NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: A synthetic biogeographic history of iguanian lizards

该行动资助了2021财年的NSF生物学博士后研究奖学金，即调查基因组，环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则的综合研究。该研究金支持研究员的研究和培训，以创新的方式为生活规则领域做出贡献。科学家通过研究生物体之间的相互关系（物种发生）及其在时间和空间上的地理分布（历史地理学）来评估生物多样性。虽然灭绝物种的地理分布（通常从化石中得知）可能与活着的后代的分布不同，但大多数生物地理学推断都是从活着的物种中得出的。该研究员将使用数据集来研究鬣蜥的生殖和地理学，鬣蜥是一个多样化的，众所周知的，全球分布的蜥蜴群。该项目将采用一种综合的生物地理学方法，可适用于任何有遗传数据和化石的生物群体。此外，研究鬣蜥的历史分布对于了解这些蜥蜴的现在分布和预测未来分布非常重要。该研究员将指导来自不同背景的本科生，并培训这些学生收集形态学数据。研究结果将通过外展活动、会议和出版物进行展示。该项目的目标是：1）推断鬣蜥的系统发育关系和分化时间; 2）在概率框架内估计鬣蜥的地理历史。该研究员将收集约200种活鬣蜥物种的基因组和形态学数据，以及30种灭绝物种的形态学数据，利用博物馆收藏的化石，骨骼，酒精保存的标本和组织样本。这项研究将采用一个基因组标记集（179个长而快速演变的外显子），特别适合推断鬣蜥的遗传，和一个已公布的系统发育矩阵的150个骨骼和软组织形态特征，专门为该组构建。将估计组合证据数据集的时间校准的遗传学，并用于地理分析，这将推断在鬣蜥约1.5亿年的历史上各种鬣蜥蜥蜴分支的祖先范围。这项研究将探讨特定的气候和地质事件是否可以解释白垩纪和新生代鬣蜥的地理范围变化。该研究员将接受基因组数据集的下一代测序和生物信息学处理方面的培训。该研究员将创建一个在线模块，将生物地理学的发现传达给本科生，包括那些在生物科学领域代表性不足的学生。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2021, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. Scientists evaluate biological diversification by studying how organisms are related to one another (phylogeny) and their geographical distributions through time and space (historical biogeography). Although the geographical distributions of extinct species (which are generally known from fossils) can be dissimilar to the distributions of living descendants, most biogeographical inferences are made from living species. The fellow will employ datasets to study the phylogeny and biogeography of Iguania, a diverse, well-known, and globally distributed lizard group. The project will exemplify an integrative biogeographical approach that can be applied to any group of organisms for which genetic data and fossils are available. Additionally, studying the historical distributions of iguanians is important for understanding present distributions and projecting future distributions of those lizards. The fellow will mentor undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds and train those students in the collection of morphological data. Results will be presented via outreach events, conferences, and publications.The goals of the project are to 1) infer phylogenetic relationships and divergence times among iguanian lizards, and 2) estimate a biogeographic history of iguanian lizards in a probabilistic framework. The fellow will collect phylogenomic and morphological data from ~200 living iguanian lizard species, and morphological data from 30 extinct species, leveraging fossils, skeletons, alcohol-preserved specimens, and tissue samples in museum collections. The study will employ a phylogenomic marker set (179 long and rapidly evolving exons) particularly well-suited for inferring the phylogeny of Iguania, and a published phylogenetic matrix of 150 skeletal and soft-tissue morphological characters specifically constructed for the group. Time-calibrated phylogenies of the combined-evidence dataset will be estimated and used in biogeographic analyses, which will infer the ancestral ranges of the various iguanian lizard clades across the ~150 million-year history of Iguania. The study will address whether specific climatic and geologic events can explain geographic range changes in iguanian lizards during the Cretaceous and Cenozoic. The fellow will receive training in next-generation sequencing and bioinformatic processing of genomic datasets. The fellow will create an online module to communicate the biogeographic findings to undergraduate students, including those underrepresented in the biological sciences.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.