Systematics of Seychellean Caecilians (Amphibia:Gymnophiona)
{'Code': '08010207', 'Directorate': {'Abbreviation': 'BIO', 'LongName': 'Direct For Biological Sciences'}, 'Division': {'Abbreviation': 'DEB', 'LongName': 'Division Of Environmental Biology'}}
{'SignBlockName': 'Scott L. Collins', 'PO_EMAI': None, 'PO_PHON': None}
The research is aimed at studying the evolutionary                         relationships among several populations and species of caecilians               in the Seychelles Archipelago, western Indian Ocean.  Caecilians                are small, legless, largely burrowing amphibians restricted to                  the tropics.                                                                         The granitic islands of the Seychelles are the mountaintop                 remnants of a partially submerged microcontinent.  About 18,000                 years ago when world sea-levels were lower, the Seychellean                     microcontinent (129,560 km2) was fully emergent.  With                          postglacial warming of the earth, sea-levels rose, and, about                   10,000 years ago, the Seychellean microcontinent was fragmented                 into an archipelago.  At the same time, the species that occurred               on the microcontinent were fragmented into island populations.                  Since fragmentation, there has been no gene flow (interbreeding)                between these island populations in species like caecilians,                    which are intolerant of salt water and lack means of dispersal                  across marine barriers.  The fragmentation of species' ranges                   occurred in parallel, so that several species share the same                    fragmentation history.                                                               The situation described above is well-suited for the study                 of a variety of evolutionary phenomena.  The major goals of the                 research are to (1) determine the evolutionary relationships of                 the species and populations by comparing anatomical and                         biochemical characters; (2) determine the influence of                          interrupted gene exchange on the divergence of populations; (3)                 determine the relationship between island separation time and                   molecular divergence compared to anatomical divergence;                         (4)determine whether patterns of genetic divergence are similar                 across species suggesting uniform rates of evolution; and (5)                   test recently developed models of gene flow using a multispecies                approach with different degrees of dispersibility among species.
{'FirstName': 'Ronald', 'LastName': 'Nussbaum', 'PI_MID_INIT': 'A', 'PI_SUFX_NAME': None, 'PI_FULL_NAME': 'Ronald A Nussbaum', 'EmailAddress': 'nuss@umich.edu', 'NSF_ID': '000412617', 'StartDate': '03/15/1989', 'EndDate': None, 'RoleCode': 'Principal Investigator'}
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{'Code': '1127', 'Text': 'Evolutionary Processes'}
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