Collaborative research: Patterns of diversity in planktonic ciliates: spatio-temporal scales and community assembly in the coastal ocean

合作研究：浮游纤毛虫的多样性模式：沿海海洋的时空尺度和群落组装

• 批准号: 1435515
• 负责人: George McManus
• 金额: $ 54.18万
• 依托单位: University of Connecticut
• 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: 2014-09-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1435515&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; research; Patterns; diversity; planktonic

Most of the biomass, productivity, and overall metabolism in the ocean are due to microbes, including bacteria, single-celled algae and protozoa. Oxygen depletion, harmful blooms, and other ocean ills are all attributable to these smallest members of the plankton. Their production and processing of organic matter, however, form the basis of the ocean's food web and thus determine the amount of food humans can harvest from the sea. Due to their small size, it is more difficult to assess the biological diversity of microbes than it is for larger organisms, such as the ocean's fish and mammal populations, yet because of their high abundance and dominance of ocean metabolism it is critical that we are able to measure microbial diversity and to understand how it changes over different time and space scales in response to changes in the environment. This project will make an important step forward in helping us to understand microbial biodiversity and set a baseline for changes that are expected in coming decades. In carrying out this research, undergraduate and graduate students as well as post-doctoral scholars will obtain training in the latest sequencing and data-processing technologies, an important goal for maintaining US leadership in biotechnology. This project will use DNA-based methods to measure microbial diversity in the coastal ocean, employing the deep-sequencing technology to sample hundreds of thousands of microbial species simultaneously. To enable the deepest possible sampling, it will focus on a single group of microbes, the ciliates, using them as a model for similar microbes. Previous use of such methods has revealed a common pattern in which a small group of common ciliate species is accompanied by a very large group of rare ones. Because the new sequencing technologies provide so much information about microbial communities from each sample, this project will be able to evaluate how both the common and rare parts of the community (the latter is often referred to as the "rare biosphere") change with seasons, distance from shore, climate zone, etc. The technical goals for this project are to evaluate how ciliate diversity varies over time and space in the ocean, to evaluate environmental factors, both abiotic and biotic, that drive this variation, and to perform experiments under controlled conditions to test hypotheses about the relationship between diversity and these factors.

海洋中的大多数生物量，生产率和总代谢都是由于微生物，包括细菌，单细胞藻类和原生动物。 氧气耗尽，有害的花朵和其他海洋疾病都归因于浮游生物的这些最小的成员。 但是，它们的有机物生产和加工构成了海洋食品网的基础，因此确定了人类可以从海中收获的食物量。由于它们的尺寸小，比大型生物（例如海洋的鱼类和哺乳动物种群）更难评估微生物的生物学多样性，但是由于它们的高丰度和海洋代谢的占优势，我们至关重要的是，我们能够测量微生物多样性并了解其在不同的时间和空间对环境中的变化的变化和空间规模的变化。 该项目将迈出重要的一步，以帮助我们了解微生物生物多样性，并为未来几十年预期的变化树立基准。 在进行这项研究时，本科生和研究生以及博士后学者将获得最新的测序和数据处理技术的培训，这是维持美国在生物技术领域领导的重要目标。该项目将采用基于DNA的方法来测量沿海海洋中的微生物多样性，并采用深层序列技术同时对数十万个微生物物种进行采样。 为了实现最深的抽样，它将专注于一组微生物纤毛，并使用它们作为类似微生物的模型。 以前使用此类方法已经揭示了一种共同的模式，其中一小部分常见的纤毛物种伴随着一大批稀有物种。 由于新的测序技术提供了每个样本中有关微生物群落的大量信息，因此该项目将能够评估社区的常见部分和稀有部分（后者通常被称为“稀有生物圈”）随季节的变化，距离海岸，气候区域等距离发生变化。变异，并在受控条件下进行实验，以测试有关多样性与这些因素之间关系的假设。