EAGER: The evolution of cranial spines in sculpin fishes (superfamily Cottoidea)

许多脊椎动物都保护自己的头骨，哺乳动物的角和鹿角吸引了进化生物学家最多的注意力。该项目通过将对动物武器的研究扩展到一种名为杜父鱼的未开发鱼类群来促进科学的进步。 石首鱼有大而多变的头部刺。 据推测，它们用它们来战斗和争夺配偶，或者保护自己不被捕食者吃掉。后者是假设的，但从未测试过。 该项目将是首次在水生系统中进行此类研究，它将有助于确定脊椎的进化是否遵循与陆地系统中发现的相同的规则和模式。该项目将通过提供众多的教育经验，包括研究生和本科生的研究机会，以前成功的培训研讨会的新版本，以及使用动物武器的3D可视化来激发预科学生对生物学的兴趣的旅行课程，使社会受益。它还将通过公开和免费提供近1000个CT扫描鱼类标本骨骼的3D重建来开放科学数据。由于其新颖的学科和方法的结合，该项目有可能开创一种可能成为新的社区标准的科学方法。鱼类学、比较系统发育分析、宏观进化、生物力学和3D形态测量学的专家团队将联合这些学科，发现为什么杜父鱼的头部具有令人印象深刻的可变前鳃盖棘。这些鱼进化出了它们的武器来升级和加强雄性之间的竞争吗？或者，这些刺是为了保护它们的携带者免受间隙有限的掠食者的吞噬？为了回答这个问题，该项目将连接150多个物种的microCT扫描，合成的脊椎动物和功能性状多样性数据库，以重建这些鱼类脊椎进化的历史。此外，它将揭示规则的普遍性，这些鱼类的颅附属物的进化遵循那些在陆地系统中发现的。

Many vertebrate groups have protected their skulls, with the horns and antlers of mammals having attracted the most attention from evolutionary biologists. This project promotes the progress of science by expanding research on animal weaponry into an unexplored group of fishes called sculpins. Sculpins have large and variable head spines. It is assumed that they use them to fight and compete for mates or to defend themselves from being eaten by predators. The latter has been assumed, but never tested. This project will be first study of its kind in an aquatic system, and it will help determine whether the evolution of spines follows the same rules and patterns discovered in terrestrial systems. The project will benefit society by offering numerous educational experiences, including research opportunities to graduate and undergraduate students, a new version of a previously successful training workshop, and a travelling class that uses 3D visualization of animal weapons to excite precollege students about biology. It will also open access to scientific data by making 3D reconstructions of the skeleton of nearly 1000 CT scanned fish specimens publicly and freely available. Because of its novel combination of disciplines and methods, the project has the potential to pioneer a scientific approach that may become a new community standard. A team of experts in ichthyology, comparative phylogenetic analysis, macroevolution, biomechanics and 3D morphometrics will unite these disciplines to discover why the heads of sculpins bear impressively variable preopercular spines. Have these fishes evolved their weapons to escalate and enhance male-male competition? Or, do the spines defend their bearers from engulfment by gape-limited predators? To answer that question the project will link microCT scans of more than 150 species, synthetic phylogenies, and databases of functional trait diversity to reconstruct the history of spine evolution in these fishes. Further, it will shed light on the generality of rules governing the evolution of cranial appendages in these fishes follows those discovered in terrestrial systems.