Rationale for DeepFin

There is a clear need to actively bring together the fields of traditional morphological systematics and paleontology with the recently established field of molecular systematics. These areas have many common goals but historically lacked the ability to communicate and coordinate their activities towards resolving phylogenies of fishes. Development of cyberinfrastructure that includes a federation of integrated data bases with fundamental information for systematic ichthyology will greatly enhance the integration of the discipline.

Vertebrate animals constitute a model for the study of evolution because as a group they are the most studied and best known of all eukaryotes. The extensive fossil record and basic similarities in anatomy, development, and reproductive mode of vertebrates have allowed detailed investigations into the mode and tempo of evolutionary processes (Carroll, 1997). Burgeoning genomic databases for fishes (complete genomes for zebrafish and puffer fish; medaka and tetraodon underway; massive genetic mapping efforts for salmon, stickleback, and tilapia) will require this phylogeny to achieve an integrated “phylogenomic” perspective of vertebrate evolution. Fishes also have tremendous economic importance as a source of food and recreation. Because fish are popular organisms, knowledge and knowledge access tools developed by the DeepFin network will have high educational value.

Without a long-term plan and leadership to organize and conduct the activities described in this proposal it is very unlikely that the following goals will be achieved "naturally" or in a timely way: (a) establishing effective ways to maximize resource use and minimize duplication of effort to achieve common research plans; (b) nurturing a sense of community among many previously isolated research groups (morphologists, paleontologists and molecular systematists); (c) enhancing inter-institutional opportunities to recruit and broadly train students in systematic ichthyology; (d) developing cyberinfrastructure with linked databases for morphology, paleontology, molecular markers, and an interactive directory of researchers; (e) facilitating a cohesive community of fish systematists to interact with other RCNs (e.g. plants, fungi) and eventually with other AToL groups, to address in concert problems common to all (e.g., phyloinformatics); (f) generating a well-supported comprehensive fish phylogeny that will facilitate multidisciplinary research with areas such as genomics and evolutionary developmental genetics (evo/devo).