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School of Life Sciences Seminar

"Origins of Diversity: The Evolutionary Assembly of Hawaiian Arthropod Communities" - Speaker: Dr. Rosemary Gillespie, Professor, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, UC Berkeley***Abstract: The Hawaiian Islands provide a real-time laboratory for evolutionary biology, showcasing adaptive radiation due to their extreme isolation, varied habitats, and lack of competition. Moreover, because of the chronological arrangement of the islands, the archipelago provides a way to infer the stages of radiation across multiple lineages in real time. I will discuss different mechanisms that underpin adaptive radiation, focusing in particular on spiders. I will then introduce an approach we are using to understand how entire communities change over extended evolutionary time: We are using DNA metabarcoding of arthropod communities across the chronosequence, measuring relative abundance, diversity, and interactions between, entire arthropod communities, controlling for elevation, and precipitation, and all within Metrosideros forest. The results show regular patterns of change in diversity, specialization, and resilience to biological invasion, across the island chronosequence, with a strong association between island age and invasion success. Current work focuses on connecting these ground-based signatures with imagery from drones, helicopters, and satellites.

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School of Life Sciences, Mānoa Campus

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