Gymnodactylus phylogeography of the Atlantic Forest darwinii group (Squamata: Gek...
| Grant number: | 12/15754-8 |
| Support type: | Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctorate |
| Effective date (Start): | December 01, 2012 |
| Effective date (End): | December 16, 2017 |
| Field of knowledge: | Interdisciplinary Subjects |
| Principal Investigator: | Miguel Trefaut Urbano Rodrigues |
| Grantee: | Agustín Camacho Guerrero |
| Home Institution: | Instituto de Biociências (IB). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil |
| Associated research grant: | 11/50146-6 - Comparative phylogeography, phylogeny, paleoclimate modeling, and taxonomy of neotropical reptiles and amphibians, AP.BTA.TEM |
| Associated scholarship(s): | 15/01300-3 - Use of voluntary maximum temperatures for linking thermal physiology and species geographic range size, BE.EP.PD |
Abstract A cutting edge trend in biogeographical research involves development of an integrative understanding of those factors responsible for the evolution of ecogeographical traits in species distributions (herein: niche envelope (NE) and area of occupancy (AOO)). Further advance in this field requires the integration of phylogenetic, taxonomic, distributional, ecological and functional data, which has been heretofore? insufficient. However, our group and collaborators, among others, have substantially advanced the current status of functional, taxonomic, distributional and phylogenetic knowledge of snake-like taxa and their lacertoid relatives. Compiling results of studies done all over the world, this project will test the effect of morphological evolution over ecogeographical traits of lizard species. The specific questions to be answered are: a) can NEs and AOOs of lizards be predicted by their expected performance in different microenvironmental conditions? b) Are there biogeographical and environmental correlates of the decrease in distribution ranges that relate to the evolution of the snake-like morphs? To answer these questions, we will gather ecophysiological and distributional data of snake-like and lacertoid species from different continents. We will then use our own specifically developed R scripts to generate ecogeographical traits for related lacertoid and snake-like species from several continents. This comparison includes most of the known species that have independently evolved the snake-like body morphs within the Squamate reptiles and for which genetic and distributional data is already available. Using supertree assemblage techniques, the species phylogenetic relationships will be estimated and these data will be analysed using nested analysis and multivariate approaches for analyses of niche envelope matrices. Model selection procedures incorporating phylogenetic generalised least squares models will be performed to account for species relatedness in order to test how the morphological evolution of snake-like taxa relates to NE, and to identify those factors most strongly related to the geographical distribution size of snake-like lizards. (AU) | |