This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Microbial Biology for FY2003. The fellowship supports training and research on the basic biology of protozoan, microalgal, fungal, archaeal, bacterial and viral species that are not generally considered to be model organisms. Further, it provides opportunities for recent doctoral recipients to obtain additional training in microbial biology, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond the research experiences during the undergraduate and graduate training. These fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including foreign locations.
The research and training plan is entitled "The phylogeny and global diversification of tortoises determined with complete mitochondrial genomes." Over the past 60 million years, terrestrial tortoises (Testudinidae) have marched or floated to most continents. Despite a good fossil record, patterns of tortoise diversification are still poorly understood. This research uses complete genomes of mitochrondrial DNA of tortoises to reconstruct their evolutionary history.
