BoCP-Implementation: US-China: Trait innovations in the fig mutualism and their contributions to increased patterns of biodiversity

相互依赖生存和繁殖的物种，如植物及其传粉者，在地球生命多样化方面发挥了重要作用。该项目的一个广泛目标是了解这些相互作用的物种如何变化以及如何受到气候变化的影响。研究人员将研究最具生态重要性和高度多样性的相互作用物种之一：无花果，为它们授粉的小黄蜂，以及依赖无花果生存但在大多数情况下不会为它们提供好处的寄生黄蜂。他们将研究物种之间的相互作用和对当地条件的适应如何在地理上发生变化，这些变化如何受到无花果不同繁殖特征的影响，以及如何进化出一组与无花果相互作用所必需的新颖多样的形态和生理黄蜂属性。这项研究将通过与当地少数民族高中的公立学校教师合作，对K-12学生和教师培训产生教育影响。此外，该项目将对农业和粮食生产产生重要影响，因为影响这一系统对全球变化的反应的相同过程也在农业作物-传粉媒介和作物-害虫相互作用中发挥作用。本研究的主要目的是：1）对雌雄同株和雌蕊异株的榕属植物进行大规模的地理研究，对榕属植物的空间遗传结构、地方适应性以及榕属植物及其传粉和非传粉榕小蜂的种群遗传学差异进行比较基因组学分析; 2）研究寄主吸引机制，了解其对榕属植物多样性和空间遗传结构的影响; 3）测试环境变化和片段化对互惠和拮抗相互作用稳定性的影响;和4）研究该系统中涉及协同和拮抗相互作用的新性状的遗传机制。拟议中的研究不仅将产生关于宿主交配系统如何限制共同进化分歧和对环境退化反应的理论的关键测试，而且还将有助于揭示无花果及其授粉和非授粉之间的协同和拮抗相互作用所涉及的性状的遗传结构。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值进行评估，更广泛的影响审查标准。

Interacting species that depend on each other for their survival and reproduction, like plants and their pollinators, have played major roles in the diversification of life on Earth. A broad goal of this project is to understand how those interacting species change and are being affected by the changing climate. The researchers will study one of the most ecologically important and highly diverse group of interacting species: figs, the small wasps that pollinate them, and the diverse group of parasitic wasps that depend on figs for survival but that in most cases do not provide benefits to them. They will study how species interactions and adaptation to local conditions change geographically, how those changes are influenced by different reproductive characteristics of the figs, and how a group of novel and diverse morphological and physiological wasp attributes that are necessary for the interaction with figs have evolved. This research will have educational impacts in K-12 student and teacher training via collaboration with public school teachers from local minority-serving high schools. Moreover, the project will have important implications for agriculture and food production because the same processes influencing this system’s responses to global change also play a role in agricultural crop-pollinator and crop-pest interactions. The research has four objectives: 1) Conduct large scale geographic studies of monoecious and gynodioecious fig species to conduct comparative genomic analyses of spatial genetic structure, local adaptation, and the population genetics of species divergence on fig hosts and associated pollinating and non-pollinating fig wasps; 2) Study mechanisms of host attraction to understand their effects on fig diversification and spatial genetic structure; 3) Test the effects of environmental changes and fragmentation on the stability of mutualistic and antagonistic interactions; and 4) Study the genetic mechanisms underlying novel traits involved in synergistic and antagonistic interactions in this system. The proposed research will not only generate critical tests of theory about how host mating system constrains coevolutionary divergence and responses to environmental degradation, but will also help uncover the genetic architecture of traits involved in synergistic and antagonistic interactions between figs and their pollinating and non-pollinating wasps.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.