Jason E Bond - US grants

ABSTRACT

A grant has been awarded to Dr. Jason E. Bond of East Carolina University to taxonomically revise and study the evolutionary relationships of the trapdoor spider subfamily Euctenizinae (Cyrtaucheniidae). Alpha-taxonomy is a field of biology that provides the underlying foundation, and thus lies at the very core, of almost every biological question; revisionary-systematic studies are one of the more powerful tools we can apply to the study and conservation of our planet's biodiversity. Although North America has a rich tarantula and trapdoor spider fauna it is shocking that 50% of these species remain undescribed and that much of this diversity, attributable to members of the Euctenizinae, is distributed throughout the California Floristic Province, an evolutionary center that is a biodiversity "hotspot". This project proposes to formally document euctenizine diversity by completing exhaustive taxonomic revisions of all of its genera and species (70 - 80) and by then reconstructing its species evolutionary relationships using morphological, behavioral, and molecular data.
Because this project "utilizes modern information technology at all stages" (e.g., GIS, digital imaging, sequence data generation and alignment, and phylogeny reconstruction) it is ideal for training students in the methods and concepts surrounding modern revisionary work. Students as full partners in research will be trained to gather and analyze taxonomic and phylogenetic data, and will be encouraged to present their results at meetings and as scientific journal publications. Fieldwork conducted during the course of this project will result in the acquisition of many rare specimens that will be deposited in major museum collections for future study. Data generated from these specimens will be made available on the World Wide Web as part of a project website. Additionally, this project will make available interactive, fully illustrated taxonomic keys to all of the known Euctenizinae species that can be then used by non-spider specialists.

A grant has been awarded to East Carolina University (ECU) under the direction of Dr. Jason E. Bond for the purchase of an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope (ESEM) equipped with energy dispersive x-ray capabilities. For over a quarter of a century the Department of Biology has supported a fully equipped electron microscope laboratory (the EML). This facility has served as a research tool for faculty and students from numerous disparate biological disciplines and as an important resource for faculty and students from at least three other science departments. Moreover, the EML has served an important educational function, training over 20 advanced undergraduate and graduate students per year in fundamental electron microscope techniques.

The ESEM will be used in support of the research and teaching missions of at least three separate ECU Departments: Biology, Chemistry and Geology. At a minimum we anticipate major use of an ESEM by a group of five core users and a core of seven auxiliary users who will use the equipment on an irregular basis. The acquisition of this scope will directly impact the research programs of the five core users (PI's), three of which are currently funded by the NSF. These core research programs include studies of spider morphology for systematics, pollination biology and the evolution of self incompatibility, mineralogical and geochemical assessment of changes occurring in coastal limestone aquifers, studies of the surface morphology and stoichiometry of the surface of zeolites, and investigation of the groundwater chemistry of Coastal Plain aquifers in North Carolina. In addition to the use of this instrumentation by faculty and graduate students from these three Departments the ESEM will be used formally in a number of courses. For example, Biology has, on average, trained ~23 students per year in electron microscopy. With the addition of EDX capabilities requested as part of this microscope, the ESEM will also be suitable for use by undergraduates enrolled in chemistry and geology courses. Semester enrollments in courses will expose an additional estimated 19 and 36 Geology and Chemistry undergraduate students to the ESEM respectively.

The availability and ease of use afforded by the acquisition of an ESEM will increase the likelihood of exposing scanning electron microscope technology and digital imaging to the culturally diverse student body of East Carolina University and to the people of the eastern North Carolina. Training students in electron microscopy has a number of broad scale benefits to students. For example, the acquisition of digital imaging techniques and training on such a technologically advanced piece of equipment will provide students with training in a set of tools that can be used in a broad number of disciplines in the life and physical sciences. Although acquisition of an ESEM will significantly impact the educational programs of departments at ECU, we anticipate that this equipment will also impact local middle, school, high school and community college science programs. This equipment will be made available to the faculty and students for use in both teaching demonstrations and basic research.

A grant has been awarded to Dr. Jason E. Bond and Mr. Paul E.
Marek of East Carolina University to enhance, improve, and support the
co-PI's dissertation project - a taxonomic and evolutionary study of the
millipede tribe Apheloriini (Diplopoda: Polydesmida) distributed
throughout the Appalachian Mountains. Aposematism (warning coloration)
and color mimicry are among the most striking features of the
Appalachian millipede genus Brachoria. Individuals in this genus
display strong color and pattern similarity with several other closely
related sympatric genera. These millipedes provide an excellent system for studying
mimicry evolution. However, until now investigating mimicry and other
interesting evolutionary questions in this millipede group has been
hindered by the absence of a sound taxonomic structure and a robust
phylogeny. This project will provide: (1) a phylogeny-based
classification system of Apheloriini; (2) a systematic revision of the apheloriine
genus Brachoria that will include a reconstruction of evolutionary relationships,
new species descriptions and redescriptions of existing taxa, documentation of
geographical distributions and natural histories, and production of
easy-to-use keys for identification; and (3) a hypothesis-driven test of
alternative mimicry scenarios in Brachoria.

This project, acquiring a high-performance distributed-memory cluster, will enable computationally aggressive techniques to be applied in a variety of disciplines. This cluster is designed to support the following projects:

-Investigating the role of solvent in catalytic organometallic transformations,
-Study of arthropod evolutionary diversification,
-Computational fluid dynamics development of advanced engines,
-Molecular dynamics simulations of the voltage-gated potassium channel, Kv1.3,
-Study of p53-binding S100 proteins,
-All-electron studies on the explosive nature of organic molecular crystals, and
-Strategies to reduce the risk associated with the atmospheric emission of Hg compounds.

Each of these applications is discussed and computational methods to be employed and their hardware and software requirements are presented. A system including fast interconnect and up to 256 processors with 2 GBytes of local memory, accompanied by several TBytes of online storage, is proposed.

The class Diplopoda, the millipedes, is a very species-rich group (over 7,000 described species) that is among the most ancient of surviving terrestrial arthropods. Despite this tremendous amount of known diversity, recognized ecological importance, and interesting evolutionary history, the group remains largely unstudied. Current estimates based on known degrees of endemism suggest that there may be as many as 80,000 extant species on the planet today. The project summarized here is a continuation of a previous Partnership for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy (PEET) training program to develop new millipede taxonomy and systematics expertise. The investigators Petra Sierwald (The Field Museum of Natural History), Jason Bond (East Carolina University) and William Shear (Hampden-Sydney College) propose to maintain an established program of millipede research and student training by capitalizing on the insights achieved from the previous PEET award. Major project products anticipated are evolutionary and taxonomic studies published in the primary literature, web disseminated tools (e.g. taxonomic identification keys) to aid other non-specialist researchers, acquisition of specimens to be deposited in natural history collections, and a worldwide species catalog, the first of its kind encapsulating the millipede taxonomic literature spanning over two centuries.
Foremost, the goal of this project is to develop a sustainable community of knowledgeable, trained researchers working on this important group of organisms. This goal will be achieved by training at least three postdoctoral researchers, two graduate students, and at least six undergraduate interns. Trainee projects include a broad phylogenetic assessment of the Diplopoda and taxonomic and systematics studies of millipede groups chosen from across at least three separate orders. In short this project aims to make significant contributions to science and education by training the next generation of millipede systematists. In both a Museum (natural history collections) and University environment, trainees will acquire methods and skills that will prepare them for future positions as researchers, teachers, and resource managers in biology and entomology. In terms of millipedes, the improved phylogenetic structure, taxonomic revisions, and methodological advances attained over the course of this 5-year project will provide a sound foundation for future systematic workers.

The spider family Theraphosidae, commonly referred to as 'tarantulas', is the most diverse lineage among a group of spiders that includes trapdoor and funnel web spiders. Tarantulas are the world's largest spiders, can live for over 30 years and have decidedly infamous reputations. Despite their diversity and notoriety, theraphosid spiders are relatively understudied. The classification of tarantulas is in shambles and is widely regarded as 'a taxonomic and nomenclatural nightmare'; members of the family are morphologically similar, taxa have been described on the basis of only one or few specimens, and few studies have taken an evolution-based approach to classification. In this REVSYS project Jason Bond and Brent Hendrixson will carry out a three-year plan to stimulate a renaissance in theraphosid systematics by tackling the most diverse (90 species) and 'close to home' genus, Aphonopelma. As part of this study they will employ multiple types of character evidence (morphological and molecular) to enhance biodiversity documentation of the genus Aphonopelma through evolutionary, biogeographic, and alpha-taxonomic revisions, develop online taxonomic keys and tools, collect rare spiders through extensive fieldwork in North and Central America, and train students in basic biodiversity research.

Training the next generation of taxonomic and organismal expertise forms a thread that runs through this project's research endeavors. The educational goal will be to provide students comprehensive training in theraphosid systematics that involves research addressing fundamental conceptual issues in systematics, biodiversity conservation, and evolutionary biology. The computerization and outreach objectives of this project will greatly enhance general accessibility to theraphosid diversity and increase the visibility of these spiders to the general public. Finally, the unique life history characteristics of tarantulas, coupled with their extensive distribution throughout global biodiversity hotspots, makes this group an ideal model for conservation related studies and assessments.

The purpose of this project is to catalyze a new set of collaborations and initiate a partnership with project PIs Jason Bond (Auburn University), Marshal Hedin (San Diego State University), and Brent Hendrixson (Millsaps College) and Miquel Arnedo, at the University of Barcelona in Spain. The project-planning trip to the Barcelona will bring together a group of investigators who have interests in the evolution, systematics, conservation, and taxonomy of mygalomorph spiders. The spider infraorder Mygalomorphae (trapdoor spiders, tarantulas, and their kin), are a biologically unique clade of early diverging spiders; many of its members are well known to non-arachnologists and include the world's largest (tarantulas), most venomous (Australian "funnel-web" spiders), and most long-lived spiders.

The planning trip will focus on reviewing the status of mygalomorph classification to identify "problem" lineages, bring together all of the genetic data currently available with the aim of developing a more comprehensive set of molecular markers, develop a workflow for identifying a set of morphological character ontologies and a means by which to share morphological data, and formulate a general paradigm for evaluating species boundaries and conservation status. The planning trip will culminate in a 10-day collecting trip in the Andalusia region of Spain. In addition to developing a number of tangible outcomes to include a set of molecular markers for broad scale analyses of spider phylogeny, significant broader impacts of the project will involve training students (undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral) in conceptual issues related to systematics, biodiversity conservation and evolutionary biology.

The arthropod class Diplopoda (the millipedes) comprises ~12,000 described species that are distributed worldwide in nearly every biome. The group has a deep evolutionary history that includes some of the very first terrestrial animals, dating from the mid-Silurian over 400 million years ago. Despite their ecological importance as decomposers in forests, wealth of diversity (estimated 20,000-80,000 species), and prominence as chemical warriors owing to their vast array of defense secretions, the group is woefully understudied. The research team will revise the current ordinal and family-level classification systems using a modern phylogenomic framework based on next generation sequence data and then employ these data to explore the evolution of chemical defense secretions and their precursors.

This project seeks to greatly enhance the accessibility of millipede diversity through the development of a morphological atlas for the group, production of the first illustrated key to millipede families, and publication of the first complete millipede species catalog. The project team will develop a strong collaborative research and training network and will partner with collaborators worldwide. Training in millipede systematics, morphology, and genomics will include a broad range of individuals from high school students and teachers, undergraduate researchers, a postdoctoral trainee, to students participating in organized training workshops, to be held in the Southeastern US and in Bangkok, Thailand.

The tarantula genus Aphonopelma ranks among the most infamous mygalomorph spiders (tarantulas, trapdoor spiders and their kin) of the American southwest, yet they are a group that has been woefully understudied because traditional morphological characters are generally ineffective at consistently and rigorously identifying species boundaries. Widely distributed throughout the southwestern United States and Mexico, many Aphonopelma species reside within two biodiversity ?hotspots?: the California Floristic Province and the Madrean pine-oak woodlands in Arizona. It is of critical importance that we discover and develop methods to accurately identify the species-level diversity within the group before it is lost to extinction. Our project will integrate "Anchored Enrichment" genomic data, from high-throughput next-generation sequencing, with geospatial analyses to resolve species boundaries within Aphonopelma, while investigating the evolution of miniaturization and subsequent diversification in a very unique lineage of dwarf tarantula species.

Data generated from this project will substantially increase the molecular markers currently available for species delimitation in spiders. This will be the first study to employ this cutting edge genomic approach in any spider group. Project activities will provide training in modern phylogenetic and bioinformatics techniques, taxonomic, and organismal expertise to undergraduates from underrepresented groups in science, while broadening international collaboration with graduate students in Mexico and other parts of the world.

The rapid biodiversity change in North America has significant effects on essential ecosystem services, from impact on soil health and nutrient cycling, to agriculture, forestry and water quality. Exploding populations of invasive species threaten fresh water and terrestrial habitats and potentially impact the natural resources of the nation. Easy access to robust, expertly vetted baseline data for species occurrences, abundances, and distribution ranges, and monitoring how these parameters have changed through time, will facilitate the protection of the nation's natural resources, and vastly improve the capacity for effective restoration, land management planning, and conservation management. Numerous undergraduate students will receive training in digitization technologies and a modular exhibit will be developed to engage public interest in biodiversity changes.

Effective monitoring requires easy electronic access to historical specimen baseline information for temporal and regional species diversity comparisons that can facilitate informed land management decisions. Vast amounts of specimen data are housed within the nation's natural history collections, but most of these data are not readily accessible from digital resources. Size and complexity of scientific specimen collections require major technological advances in capturing specimen data. The goal of this four-year collaborative project is the rapid digitization of >2 million specimens and their locality data from ten arthropod and mollusk collections housed at six major US museums in six states (Il, OH, AL,MI, DE, PA). This project will significantly automate specimen data capture by utilizing optical character and voice-recognition technologies. The digitized data from this project will be immediately deployed for habitat-based distribution modeling and analyses.This award is made as part of the National Resource for Digitization of Biological Collections through the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program and all data resulting from this award will be available through the national resource (iDigBio.org).

Many animals use more than one of their senses to communicate with each other, for example, combining sounds with colors or motions. Understanding why animal signals are so complex and how they evolved is a major research focus for scientists in many fields. Such research can add to our knowledge about how the senses work, how attention and learning shift perception, and how changing environments can impact communication (among others). In this project, scientists from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Auburn University use a systems approach to study the evolution of courtship displays in a well-developed animal system. The team uses genomics to reconstruct the evolutionary history of more than 23 species. For each species, they also describe the communication system in detail and how it changes with environmental conditions. They then test hypotheses about system properties such as robustness and flexibility/evolvability. The project will advance our understanding of complex animal signals, and test long-standing theories from engineering and genomics about system structure and function. The project involves the training of undergraduate and graduate students. Research findings will also be integrated into a science exhibit that will be made available to the general public at natural history museums in Nebraska and Alabama.

Despite an appreciation of the prevalence and importance of complex signals in animal communication, progress towards an evolutionary analysis of signal complexity has been constrained by a lack of hypotheses and tools that can compare signaling systems across taxa and assess evolutionary and functional implications. This project develops and tests a novel theoretical and empirical paradigm by integrating a systems approach into animal communication research using Schizocosa wolf spiders. North American Schizocosa include 23 species that vary in their use of vibratory and visual courtship displays. Specific aims are (1) to assess the structure and dynamics of vibratory and visual courtship signals of each species in different environments; (2) to generate a robust phylogeny; and (3) to use phylogenetic comparative methods to test (i) the hypothesis that degeneracy facilitates robustness across changing conditions and (ii) whether degeneracy facilitates (or constrains) elaboration and signal divergence. The simultaneous measures of vibratory and visual signals across contexts combined with a robust phylogeny will enable unparalleled opportunities for evolutionary analyses of complexity. This research will facilitate an integrative and comprehensive understanding of the evolution, diversification, and maintenance of complex animal communication and provide a roadmap for similar studies across distinct taxa and signaling systems.