Objective
Islands and archipelagos have fascinated ecologists and biogeographers for centuries. As natural evolutionary laboratories that have distinct boundaries and come in all sizes, they are ideal for testing theories about evolution, biogeography and ecology. The Indo-Pacific region constitutes the largest concentration of islands and archipelagos on the planet providing an ideal setting for testing such theories. This project will focus on a large radiation of passerine birds, the core Corvoidea (crows and allies). The core Corvoidea originated in the mid-Tertiary in Australia, from where members dispersed into the Indo-Pacific archipelagos and onwards to other continents. Today the core Corvoidea is a very successful group in terms of distribution and species numbers, occurring in the Indo-Pacific as well as on all continents. Until recently, little molecular data was available for the group, hampering ecological, evolutionary and biogeographical analyses and interpretations. However, this has changed dramatically and molecular phylogenies now exist, including roughly about 85% of all the species. With this molecular data in hand there is an unprecedented possibility of actually testing evolutionary and biogeographical ideas and theories about the history of this group and the reasons for its success with state-of-the-art evolutionary and ecological statistical tools and software. Imperial College London has a great tradition of using large datasets and phylogenies to answer questions pertaining to patterns of diversity, evolution, community assembly and biogeography. Thus, the combination of a well resolved and well sampled molecular framework including more than 700 passerine bird species, and an institution with a history of using advanced bioinformatic and statistical methods to address evolutionary questions, provides an ideal environment for advancing the understanding of island biogeography, island evolution and island community assembly.
Fields of science
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiological morphologycomparative morphology
- natural sciencesbiological scienceszoologyornithology
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesecology
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesastronomyplanetary sciencesplanets
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesphysical geography
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
MC-IEF - Intra-European Fellowships (IEF)Coordinator
SW7 2AZ LONDON
United Kingdom