DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Untangling history and ecology to reconstruct the assembly of an iconic avifauna

American Museum Natural History, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This research will develop and test a conceptual framework for understanding the assembly, and species composition, of mixed-species flocks of birds by studying the roles of evolutionary history and ecological processes of flocks in the Solomon Islands. The birds of the Solomon Islands have long served as a natural laboratory for the development of community assembly theory. The results of this research will form the basis of understanding in more complex natural systems. By understanding community assembly history, it becomes possible to search for the effects of that history on attributes of contemporary systems. For example, if the order of species arrival into a community influences the functional roles of species in a community, it may be possible to use community assembly history to make predictions about the ecology of contemporary systems. Such a connection would suggest that other attributes of communities, such as stability or resistance to extinction, might be influenced by assembly history. Additionally, the research will form the basis of in-country training for local communities to develop skills necessary to survey biodiversity, build an appreciation for the global significance of the Archipelago's diversity, will contribute to a growing body of open access educational materials tailored to the Solomon Islands, and will train a student in the New York City area in statistical and morphological methods. In order to reconstruct the assembly history of mixed-species foraging flocks in the Solomon Archipelago, this research will use next generation sequencing of ultraconserved elements from fresh tissues and ancient DNA. Historical biogeography and demography will be used to reveal the sequence of colonization, ancestral population sizes, and gene flow between populations for six lineages of birds that form the nucleus of mixed-species flocks in the Solomon Islands. These data will be related to morphological and ecological data to test for the presence of a signal of island assembly history on contemporary morphology and ecology. While assembly history may appear stochastic at ecological timescales, it assumes a degree of predictability at evolutionary scales. This study will test whether these predictable larger scale patterns influence the ecology of communities. Ultimately, by reconstructing the processes that guide community assembly, it may not only be possible to begin to characterize the history of biotas, but potentially to make predictive statements about ecology based on historical reconstructions.