RAPID: Collaborative Research: Sponge resilience in the face of multiple stressors

RAPID：协作研究：海绵在面对多重压力时的弹性

• 批准号: 1810616
• 负责人: Marilyn Brandt
• 金额: $ 3.91万
• 依托单位: University of The Virgin Islands
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-12-15 至 2021-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1810616&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: RAPID; Collaborative; Research; Sponge; resilience

Over the past several decades, coral reefs worldwide have undergone a transition from being dominated by the corals themselves to being dominated by sponges or algae. The causes of these changes are complex, but they include both natural stressors, such as diseases and hurricanes, and impacts from human activities, such as coastal development and climate change. There are over 600 species of sponges on Caribbean coral reefs, and they serve many important ecological roles, including nutrient cycling, providing food and shelter for other reef animals, and producing a tremendous diversity of chemical compounds that are important for controlling species interactions on the reef, and may serve as potential new drugs. In spite of their importance on coral reefs, there are many aspects of sponge biology that remain unknown, including how they respond to different types of stressors. Coral reefs in St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, are exposed to different levels of man-made stressors, depending upon their proximity to coastal development, and the sponge assemblages on these reefs also vary with levels of human impacts. In September 2017, St. Thomas was devastated by two Category 5 hurricanes in a row. Since, unlike corals, virtually nothing is known about what happens to sponge communities in the aftermath of hurricanes, the research team will use a combination of field ecology and population genetics approaches to determine how sponge communities respond and recover from these devastating storms and whether prior exposure to land-based stressors affects their recovery. Researchers at the Universities of Mississippi, Alabama and the Virgin Islands will participate in this RAPID project, and will provide training opportunities for students and postdoctoral researchers, especially from underrepresented groups. Information will be provided to resource managers in the Virgin Islands, along with outreach programs to community groups in St. Thomas.The goal of this project is to assess the impacts of single (e.g., hurricanes) versus multiple (e.g., hurricanes and land-based sources of pollution) stressors on the resilience, recovery, and recruitment of sponge communities in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. Given the growing dominance of sponges on coral reefs worldwide, understanding the responses of sponges to natural and anthropogenic stressors is increasingly important. The investigators will leverage multiple years of data on sponge assemblages from several sites around the island of St. Thomas that varied in their levels of exposure to local land-based stressors prior to Hurricanes Irma and Maria, and evaluate changes to these diverse assemblages over time, beginning within 3 months of these devastating storms. Using a combination of natural and experimentally cleared plots, the investigators will assess the progress of sponge succession and whether the presence of algae interferes with sponge recruitment and recovery. Subsamples of recruits and nearby conspecifics will be collected to evaluate population genetic diversity and potential sources of new individuals. The data resulting from this project will provide critical insights into sponge resilience in response to hurricanes at sites previously exposed to land-based stressors, the initiation of succession within sponge communities, potential predictors of successional trajectory, and genetic diversity within sponge populations following a storm event. This information will help identify factors that inhibit coral recovery and potential approaches to enhance resilience of coral reefs.

在过去的几十年里，全世界的珊瑚礁经历了从珊瑚本身为主到海绵或藻类为主的转变。这些变化的原因很复杂，但其中既包括疾病和飓风等自然压力因素，也包括沿海开发和气候变化等人类活动的影响。加勒比珊瑚礁上有 600 多种海绵，它们发挥着许多重要的生态作用，包括养分循环、为其他珊瑚礁动物提供食物和住所，以及产生多种多样的化合物，这些化合物对于控制珊瑚礁上的物种相互作用非常重要。珊瑚礁，并可能作为潜在的新药。尽管海绵对珊瑚礁很重要，但海绵生物学的许多方面仍然未知，包括它们如何应对不同类型的压力源。美属维尔京群岛圣托马斯的珊瑚礁根据其与沿海开发的距离而受到不同程度的人为压力，而且这些珊瑚礁上的海绵组合也随着人类影响的程度而变化。 2017 年 9 月，圣托马斯连续遭受两次 5 级飓风的袭击。由于与珊瑚不同，人们对飓风过后海绵群落发生的情况几乎一无所知，因此研究小组将结合现场生态学和种群遗传学方法来确定海绵群落如何应对这些毁灭性风暴并从中恢复，以及之前是否暴露于陆地压力源会影响他们的康复。密西西比大学、阿拉巴马大学和维尔京群岛大学的研究人员将参与该 RAPID 项目，并将为学生和博士后研究人员，特别是来自代表性不足群体的学生和博士后研究人员提供培训机会。将向维尔京群岛的资源管理者提供信息，同时向圣托马斯的社区团体提供外展计划。该项目的目标是评估单一灾害（例如飓风）与多重灾害（例如飓风和陆地灾害）的影响。影响美属维尔京群岛圣托马斯海绵群落恢复力、恢复和招募的压力因素 鉴于海绵在全球珊瑚礁上的主导地位日益增强，了解海绵对自然和人为压力源的反应变得越来越重要。研究人员将利用圣托马斯岛周围多个地点的海绵组合物的多年数据，这些地点在飓风艾尔玛和玛丽亚之前受到当地陆地压力源的暴露程度各不相同，并评估这些不同组合物随时间的变化，在这些毁灭性风暴发生后的三个月内开始。 研究人员将结合自然和实验清理的地块，评估海绵演替的进展以及藻类的存在是否会干扰海绵的补充和恢复。将收集新兵和附近同种人的子样本，以评估群体遗传多样性和新个体的潜在来源。该项目产生的数据将为以下方面提供重要见解：海绵在先前暴露于陆地压力源的地点应对飓风的恢复能力、海绵群落内演替的启动、演替轨迹的潜在预测因子以及风暴后海绵种群内的遗传多样性事件。这些信息将有助于确定抑制珊瑚恢复的因素以及增强珊瑚礁恢复力的潜在方法。