Species and spaces: biodiversity at landscape and community scales

我们星球上的大多数生命重量不到几克，通过嗅觉和味觉来体验世界，并且很可能是科学或你所不知道的。确定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体作为保护伞或指示物种，以代表这一巨大的生物多样性。然而，这种方法并不公正地对待小生命，也不公正地对待我们对形成我们今天生活的生物多样性模式的过程的理解。我实验室的研究使用分子生态学方法（使用分子遗传数据研究野生生物）来更好地了解神秘物种和碎片化空间。由于缺乏形态上的不连续性或分化，低估了生物多样性，对我们正确理解物种之间相互作用的能力产生了巨大而严重的影响。在一个气候变化的世界里，这种知识差距将加剧。关于物种成员资格的决定对我们理解生物多样性，物种形成，种群连通性和景观破碎化产生了一系列后果，我的研究计划旨在测试物种的识别和背后的概念。我用两个模型系统来探索物种进化，神秘的物种和人口的连通性：蚂蚁物种孤立的哥斯达黎加火山和热带和温带寄生虫昆虫物种参与复杂的食物网。每个模型系统的特点是其程度的空间和时间的隔离和物种的分类障碍的前沿。 在这里，一个综合的方法是至关重要的，我们的理解人口的联系和形态的秘密，所以我使用分子生态学工具（标准化的mtDNA和核标记和真实的时间PCR反应），形态分类学和现场生态学。我的跨学科方法测试这些进化和生态过程，允许更准确的保护，并导致更好地了解生态学和进化。

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.