Neutral processes and ecological determinants responsible for mammal’s diversification

• Grant number: 17/10583-4
• Support Opportunities: Research Grants - Visiting Researcher Grant - International
• Start date: November 01, 2017
• End date: June 30, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Theoretical Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Marcus Aloizio Martinez de Aguiar
• Grantee: Marcus Aloizio Martinez de Aguiar
• Visiting researcher: Sergio Ivan Perez
• Visiting researcher institution: Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNPL), Argentina
• Host Institution: Instituto de Física Gleb Wataghin (IFGW). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Our collaboration with Dr. S. Ivan Perez begun in 2008. Since then I have kept in touch with Dr. Perez via Email and Skype and personally during his visits to our university. Because of our interaction, we have studied problems in evolutionary biology using several organisms as model systems. Our approach to these problems has been framed under the perspective of neutral models of speciation, genealogies and molecular phylogenies, diversification of complex phenotypes, and their ecological determinants. With the research program laid out in this project, we strive to explore, using several statistical formalisms, the evolutionary and ecological processes responsible for the origin and maintenance of diversity at several levels of organizational complexity. The problems that we will investigate include: (1) the mechanisms responsible for the diversity of species of Neotropical Primates; (2) the factors responsible for morphological diversity in South American mammals (Platyrrhini [Primates], Echymidae [Rodentia], Phyllostomidae [Chiroptera]); (3) the development of morphometric methods for the study of morphological diversity between species; (4) the factors responsible for changes in diversity during the Pleistocene-Holocene in communities of South American mammals; and 5) the changes in human trophic ecology after the Pleistocene-Holocene transition in South America. Our primary aim with this project is to strengthen our joint research efforts in the past few years and, especially, bring into fruition the several projects currently underway and submit the results for publication. Dr. Perez will be primarily based at the Departamento de Física da Matéria Condensada do Instituto de Física da Unicamp, but he will also take part in projects that are jointly being pursued in collaboration with Profs. Fernando Von Zuben and Sergio F. dos Reis (Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica and Instituto de Biologia, Unicamp, respectively), M.Sc. Carolina Lemes (Doctoral student under Dr. Aguiar, Unicamp), Prof. Marcio Silva Araújo (Departamento de Ecologia, UNESP-Rio Claro), Prof. Paulo R. Guimarães Jr. and Dr. Mathias Pires (Departamento de Ecologia, USP), and Prof. Ricardo T. Lopes (Programa de Engenharia Nuclear, UFRJ). (AU)