CAREER: A phylogeny of living and extinct confers

University Of Kansas Center For Research Inc, Lawrence KS

Investigators

Abstract

Plants have populated terrestrial environments for over 400 million years, through changing climates, shifting biotas, and the creation and breakup of continents. Our understanding of how global changes have impacted the evolutionary history of plants through time remains limited. This project encompasses an integrated research and education program that will investigate how the widespread and ancient group of plants known as conifers, which includes the tallest (redwoods) and longest-lived (pines) organisms today, evolved over the last 300 million years in response to a changing planet. Results will help us to better understand the origins of our modern floras and how they might be impacted by ongoing global change. To advance these scientific goals, broaden participation in science, and promote knowledge of plant biology, the project includes a new research-based course in plant structure, research training at multiple career stages, and a permanent public exhibit at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum. The PI and a team of undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs will reconstruct the phylogeny of living and extinct conifers, investigate diversification dynamics through deep time, and test hypotheses on the evolution and homology of conifer reproductive structures. These analyses will utilize data generated in part from a new course-based undergraduate research experience on developmental plant anatomy. A phylogeny will be inferred based on both morphological and molecular data, and using a variety of phylogenetic methods. Divergence times will be estimated that directly incorporate fossils. Evolutionary rates (of speciation, extinction, and phenotypic evolution) will be estimated using both phylogenetic and fossil occurrence-based approaches. Potential environmental and biological drivers of evolutionary rate shifts will also be investigated. Finally, comparative and developmental anatomy will be used to test homology hypotheses of seed-bearing cones and to elucidate patterns and processes underlying reproductive evolution in conifers. This work will contribute to our understanding of plant phylogeny, provide new insights into diversification dynamics in deep time, address a longstanding problem in plant morphology, and educate a new generation of scientists in plant structure, evolution, and the scientific process. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.