Collaborative research: Coral community resilience: testing the role of hidden diversity in pocilloporid corals at Moorea

合作研究：珊瑚群落复原力：测试莫雷阿岛细孔珊瑚隐藏多样性的作用

• 批准号: 1829898
• 负责人: Peter Edmunds
• 金额: $ 8.28万
• 依托单位: The University Corporation, Northridge
• 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=1829898&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; research; Coral; community; resilience; Collaborative; research; Coral; community; resilience

While most coral reefs in the world are threatened by multiple disturbances that are driving coral cover downward, the coral reefs at Mo'orea, French Polynesia, provide a striking exception. However, it is not yet clear what makes the coral communities of Mo'orea an exception to the trend of global decline in coral cover, and what drives spatial variation in recovery patterns around the island. The most recent wave of recovery on the outer reefs is dominated by corals in the genus Pocillopora (the cauliflower coral). While the colonies of this coral all look similar to one another, they actually represent multiple 'hidden' species that are genetically divergent but visibly indistinguishable. The morphological similarity makes it hard to identify species in the field, and this often forces researchers to pool these corals into a single group, which has impeded a full understanding of coral recovery. The ecological differences among these hidden species remain poorly understood, but they may be a crucial factor keeping the ecosystem in a coral-dominated state. This project is studying how 'hidden diversity' provides a form of 'ecological insurance' that provides reef-building coral communities around this island with ecological and evolutionary options that buffer reefs from unpredictable and unfavorable environmental conditions. If multiple cryptic species exhibit a diversity of responses to disturbance and stress, then it increases the ability of the community to recover and re-organize after impacts compared to that if all the species responded the same way. By studying the reefs at Mo'orea, this project provides unique, important, and transferable knowledge to better understand fundamental mechanism driving coral community recovery following catastrophic damage, and will provide much-needed information to better manage coral reefs and favor them remaining in a coral-dominated state. A PhD student and a postdoctoral researcher at Florida State University (FSU) are being supported and mentored during the project, and a program of professional growth is being provided for a technician who will work on the project. The investigators are working with science educators from Florida schools to introduce marine biology clubs that will provide outreach opportunities for FSU and California State University Northridge participants to engage high school students and teachers in the research themes at the core of this project.This project will test the hypothesis that the presence of morphologically similar yet genetically divergent lineages of corals in the genus Pocillopora drives rapid recovery of coral communities dominated by Pocillopora on the outer reefs of Mo'orea, French Polynesia. By creating a diverse portfolio in the capacity of the Pocillopora community to recover and reorganize after disturbance, hidden ecological differences among coral lineages in their response to disturbance is expected to promote community resilience. A well-studied genetic marker will be used to distinguish coral colonies among different lineages. Field-based projects, co-located with Moorea Coral Reef-Long-Term Ecological Research (MCR-LTER) sites, will determine how pocilloporid lineages differ in their distribution and abundance, spatial and temporal patterns of annual recruitment, symbiont composition, and post-settlement growth and survival. These data will be used to build Integral Projection Models (IPMs) to compare population differences among lineages in their sensitivity to size-dependent perturbations, and their capacity for population growth following disturbance. Results from the field projects and IPMs will be synthesized to estimate response diversity as the multivariate dispersion of lineage dissimilarity, and to assess the extent to which it predicts variation among sites in the recovery rate of pocilloporid percent cover, estimated empirically from the MCR-LTER time series. The intellectual merits of this project lie in developing new and transferable understanding of: i) the ecological differences within an ecologically important coral genus, ii) why pocilloporids at Mo'orea are an exception to the global trend of declining coral cover, and iii) the potential for hidden response diversity to act as a fundamental mechanism determining the capacity for coral communities to reestablish and reorganize following disturbances.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.

尽管世界上大多数珊瑚礁都受到驱动着珊瑚覆盖的多次干扰的威胁，但法属波利尼西亚的莫阿里亚的珊瑚礁提供了一个惊人的例外。但是，目前尚不清楚是什么使Mo'orea的珊瑚社区成为全球珊瑚覆盖趋势的例外，以及是什么导致了岛上恢复模式的空间变化。外部礁石上最新的恢复浪潮由珊瑚属（花椰菜珊瑚）中的珊瑚占主导地位。尽管这种珊瑚的菌落看起来彼此相似，但它们实际上代表了多个遗传上不同但明显无法区分的“隐藏”物种。形态学的相似性使得很难识别该领域的物种，这常常迫使研究人员将这些珊瑚汇集到一个群体中，这阻碍了人们对珊瑚恢复的完全理解。这些隐藏物种之间的生态差异仍然很众所周知，但它们可能是使生态系统处于珊瑚为主的状态的关键因素。该项目正在研究“隐藏的多样性”如何提供一种“生态保险”的形式，该形式为该岛上的珊瑚礁建设珊瑚礁社区提供了生态和进化的选择，这些选择可以缓冲礁石，这些珊瑚礁来自不可预测且不利的环境条件。如果多个隐性物种表现出对干扰和压力的反应多样，那么如果所有物种都以相同的响应方式，那么在影响后，社区在影响后恢复和重组的能力增加了。通过研究Mo'orea的礁石，该项目提供了独特，重要且可转移的知识，以更好地了解灾难性损害后促进珊瑚社区恢复的基本机制，并将提供急需的信息，以更好地管理珊瑚礁，并在珊瑚为主的状态下保持珊瑚礁。在该项目期间，正在为佛罗里达州立大学（FSU）的博士生和博士后研究员提供支持和指导，并为将在该项目中工作的技术人员提供了专业增长计划。调查人员正在与佛罗里达学校的科学教育工作者合作介绍海洋生物学俱乐部，这将为FSU和加利福尼亚州立大学Northridge的参与者提供宣传机会，使该项目的核心核心的核心群体中的corals corals of Corals在该项目的核心方面，让高中生和老师参与研究主题。 Pocillopora在法属波利尼西亚的Mo'orea外礁上。通过以Pocillopora社区的身份创建多样化的投资组合，在干扰后恢复和重组，珊瑚血统之间的隐藏生态差异预计将促进社区的韧性。研究良好的遗传标记将用于区分不同谱系之间的珊瑚菌落。基于现场的项目与Moorea Coral Reef-Long-Emer-Enm-term-ter-ter-lter地点共同确定Pocilloporid谱系的分布以及年度招募，共生体组成以及S-Sembiont组成以及S-Spatept Growth and Sersettept Growth and Sercorival的分布和丰度，空间和时间模式的差异。这些数据将用于构建整体投影模型（IPM），以比较谱系对大小依赖性扰动的敏感性的人口差异，以及在干扰后对人口增长的能力。现场项目和IPM的结果将被合成，以估算响应多样性作为谱系差异的多元分散，并评估其预测位点之间的差异程度，从而估计，从MCR-lter Time序列中估计，Pocilloporid覆盖率的恢复速率。该项目的智力优点在于对以下新的了解：i）生态上重要的珊瑚属中的生态差异，ii）为什么莫阿奥雷亚的pocilloporid是全球趋势趋势的例外，而珊瑚覆盖率下降的趋势以及iiii）的潜力，以确定统一的统治能力，以确定统一的能力，以重新进行珊瑚的社区，使得统一的能力，使得统一性的能力，使得统治珊瑚的能力。法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的智力优点和更广泛影响的审查标准来评估的值得支持的。