| 英文摘要: | This project will synthesize more than 30 years of research on the evolutionary history and classification of the "higher" flies, including robber flies, bee flies, flower flies, fruit flies, carrion flies, bot flies, and tsetse flies, many of which are economically and ecologically important. It will integrate exciting new fossil discoveries as well as anatomical and new genomic data. A unique feature of the fossil record for these flies is that many diverse higher flies are preserved with life-like fidelity in fossilized resin (amber) that is from 17 to 130 million years old. This profoundly enhances the accuracy with which the timing and amount of evolutionary change can be measured. With these data, this project can address whether higher flies are diverse because their speciation is so rapid, or because their extinction rate is low, or both. It also can address whether higher flies were affected by mass extinctions that occurred 66 million years ago, when most dinosaurs became extinct, and whether the largest group of higher flies, which represents the largest radiation of all life in the past 66 million years, also are the fastest evolving. Besides these broad questions, this study will also address the rate of evolution of fruit flies (Drosophila), based on several hundred specimens in amber. Since fruit flies are a model system for genetic and genomic research, this will provide a unique context for research in genomics and evolution. The project also will provide research training and experience for high school students and develop a museum exhibit on the evolution of flies.
This project will construct a comprehensive evolutionary framework through the analysis, study, and interpretation of over 30 years of accumulated data on the phylogeny, biogeography, and general evolution of the "higher" flies (Brachyceran Diptera). It will build upon the principal investigator's experience from hundreds dissections of exemplar living species, thousands of measurements and digital images of living and fossil species, and writing descriptions for over 70 fossil species to first assemble a data matrix of 592 morphological characters from 526 taxa, including both fossil and extant species. This morphological and molecular data will be used to compile a monograph on the morphology, fossil record, and phylogeny of the Brachycera, emphasizing the Mesozoic Era. This project also will produce a detailed descriptive study on diverse new Drosophilidae preserved in amber (42-17 million years ago) and two papers that address divergence times of lineages in lower Brachycera and in the Ephydroidea, especially Drosophila, analyzed with morphological and genomic data. Outreach will include mentoring high school student interns in the amber laboratory and developing a traveling or permanent exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, "Flies." |