Collaborative research: The effects of predator traits on the structure of oceanic food webs

合作研究：捕食者特征对海洋食物网结构的影响

• 批准号: 1829835
• 负责人: Casey Dunn
• 金额: $ 35.05万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-09-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1829835&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; research; effects; predator; traits

Food webs describe who eats whom, tracing the flow of energy from plants up to large animals. While many connections in food webs on land are quite familiar, there are large gaps in our understanding of ocean food webs. Closing these gaps is critical to understanding how nutrients and energy move through ocean ecosystems, how organisms interact in the ocean, and how best to manage ocean resources. This project will study ocean food web structure with a focus on siphonophores, an abundant group of predators in the open ocean that form colonies that range in length from less than an inch to more than one hundred feet. Siphonophores are known to be important predators within ocean food webs, but they are difficult to study because they live across great ocean depths and are gelatinous and fragile. The details of what they eat, as well as many other features of their biology, remain poorly known. This project will combine direct observations of feeding, genetic analysis of siphonophore gut contents, and stable isotope analyses to identify what different species of siphonophores eat. This will provide a new understanding of how the structure of food webs arise, aiding in our ability to predict future changes to food webs as the global climate shifts. Siphonophores feed in a unique manner--they have highly specialized tentacles that are used solely for capturing prey--thus, the prey captured is determined largely by the anatomy and function of these tentacles. The project will describe these tentacles, reconstruct their evolutionary history, and investigate how evolutionary shifts in tentacle structure have led to changes in diet. This project will train one PhD student, one Master's student, a postdoc, and undergraduate students, including individuals of underrepresented groups. This project will support the production of scientifically rigorous yet engaging videos, foster the expansion of a citizen-science program, and create K-12 teaching modules.This project will advance three scientific aims: First, it will identify the diet of a diverse range of siphonophores using DNA metabarcoding of gut contents and prey field, remotely operated vehicle (ROV) video of prey encounters, and stable isotope analysis. These approaches are highly complementary and allow for extensive cross validation. Second, the project will characterize the selectivity of siphonophore diets by comparing them to the relative prey abundances in the habitats of each of these species. Third, the project will characterize the structure of the siphonophore prey capture apparatus across species through detailed morphological analysis of their tentacles and nematocysts. These data will be integrated in an ecological and evolutionary framework to identify predator features associated with prey specialization. In a larger context, addressing these questions will advance our understanding of oceanic predation by revealing how evolutionary changes in predator selectivity correspond to evolutionary changes in habitat and feeding apparatus and how these changes shape current food web structure in the open ocean. The team will test and refine an integrated approach to describing the structure and origin of food web topology, and evaluate the potential for phylogenetic relationships to explain prey selectivity.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

食物网描述谁吃了谁，追溯了从植物到大动物的能量流。尽管陆地上的食物网的许多联系非常熟悉，但我们对海洋食品网的理解存在很大的差距。缩小这些差距对于了解养分和能量如何通过海洋生态系统，生物在海洋中相互作用以及如何最好地管理海洋资源的方式至关重要。该项目将研究海洋食品网络结构，重点是虹吸管，这是一个在开阔的海洋中的大量捕食者，形成殖民地的长度从不到1英寸到一百英尺以上。已知虹吸管是海洋食品网中重要的捕食者，但是它们很难学习，因为它们生活在大海深处，并且是凝胶状和脆弱的。他们饮食的细节以及生物学的许多其他特征仍然鲜为人知。该项目将结合对喂养的直接观察，虹吸管肠含量的遗传分析以及稳定的同位素分析，以识别哪种不同种类的siphonophonophores饮食。这将提供对食物网的结构如何出现的新理解，这有助于我们预测随着全球气候变化的未来变化的能力。 siphonophores以独特的方式进食 - 它们具有高度专业的触手，仅用于捕获猎物 - 因此，捕获的猎物主要取决于这些触手的解剖结构和功能。该项目将描述这些触角，重建其进化史，并研究触手结构的进化转变如何导致饮食变化。该项目将培训一名博士生，一名硕士学生，一名博士后和本科生，包括代表人数不足的人。 This project will support the production of scientifically rigorous yet engaging videos, foster the expansion of a citizen-science program, and create K-12 teaching modules.This project will advance three scientific aims: First, it will identify the diet of a diverse range of siphonophores using DNA metabarcoding of gut contents and prey field, remotely operated vehicle (ROV) video of prey encounters, and stable isotope analysis.这些方法是高度互补的，可以进行广泛的交叉验证。其次，该项目将通过将它们与每个物种栖息地的相对猎物丰度进行比较来表征siphonophore饮食的选择性。第三，该项目将通过对触手和线虫细胞的详细形态分析来表征横跨物种的虹吸管猎物的结构。这些数据将集成到生态和进化框架中，以识别与猎物专业相关的捕食者特征。在更大的背景下，解决这些问题将通过揭示捕食者选择性的进化变化与栖息地和喂养设备的进化变化以及这些变化如何影响开放海洋中的当前食物网络结构，从而提高我们对海洋捕食的理解。 该团队将测试和完善一种综合方法来描述食品网络拓扑的结构和起源，并评估系统发育关系的潜力来解释猎物的选择性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是通过基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响标准通过评估来获得支持的。

项目成果

Integrating siphonophores into marine food‐web ecology

将管水母融入海洋食品网络生态

• DOI: 10.1002/lol2.10235
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Limnology and Oceanography Letters
• 影响因子: 7.8
• 作者: Hetherington, Elizabeth D.;Damian‐Serrano, Alejandro;Haddock, Steven H.;Dunn, Casey W.;Choy, C. Anela
• 通讯作者: Choy, C. Anela