UNISLAND · Towards a unified mechanistic model of oceanic island biogeography
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2017-09-16 → 2020-09-15
- EU contribution
- €257,191
- Participants
- 2
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Towards a unified mechanistic model of oceanic island biogeography
The overall goal of this proposal is to reduce the gap between the state-of-the-art of biodiversity analysis and a unified theory of island biogeography, and in doing so increase the policy relevance of island biogeographic theory, which potentially result in the conservation of islands and their cultural and biological values. During the period here reported, we have mainly focussed on Objs. 1 and 2. In Obj. 1, we investigated spatiotemporal patterns of biodiversity across oceanic archipelagos, by testing the prediction that island age and species age are positively correlated against the alternative model where variation in species age increases with island age. We developed and are applying novel phylogenetic meta-analyses to address this question. UNISLAND is thus shedding light on the tempo, timing and underlying mechanisms for the creation and loss of diversity during island ontogeny. Although the original work plan during this period was also supposed to focus on aspects related to the distribution in space and time of zonal ecosystems in Hawaii and the Canary Islands by means of community-level distribution modeling of their past, present and future potential distributions (Obj. 2), it has been very difficult to gather fine spatial-scale environmental layers, which has become the main focus of the work related to the objective, in order to be able to run community-level distribution modeling analyses.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Understanding how ecological and evolutionary processes shape patterns of biodiversity remains a central challenge for ecological and biogeographic theory. Oceanic islands, because of their spatiotemporal properties, provide the most promising arena to address this challenge. UNISLAND will advance general theory by applying novel ecological, evolutionary and genomics approaches to explicitly test mechanistic predictions derived from the recently developed General Dynamic Model (GDM). The GDM, while an island focused model, is of broad ecological relevance, because it encompasses generally held ecological relationships, such as the species area relationship (SAR) and the species abundance distribution (SAD). Two key mechanistic predictions derived from the GDM have so far been untested, and are the focus of UNISLAND. The first is that the older an island is, the more old are the single island endemic species (SIEs) that evolved on that island. The second is that single island endemic species (SIEs) have higher extinction probabilities that other species. UNISLAND is embedded in a multidisciplinary framework involving: comparative phylogenetics; community-level modeling; ‘museum’ genomics; and spatially-explicit coalescent-based analysis. Data generated by UNISLAND will evaluate the range shift and extinction risk (species-level and ecosystem-level), thus addressing international and European-level research priorities. Through the collaborative phase between the ER and OPS, UNISLAND will provide the ER with state of the art skills in historical DNA genomics and ecological modelling that will be transferred to the CSIC during the return phase. The complementary research profiles of the OPS, RPS and ER, their mutual interests in the spatial structuring of biodiversity, and the application of modern fit for purpose methodology, underpin the strength of UNISLAND.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- AGENCIA ESTATAL CONSEJO SUPERIOR DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS · MadridCoordinatorSpain
- THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA · OaklandUnited States
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union