Species and spaces: molecular ecological analyses of biodiversity

地球上的大多数生命重量都不到几克，通过嗅觉和味觉来体验世界，科学和你很可能都是未知的。识别生物多样性和需要保护的物种或种群的传统方法通常使用更大和更好理解的生物作为保护伞或指示物种来代表这一巨大的生物多样性推动力。然而，这种方法不公正地对待小生命，或者我们对形成我们今天生活在其中的生物多样性模式的过程的理解。我实验室的这项研究使用了分子生态学方法(使用分子遗传数据来研究野生生物)，以更好地了解隐秘的物种和碎片化的空间。由于缺乏形态不连续或分化，低估了生物多样性，对我们正确理解物种之间的相互作用的能力产生了戏剧性和严重的影响。在一个气候不断变化的世界里，这种知识鸿沟将会加剧。关于物种成员的决定会对我们对生物多样性、物种形成、种群连通性和景观破碎化的理解产生一系列后果，我的研究计划旨在测试物种的识别和背后的概念。我使用两个模型系统来探索物种进化、神秘物种和种群联系：孤立的哥斯达黎加火山上的蚂蚁物种，以及复杂食物网中的热带和温带寄生昆虫物种。每个模式系统的特点是其空间和时间隔离的程度，以及处于分类障碍前沿的物种。在这里，综合的方法对我们理解种群联系和形态密码至关重要，因此我使用了分子生态学工具(标准化的mtDNA和核标记以及实时PCR反应)、形态分类学和田间生态学。我的跨学科方法测试了这些进化和生态过程，允许更准确的保护，并导致对生态学和进化的更好理解。

Most life on our planet weighs less than a few grams, experiences the world through smell and taste, and in all likelihood is unknown to science or to you. Traditional methods of identifying biodiversity and species or populations needing conservation generally use larger and better understood organisms as umbrella, or indicator, species to represent this vast bolus of biodiversity. However, such an approach does not do justice to small life, or our understanding of the processes that have formed the patterns of biodiversity within which we live today. The research in my lab uses a molecular ecological approach (using molecular genetic data to study organisms in the wild) to better understand cryptic species and fragmented spaces. Underestimating biodiversity, due to lack of morphological discontinuities or differentiation, has a dramatic and serious effect on our capacity to properly understand interactions between species. This knowledge gap will be exacerbated in a world with changing climate. Decisions regarding species membership have a cascade of consequences on our understanding of biodiversity, speciation, population connectivity and landscape fragmentation and my research program is designed to test the identification of, and concepts behind, species. I use two model systems to explore species evolution, cryptic species and population connectivity: ant species on isolated Costa Rican volcanoes and tropical and temperate parasitoid insect species involved in complex food webs. Each model system is characterised by its degree of spatial and temporal isolation and by species at the leading edge of the taxonomic impediment. Here, an integrative approach is critical to our understanding of population connection and morphological crypsis and so I use molecular ecological tools (standardized mtDNA and nuclear markers and real time PCR reactions), morphological taxonomy and field ecology. My interdisciplinary approach tests these evolutionary and ecological processes, permits more accurate conservation and leads to a better understanding of ecology and evolution.