AToL: Collaborative Research: AmphibiaTree---An Integrated Phylogenetic and Bioinformatics Approach to the Tree of Amphibians

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

0334939 Wake and Wake A grant has been awarded to Drs. David Wake and Marvalee Wake at the University of California at Berkeley, as part of a four-institution collaboration, to study phylogenetic relationships of the living amphibians and their close fossil relatives. Living Amphibians are a prominent part of the Earth's vertebrate fauna and include three orders: the caecilians (Gymnophiona), salamanders (Caudata), and frogs and toads (Anura). Despite recent advances in discovering and describing their diversity, many critical questions in amphibian evolution remain unresolved and a fresh analysis of evolutionary relationships is needed to take new discoveries into account. Furthermore, the recent decline and apparent extinction of amphibians from many environments makes it urgent that we discover and classify the diversity present today. A team of seven investigators from diverse institutions (University of Texas at Austin, University of California at Berkeley, Harvard University, and the University of Kansas) and their colleagues will collaborate to resolve modern amphibian relationships. Field sampling in biodiversity hotspots will provide materials of new or previously unsampled lineages. Anatomical and morphological data from living and fossil forms will be combined with DNA sequences from a set of defined mitochondrial and nuclear genes for as many species as possible, and will be integrated with existing data sets. Analysis of these large data sets will be used to gain insight into such questions as repeated patterns of evolution, geographic patterns, and rates of evolution. Drs. Wake and Wake and their students and colleagues will focus on molecular and morphological studies of caecilians and salamanders, with targeted field work in South America and Africa, and will have special responsibility for the AmphibiaWeb component, as well as contributing to the overall integration of molecular and morphological datasets for phylogenetic analysis. Understanding the evolutionary history of modern amphibians is critical for developing conservation strategies for amphibians as well as completing the vertebrate portion of the tree of life. The project will involve extensive student training and interaction with US and international colleagues. Communication with the public will utilize web resources, especially AmphibiaWeb, an existing site that will be expanded and further developed to provide information on all species of amphibians for professionals and the public at large. AmphibiaWeb will also provide training opportunities for students and senior professionals to enable them more effectively to communicate their findings.