DISSERTATION RESEARCH: A synthetic analysis of evolutionary patterns in the Squamate family Cordylidae

American Museum Natural History, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

The process of adaptive radiation (the rapid diversification of one species into several species that are each specialized to a specific environmental niche) has been an intensely debated aspect of evolutionary biology since Darwin. Recent methods that analyze the correlation of ecology, morphology and evolutionary history allow us to study adaptive radiations in a quantitative and statistical framework. The girdled lizards (family Cordylidae) are a family of distinctively armored lizards from sub-Saharan Africa that encompass a wide variety of morphologies, life histories and behaviors, making them an ideal system to investigate the evolution of adaptive traits. This project will combine DNA and morphological data to recover the evolutionary relationships of all 80 members of the Cordylidae. A series of fossils will then be used to recover the age of key ancestors, and a comprehensively sampled analysis utilizing state-of-the-art computed tomography (CT) will be combined with newly developed techniques to analyze patterns and processes of morphological and ecological variation. The findings of this research will be communicated to the public via events at the American Museum of Natural History and through the Museum's website. This project will also help develop the Museum's digital collection, with three-dimensional models of all the scanned specimens to be made freely available for download. This project will facilitate collaborations between U.S. and African scientists and will train undergraduates and high-school students in a series of CT imaging techniques.