Collaborative Research: Turbulence-spurred settlement: Deciphering a newly recognized class of larval response

合作研究：湍流引发的沉降：破译一类新认识的幼虫反应

• 批准号: 1357033
• 负责人: Christopher Lowe
• 金额: $ 26万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-02-01 至 2018-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1357033&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Turbulence; spurred; settlement

Overview: With this award the investigators will explore a habitat-scale oceanographic process that has the potential to integrate studies of larval delivery with an understanding of how larvae respond to substrate-associated cues. This work will build on published and preliminary data indicating that turbulent shear characteristic of high-energy near shore environments primes larvae to initiate settlement and to transform into the juvenile stage. These prior findings suggest that: 1) Because turbulence intensity varies predictably as a function of the strength of wave breaking and other factors, turbulence could operate as an indicator for larvae of their approach to suitable habitat, providing a link between larger-scale dispersal phenomena, and near-bottom search and selection behaviors; and. 2) The larval response to turbulence acts in an unprecedented fashion. In contrast to typical cues, turbulence does not induce settlement directly, but rather spurs otherwise "pre-competent" larvae that are refractory to chemical cues to become "competent", thereby causing them to acquire responsiveness to such cues and undergo settlement. The interdisciplinary team has combined expertise in larval biology, sensory ecology, and organism-flow interactions necessary to address this topic. They will employ a phylogenetically robust approach to explore the scope and adaptive significance of the turbulence response in a widespread and ecologically important class of organisms (echinoids; sea urchins and their relatives), and will determine whether the response is aligned with environmental conditions characteristic of these organisms' adult habitat. They will also test for ecologically important functional consequences of precocious, turbulence-induced settlement. This work will provide a detailed look at an entirely new class of settlement inducer, one with strong potential for changing current conceptualizations of dispersing larval stages, their ability to detect signatures of habitat across multiple scales, and the ways in which organism-level traits might influence population connectivity.Intellectual Merit : How organisms with dispersing life stages find their way back to adult habitat is a fundamental question in marine ecology. Considerable research has explored links between transport, delivery, settlement, and recruitment, with important advances in knowledge. However, a complete understanding of the larval recruitment process remains elusive. Standard tools for estimating dispersal (e.g., numerical circulation models) have limited spatial resolution, which prevents them from predicting at scales below a few hundred meters how larvae will interact with the shore. Studies investigating larval attachment have focused on chemical, tactile, or near-bottom hydrodynamic cues active across microns to centimeters. The novelty of the present project is that it will focus on processes at habitat scales -- between transport and settlement -- where there is a gap in the understanding of processes. Broader Impacts: This project will provide a framework for integrating key concepts of propagule dispersal and settlement, two fundamental but largely disjunct themes in marine science. The understanding that will come from this study will provide key information for ecosystem based management of coastal marine resources. The findings of the study will be communicated via publications and conference presentations. There will also be a robust education and public outreach effort. The investigators will develop a "Surfing to Settlement" virtual lab activity based on their research that will be incorporated into the VirtualUrchin web platform, a widely exploited educational resource at Stanford that gets thousands of unique users per month. Through connections to the San Francisco Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, they will integrate the "Surfing to Settlement" activity into one of NERRs professional development workshops for central California educators, thus disseminating this resource to and gaining valuable feedback from dozens of teachers and thousands of students. The project will also continue an existing partnership with a local community college (Santa Rosa Community College) that provides a means for undergraduates who would otherwise get little exposure to the research enterprise to receive training and mentorship in the scientific process via extended internships. In addition, the investigators will expand development of a high-quality video/photo resource that documents early development, larval morphology and behavior in a phylogenetically broad array of animal phyla, and will disseminate this resource to the public via an existing collaboration with the internationally known Monterey Bay Aquarium.

概述：通过该奖项，调查人员将探索一个栖息地规模的海洋学过程，该过程有可能将幼虫传递的研究与了解幼虫对底物相关线索的反应的理解。这项工作将建立在已发表的初步数据的基础上，表明在海岸环境附近环境幼虫的湍流剪切特征以启动沉降并转变为少年阶段。这些先前的发现表明：1）由于湍流强度可以预测地随波浪破裂和其他因素的强度而变化，因此湍流可以作为其适合栖息地的幼虫的指标，从而在较大规模的分散现象之间建立联系，以及近乎底部的搜索和选择行为。和。 2）幼虫对湍流的反应以前所未有的方式起作用。与典型的提示相反，湍流不会直接诱导定居点，而是刺激性的“优先”幼虫，这些幼虫对化学线索具有“胜任”，从而导致他们获得对此类提示并进行沉降的响应。跨学科团队在幼虫生物学，感官生态学和有机体 - 流相互作用方面结合了专业知识，以解决该主题。他们将采用一种系统发育的强大方法来探索在广泛且在生态上重要的生物类别（棘突质；海胆及其亲戚）中湍流反应的范围和适应性意义，并将确定响应是否与这些生物体成人栖息地的环境条件对齐。他们还将测试早熟，湍流引起的沉降的生态重要功能后果。这项工作将详细介绍一个全新的定居诱导剂，其中一类具有强大的潜力，可以改变当前的概念，即分散幼虫阶段，它们检测到跨多个规模的栖息地的能力，以及生物体水平的特质的方式，在质疑成人的生活阶段的构成阶段的人群中如何影响成人的养生阶段。大量研究探讨了交通，交付，和解和招聘之间的联系，并取得了重要的知识进步。但是，对幼虫招聘过程的完全了解仍然难以捉摸。用于估计扩散的标准工具（例如，数值循环模型）的空间分辨率有限，这阻止了它们在低于几百米以下的尺度上预测幼虫如何与岸边相互作用。研究幼虫附着的研究集中在跨微米到厘米的化学，触觉或近乎底部的流体动力线索。本项目的新颖性是，它将集中在运输和定居点之间的栖息地量表上的过程上，其中对过程的理解存在差距。更广泛的影响：该项目将为整合繁殖传播分散和定居的关键概念提供一个框架，这是海洋科学中的两个基本但很大程度上脱节的主题。这项研究的理解将为基于生态系统的沿海海洋资源管理提供关键信息。该研究的发现将通过出版物和会议演讲进行传达。 还将进行强大的教育和公众推广工作。 调查人员将根据其研究开发“冲浪以解决”虚拟实验室活动，该活动将纳入Virtualurchin Web平台，这是斯坦福大学广泛利用的教育资源，每月获得数千个唯一用户。通过与旧金山湾国家河口研究保护区的联系，他们将将“冲浪以和解”活动整合到NERRS专业发展研讨会之一，从而将这一资源传播给并从数十名教师和数千名学生那里获得宝贵的反馈。该项目还将继续与当地社区学院（圣罗莎社区学院）建立现有合作伙伴关系，该学院为本科生提供了一种手段，这些本科生否则几乎没有接触研究企业，可以通过扩展实习实习在科学过程中接受培训和指导。此外，调查人员将扩大高质量视频/照片资源的开发，该视频/照片资源记录了一系列动物门的系统发育范围内的早期发展，幼体形态和行为，并通过与国际知名的蒙特雷湾水族馆的现有合作将此资源传播给公众。