EAPSI: Forging Trans-Pacific Partnerships to Investigate Terrestrial Transitions in Tropical Land Crabs

Morgan Victoria M, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

Understanding how organisms utilize genetic variation to adapt to new habitats is an open question in evolutionary biology. Land crabs are a group that have repeatedly colonized terrestrial habitats, yet little is currently known about the underlying genetic machinery that has led to the impressive physical and physiological adaptations that have allowed them to live successfully on land. This project will connect the researcher with one of the world?s leading authorities on land crab biology, Professor Peter Ng at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and also with leading researchers in the field of crustacean evolutionary biology at the mid-year meeting of The Crustacean Society (TCS). The researcher will examine crabs housed in the collections at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum (LKCNHM), and will collaborate with Prof. Ng and his research group to learn about the biology and taxonomy of the crabs. The results from this project will serve as a solid foundation for a larger research project that seeks to further understand one of the most important life-history transitions in biology. For her dissertation work, the researcher plans to explore the mechanisms underlying the marine-to-terrestrial transition exhibited by brachyuran land crabs by integrating taxonomy, phylogenetics, and next-generation sequencing technologies, but prior to undertaking this larger project, she will first construct a solid taxonomic and systematic understanding of the group. For EAPSI, the researcher will be trained in these topics under the guidance of the world?s leading authority in crab systematics, Prof. Peter Ng at the NUS. She will examine and collect DNA subsamples from the land crab specimens preserved at the LKCNHM, which houses one of the largest collection of preserved land crabs in the world. Additionally, she will present at the mid-year meeting of TCS and network with other carcinologists to form additional international collaborations and partnerships. This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the National Research Foundation of Singapore.