CAREER: A Faunistic and Phylogeographic Survey of Beetle Diversity in the California Floristic Province Hotspot

Santa Barbara Museum Of Natural History, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT Michael Caterino DEB 0447694 This CAREERS project, based at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, will build a foundation for synthetic study of the rich beetle fauna of the California Floristic Province. It will establish the PI as one of a very small number of arthropod biodiversity specialists of this increasingly imperiled region. Focusing on the southern Californian Transverse Ranges, this project integrates field-based inventory work, DNA-based studies of geographic variation, and a cutting edge bioinformatics platform to develop a uniquely deep understanding of the area's biodiversity. The California Floristic Province is an internationally recognized biodiversity hotspot, yet its most diverse inhabitants, beetles and other arthropods, remain very poorly known. This project will discover hundreds of undescribed beetle species, will reveal the extent of genetic diversity across the region, and will document the distributions of thousands of species in unprecedented detail. The data developed through this study will have far-reaching application. The region has long been recognized as an important natural laboratory for studying evolution, providing important insights into the process of speciation. But these studies have been taxonomically limited. Expanding on this body of work through studies of regional beetles will allow real generalizations to be made about these processes. Additionally, despite their ecological significance, invertebrates have received little consideration in land use management in the region, due principally to a lack of applicable and accessible data. This project will produce this data and an online system for accessing it. Promoting knowledge and appreciation of insect biodiversity in the region is one of the project's primary goals. Students at high school, undergraduate, and postdoctoral levels will be directly involved in the research. They will gain experience in field biology, modern molecular systematics techniques, and bioinformatics methodology. All project personnel will share findings through public presentations at the Museum, through professional presentations at international conferences, and through an attractive, user-friendly project web site. The web site will provide the primary portal for direct access to project data. The underlying database will house thousands of georeferenced specimen records, enabling GIS-based mapping and distributional analyses. These data will also be accessible to automated queries from remote servers assembling a global biodiversity data architecture. For general users the web site will provide access to natural history information and photographs of many species they may find in the area. Special effort will be also made to make this information readily useful by primary school students and educators.