PurSUiT: Systematics and species delimitation of the clownfish-hosting sea anemones.

热带海葵是珊瑚礁群落的重要成员，与小丑鱼等无脊椎动物形成标志性的共生关系。然而，自从现代DNA测序技术问世以来，人们对热带海葵多样性的研究还没有做出重大的努力。雪上加霜的是，海葵几乎没有可用于区分物种的物理特征，而且经典的DNA测序方法对于发现新的类群无效。因此，热带海葵的多样性很可能被严重低估，需要新的基因组方法来同时发现物种，将它们置于更广泛的进化背景中，并确定在每个分类水平上哪些物理海葵特征是有用的。这项研究将通过以小丑鱼为宿主的海葵来探索导致热带海葵多样性的进化过程。小丑鱼-海葵共生一直是探索基本生物过程的模式，但之前的研究几乎完全集中在小丑鱼上。未被描述的海葵宿主的存在将改写我们对小丑鱼-海葵共生的理解，阐明热带海葵多样性的起源，并改变对跨越科学学科的数十项研究的解释。这项研究将为热带海葵多样性的现代自然历史收集资源提供依据。本科生和普通公众的外展和教育机会将在美国自然历史博物馆举行。公民科学倡议将导致形成第一个长期数据平台，以跟踪小丑鱼海葵的分布和丰度。最新的海葵物种描述将对观赏水族馆行业建立以科学为基础的保护倡议很有价值。研究人员将进行主要的实地研究，收集到马达加斯加、西澳大利亚、巴布亚新几内亚和马绍尔群岛的探险。在这项研究中采集的所有个体海葵都将在水下拍摄。生成的图像和生态元数据将被上传到公共数字生物多样性数据库。利用限制酶切位点相关的DNA测序和新开发的针对超保守元素基因座的珊瑚虫诱饵捕获探针，将发现新的海葵物种。由此产生的基因组数据将被用来测试关于热带海葵多样性和小丑鱼-海葵共生的三个关键问题：1)寄主小丑鱼的海葵的物种水平的真正多样性是什么？2)寄主海葵与小丑鱼有共同的生物地理起源吗？3)热带是海葵生物多样性的中心，还是起源或积累？这些数据将在公共资源库中共享，将提供关于热带海葵多样性、小丑鱼宿主海葵和海葵超家族Actinioidae的第一个比较基因组系统研究。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Tropical sea anemones are important members of coral reef communities and form iconic symbiotic relationships with clownfishes and other invertebrates. However, no major efforts have been made to understand tropical sea anemone diversity since the advent of modern DNA sequencing. Compounding a lack of research, sea anemones have few physical characteristics that are useful for discerning between species and classic DNA sequencing approaches have been ineffective for discovering new taxa. Thus, it is likely that tropical sea anemone diversity is vastly underdescribed, and new genomic approaches are needed to simultaneously discover species, place them into broader evolutionary context, and determine what physical sea anemone characteristics are informative at every taxonomic level. This study will explore the evolutionary processes that have given rise to tropical sea anemone diversity by focusing on the clownfish-hosting sea anemones. The clownfish-sea anemone symbiosis has been a model for exploring fundamental biological processes, but prior research has focused almost exclusively on clownfish. The presence of undescribed sea anemone hosts will re-write our understanding of the clownfish-sea anemone symbiosis, shed light on the origin of tropical anemone diversity, and transform the interpretation of dozens of studies across scientific disciplines. This research will result in modern natural history collection resources for tropical sea anemone diversity. Outreach and educational opportunities for undergraduate students and the general public will take place at the American Museum of Natural History. Citizen science initiatives will result in the formation of the first long-term data platform to track the distribution and abundance of the clownfish sea anemones. Updated sea anemone species descriptions will be valuable for establishing scientifically-based conservation initiatives in the ornamental aquarium trade.Researchers will conduct major field research collecting expeditions to Madagascar, Western Australia, Papua New Guinea, and the Marshall Islands. All individual sea anemones sampled in this study will be photographed underwater. Resulting images and ecological metadata will be uploaded to public digital biodiversity databases. New sea anemone species will be discovered using restriction-site associated DNA sequencing and newly developed bait-capture probes for Class Anthozoa targeting Ultra Conserved Element loci. Resulting genomic data will be used for testing three key questions regarding tropical sea anemone diversity and the clownfish-sea anemone symbiosis: 1) What is the true species-level diversity of the clownfish-hosting sea anemones? 2) Do host sea anemones share a common biogeographic origin with clownfishes? 3) Are the tropics a center or origin, or accumulation, of sea anemone biodiversity? These data, which will be shared in public repositories, will provide the first comparative genomic systematic study on tropical sea anemone diversity, the clownfish-hosting sea anemones, and the anemone superfamily Actinioidea.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.