Understanding the ecological and macroevolutionary drivers of large-scale biodiversity patterns

我的研究试图了解生态和进化因素如何结合在一起，在大的空间和时间尺度上产生和组织生物多样性。我们融合了系统发生学、形态计量学、生态学和统计学的方法来测试关于生物模式在支系、社区内和地理景观中出现的假设。我们实验室的工作主要集中在对一项宏观进化的“自然实验”进行详细的实证研究：新热带Anolis蜥蜴(即“Anoles”)的重复适应性辐射。这些蜥蜴为研究生态、地理和宏观进化之间的关系提供了一个独特的系统，因为它们在整个新大陆热带地区相似和不同的生态和生物地理环境中重复地进行多样性。在接下来的几年里，我们实验室的研究将解决以下问题。捕食如何塑造适应性辐射？长期以来，人们一直认为竞争推动了适应性辐射的过程，但捕食的作用一直不太清楚。我们将结合捕食和竞争的实地研究、生活史的实验室饲养研究和系统发育比较方法来了解捕食和竞争如何相互作用来塑造表型多样性的宏观进化模式。多维生态位如何随着宏观进化时间的推移而演变？尽管生态位在适应性辐射的理论模型中很重要，但我们很难理解生态位宽度和生态位维度是如何在系统发育时间尺度上演变的。利用年龄和成熟度不同的岛屿辐射，我们将使用空间换时间的方法来了解在动物群进化组装过程中生态位的主要特征是如何演变的。自然坡度塑造了人类世社区集会吗？栖息地转变对自然生态群落的影响可能因人们所知甚少的原因而有所不同。一种可能的解释是，自然生态梯度可能会调节这种影响，导致沿梯度的不同位置的社区反应不同。我们将通过研究几个加勒比海岛屿上复制的生态梯度上的砍伐森林如何影响蜥蜴群落，来研究自然和人为力量如何结合来确定群落重组的规则。总之，这项研究将有助于阐明大规模生物多样性模式的生态和进化起源。从这项工作中获得的见解可以帮助指导在面对未来的人为变化时保护这种生物多样性的努力。

My research seeks to understand how ecological and evolutionary factors combine to generate and organize biodiversity over large spatial and temporal scales. We merge phylogenetic, morphometric, ecological, and statistical approaches to test hypotheses about the emergence of biological patterns within clades, within communities, and across geographic landscapes. Work in our lab is focused primarily on detailed empirical study of a macroevolutionary "natural experiment": repeated adaptive radiations of neotropical Anolis lizards (i.e., "anoles"). These lizards provide a unique system for studying the relationship between ecology, geography, and macroevolution because they have diversified repeatedly in both similar and different ecological and biogeographic settings throughout the New World tropics. Over the next several years, research in our lab will address the following questions. How does predation shape adaptive radiations? Competition has long been understood to fuel the process of adaptive radiation, but the role of predation has been much less clear. We will combine field study of predation and competition, laboratory rearing study of life history, and phylogenetic comparative methods to understand how predation and competition interact to shape macroevolutionary patterns of phenotypic diversity. How does the multidimensional niche evolve over macroevolutionary time? Despite the importance of the niche in theoretical models of adaptive radiation, we poorly understand how niche width and niche dimensionality evolve over phylogenetic timescales. Using island radiations that vary in age and maturity, we will use a space-for-time approach to understand how the principal features of the niche evolve during the evolutionary assembly of faunas. Do natural gradients shape Anthropocene community assembly? The impact of habitat conversion on natural ecological communities can vary for reasons that are poorly understood. One possible explanation is that natural ecological gradients may mediate such impacts, resulting in different community responses at different locations along a gradient. We will examine how natural and anthropogenic forces combine to determine the rules of community reassembly by examining how lizard communities are affected by deforestation across replicated ecological gradients on several Caribbean islands. Together, this research will help illuminate the ecological and evolutionary origins of large-scale biodiversity patterns. Insights from this work can help guide efforts to preserve such biodiversity in the face of future anthropogenic change.