学家的强大代表。这项提议将为两名研究生提供培训，他们将协助组织会议和编写手稿草稿。

Evolutionary biologists have identified changes in the rates of speciation and extinction as factors that give rise to the strikingly disparate patterns of species richness across the tree of life. For example, the diversity of the 2000+ species of cichlid fishes is due, in part, to shifts in the rate of speciation within several groups of African and south American lineages, but there are other parts of the tree of life (e.g., coelacanth fishes) that have remained virtually unchanged for millions of years. The success in characterizing the tempo of species diversification reflects the growth of phylogenetic comparative biology over the last twenty years. Despite this success, important questions remain regarding the population-level mechanisms that give rise to unequal speciation and extinction rates. This workshop will bring together biologists with expertise across a range of evolutionary and ecological disciplines to develop new perspectives on how species diversity patterns have evolved across vast temporal and spatial scales. Scientists will synthesize current ideas about how population level processes might scale up to produce species richness patterns and identify new research directions for understanding how speciation, reproductive isolation, and persistence of populations influence biodiversity patterns. New synthesis in this area is necessary to spur the development of new theory that better connects branches of biology that have largely worked independently of one another. The work will provide important insight into understanding past evolution but will also provide tools to understanding the future of life. This proposal will support a workshop focused on identifying the major gaps that exist in our understanding of the microevolutionary processes that underlie biodiversity patterns at phylogenetic scales. The major product of this workshop will be a review that both articulates major questions that need to be answered to advance macroevolutionary study and identifies fruitful avenues forward for answering these questions. This review will help to advance research at the interface of comparative biology, population biology, speciation, metapopulation dynamics, evolved, and paleobiology. Workshop participants will span early, mid- and late career scientists and includes strong representation of female scientists. This proposal will provide training to two graduate students who will assist with the organization of the meeting and the development of the draft manuscript.