Biologists have been seeking answers to fundamental questions about how new species arise since the time of Darwin. Speciation is difficult to study because it is a gradual process that generally occurs in a time frame that is longer than a scientist's lifetime. Genomic tools now make it possible to address many of the pivotal questions that have been left unanswered for over a century. This project, involving collaborations between the fields of population biology, genetics, ecology, genome technology, bioinformatics, and computational biology, will investigate how new species arise by elucidating the molecular genetic basis of speciation mechanisms in the Mimulus group. The molecular genetic information will be used to answer specific questions about the role of ecological isolation, mate choice, and genomic incompatibility in speciation events and in maintaining species integrity.
A broader impact of this research is a cross-disciplinary mentoring program involving underrepresented groups that will prepare students for collaborative research. Another significant broader impact of this research is that it will develop genomic tools for a group of plants that are extremely interesting to ecologists and evolutionary biologists because of their diversity of breeding systems, pollinators and habitats. A large community of scientists who have focused their research on this diverse and interesting group will benefit substantially from the development of these tools.
