Species interactions and the origins of biological diversity
Ecological interactions between species shape the ebb and flow of life on Earth, from the day-to-day dynamics of natural communities to patterns of species formation and extinction that play out over millions of years. My doctoral dissertation research employs literature surveys, phylogenetic reconstruction, mathematical modeling, and population genetics to examine the origins of species interactions, the manner in which they evolve, and their role in generating new biological diversity. I present my work in four chapters. The first chapter reviews the literature on adaptive evolutionary diversification to identify how competition between species, and its absence, sets the stage for major evolutionary change. The second chapter reconstructs the past ecology of the family Prodoxidae (Lepidoptera) to elucidate how one lineage of prodoxid moths developed a highly specialized obligate pollination mutualism with plants in the genus Yucca (Agavaceae) The third chapter develops a mathematical model of interaction between two species, which is sufficiently general to describe a wide range of different kinds of interaction and compare their effects on the diversity of the interacting species. The fourth and final chapter examines the population genetics of Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia) and its yucca moth pollinators (Prodoxidae: Tegeticula spp.) to test the hypothesis that the speciation of the pollinators had contributed to Joshua tree's evolutionary divergence
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2011