Bees: Biodiversity, biogeography

蜜蜂是几乎所有陆地环境的重要组成部分，通过它们的授粉活动，包括许多农作物。了解蜜蜂的分类学、生态学和进化史是很重要的。我们以各种方式研究这些主题。* 1.智利的阿塔卡马沙漠是世界上最古老和最干燥的沙漠之一：在大面积上，每十年的降雨量以毫米计，通常不会达到两位数。即使在绝对沙漠的边缘，也有植物和蜜蜂，其中一个特定的属占主导地位，但它的大多数物种仍然没有被描述。我们将描述这些物种，并评估它们专门针对单一物种的寄主植物（有些似乎）的程度。蜜蜂对其花宿主的适应表现在它们的口器的极端变化上，这些不寻常的特征多次独立出现，似乎允许从深层蜜腺中获取花蜜，可能是为了避免在干旱环境中蒸发。 我们将比较蜜蜂和植物的物种形成模式，并用过时的进化树来解释两者，这将使我们能够评估过去地质事件和古环境条件对互惠关系的影响。2.杜鹃蜂在其他蜜蜂的巢中产卵，可能对恶化的环境更敏感，因为它们实际上占据了更高的营养水平。然而，它们通常在分类学上是困难的。我们将使用综合分类学的属Epeolus的新世界物种，所有北美物种的识别码和属及其主机进行形态和分子系统发育研究，并使用过时的物种形成评估在何种程度上的主机的物种形成的影响，杜鹃。我们将调查宿主化学物质与杜鹃的匹配程度，以减少它们的活动被发现的机会。这种化学匹配将限制杜鹃转换宿主，我们将用进化树来评估这一点。3.基于形态学的蜜蜂进化树往往与从DNA序列数据中获得的进化树在根本上发生冲突。我们将试图通过评估分类学离群值（流氓）的影响来解决这一冲突。 我们还将首次合并所有可用的形态学数据-令人惊讶的是，以前没有这样做过。 我们将详尽地分析所得数据，并将其与分子数据联合收割机相结合。 我们建立的庞大研究收藏促进了这项工作--世界上20，000多种蜜蜂中的约30%和482个属中的90%。 我们将添加蜜蜂最近的黄蜂亲戚的数据。在我的实验室工作的学生将接触到蜜蜂研究的巨大多样性，并与部门内的专家，国内和国际合作，并使用状态。

Bees are essential components of almost all terrestrial environments through their pollinating activities, including many agricultural crops. Gaining an understanding of the taxonomy, ecology and evolutionary history of bees is important. We investigate these topics in a variety of ways.***1. The Atacama Desert in Chile is one of the oldest and driest deserts in the world: over large areas, rainfall is measured in mm per decade and often does not reach double digits. Even on the edge of the absolute desert there are plants and bees, and one particular genus predominates, yet most of its species remain undescribed. We will describe these species and assess the degree to which they specialize on single species of host plants (some seem to). The adaptations of bees to their floral hosts is indicated by extreme modifications of their mouthparts, with these unusual characteristics arising independently multiple times seemingly to permit access to nectar from nectaries that are deep, presumably to avoid evaporation in the arid environment.  We will compare the patterns of speciation of the bees and the plants and interpret both with dated evolutionary trees which will enable us to assess the impact of past geological events and palaeoenvironmental conditions upon the mutualisms.***2. Cuckoo bees lay eggs in the nests of other bees and might be expected to be more sensitive to a deteriorating environment because they, in effect, occupy a higher trophic level. However, they are usually taxonomically difficult. We will use integrative taxonomy on New World species of the genus Epeolus, produce identification keys for all North America species and perform morphological and molecular phylogenetic studies of the genus and its hosts and use dated phylogenies to assess the extent to which speciation of the hosts impacted that of the cuckoos. We will investigate the extent to which host chemicals are matched by the cuckoos so as to decrease the chances their activities are detected. This chemical matching would place constraints on cuckoos that switch-hosts and we will assess this with our evolutionary trees.***3. Evolutionary trees for bees based upon morphology often conflict in fundamentally important ways from those obtained from DNA sequence data. We will try to resolve this conflict by assessing the impact of taxonomic outliers (rogues).  We will also amalgamate all available morphological data for the first time - surprisingly, this has not been done previously.  We will analyse the resulting data exhaustively and combine it with molecular data.  This work is facilitated by the enormous research collection we have built up - ~30% of the world's 20,000+ species of bee and 90% of the 482 genera.  We will add data from the bee's closest wasp relatives.***Students working in my laboratory will be exposed to an enormous diversity of bee research and collaborate with experts within the department, nationally and internationally and use state.**