I imagine many of you have heard of the special NSF competition in systematic
biology: "Partnerships for Enhancing Expertise in Taxonomy (PEET)."
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1999/nsf9915/nsf9915.txt
PEET grants are generally pretty big, on the order of $150k for 5 years. Only 10 - 20 awards are awarded every few years; competition is intense. I have, nevertheless, taken a shot at it. Since the FWGNA project is featured prominently, I thought I'd mention it to the group.
I've asked for several grad students, a couple post-docs, and a lot of travel money to survey the North American Physidae. The plan would be to focus collecting efforts around regions where the Physa have been previously catalogued. We'd do a lot of morphological stuff, run a lot of allozyme gels, and look for sexual isolation with mate choice tests, all directed toward filling in the gaps between these states. Students and post docs will be spending some weeks gathering data in most of the major museums. And I've indicated that my FWGNA colleagues might be persuaded to send us materials from your regions as well. I've appended the project summary onto this message.
I'd encourage everybody on this list to give some thought to writing grant proposals to survey the North American gastropod fauna, and to involve the FWGNA group. Mentioning that you've got 55 colleagues ready and willing to help certainly couldn't hurt a grant application.
We'll talk more about this in Chattanooga next month. Paul Johnson says that we may have as many as 300 registrants! A marvelous turn out. See you there!
Cheers,
Rob
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Project Summary:
PEET: A monographic survey of the freshwater gastropod family Physidae,
as a first step toward the conservation of a North American fauna.
R. T. Dillon
Pulmonate snails of the worldwide family Physidae reach their peak diversity in North America, where they are the most common and widespread group of freshwater gastropods. The North American fauna nominally includes about 37 species and 40 subspecies and forms. Physid populations have played a central roll in our understanding of sex allocation, life history strategy, and freshwater ecosystem processes of great generality and importance, including population and community ecology, competition, and predator-prey interaction. Yet a statement made by Goodrich and van der Schalie in the late 1930's has been echoed by H-P. Liu in the 1990's, "No general rules have been laid down as yet that are helpful toward a certain and confident determination of the species of Physa." As a consequence, the higher classification of the physids has been in a constant state of flux.
Recently the Freshwater Mollusk Conservation Society has established a committee on the status & distribution of gastropods, which the present P.I. has been asked to chair. Our initiative, the "Freshwater Gastropods of North America" project, is a long-term effort by 55 collaborators to completely list, illustrate, and redescribe all freshwater gastropod species north of Mexico, giving synonymy, bibliography, ecology, and mapping current (and historic) distribution. The monographic revision of the Physidae proposed here would serve as a model for this much larger effort ultimately involving some 500 gastropod species in 15 families across North America.
Monographic Research. Field collections will be made by five PEET trainees (two postdoctoral fellows and three M.S. students) in states where regional monographs have been published: Michigan, New York, Missouri, Florida, and Colorado. PEET trainees will also gather data from museums, each working in at least two different collections of national stature. Our FWGNA collaborators will send us fresh study materials from anywhere we may request. Representative individuals from each population will be measured and scored for at least 21 morphological characters. We will estimate gene frequencies in samples of 30 individuals from at least 50 populations in each region, using starch gel electrophoresis to resolve variation at a minimum of 10 polymorphic loci. Mate choice tests will be performed to estimate sexual isolation among related populations, using allozyme markers to assess postmating reproductive isolation.
Training. Each PEET trainee will complete the entire study for his regional fauna, including field survey, museum work, anatomical studies, allozyme analysis, breeding experiments, data processing, and manuscript preparation. The 2 postdoctoral fellows will coordinate the activities of the 3 M.S. students and undergraduate assistants. To broaden their experiences and improve their chances on the job market, the M.S. students will complete the requirements for a degree in our graduate program in Environmental Studies, taking course work in environmental biology, conservation biology, the policy process and risk assessment. Thus our PEET trainees will be uniquely qualified to assist in the development of public policies requiring both a knowledge of biodiversity and a broad awareness of its legal and socioeconomic implications.
Computerization. Database formatting is designed to be compatible
with a FMCS effort already underway on unionid mussels. Each museum
lot, field collection, or donated sample of physids forwarded to our center
will be entered into a "primary database" of systematic data, including
26 fields. A secondary database, one record per species (12 entries
per record) will be generated from the primary database. Each secondary
record will include diagnostic features, systematics, habitat, references
and a distribution map, and will serve as the basis for both a conventional
monograph, and a web resource. The physid resource will be linked
and compatible with the multi-agency "Integrated Taxonomic Information
System" (ITIS) maintained by the USDA.
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