Testing the most striking tropical marine biodiversity gradient on the planet: does it hold for sponges?

测试地球上最引人注目的热带海洋生物多样性梯度：它适用于海绵吗？

• 批准号: 2048457
• 负责人: Robert Toonen
• 金额: $ 95.97万
• 依托单位: University of Hawaii
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2024-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2048457&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Testing; most; striking; tropical; marine

Coral reefs are among the most species-rich ecosystems on the planet, occupying only about 1% of the seafloor, but housing more than a quarter of known marine biodiversity. Sometimes called the rainforests of the sea, coral reefs have great intrinsic biological, cultural and economic value. Nearly a billion people across the planet rely on coral reef ecosystems as a significant source of their diet, and the annual economic benefits of coral reefs are estimated to be around $9.9 Trillion USD. Thus, the global decline of coral reefs by an estimated 30-50% since the 1980s is of considerable concern as scientists struggle to understand whether species are being lost before they are even discovered. While coral reefs are spectacularly diverse, the majority of this biodiversity actually lives hidden deep within the three-dimensional framework of the reef itself. This hidden (or cryptic) community of organisms are both dramatically understudied and fundamentally important for the persistence of coral reefs. Sponges are a dominant group among these cryptic organisms within the reef which provide food from the bottom of the food chain and help sustain coral reef biodiversity. Despite the vital ecological role of sponges on coral reefs, little is known about their diversity, abundance or species ranges across the Indo-Pacific. For example, the most striking marine biodiversity gradient on the planet is described from several of the visibly dominant groups on coral reefs, including corals and reef fishes. From the global hotspot of species richness in the Indo-Pacific Coral Triangle there is a sharp eastward decline in species numbers to more remote oceanic islands in the Central Pacific, such as the Hawaiian Archipelago. However, no survey to date has evaluated whether the diversity of poorly known cryptic coral reef species, such as sponges, show the same pattern as the visible species that dominate the surface of the reef. Summer training modules introduce at-risk Pacific Islander youth to coral reef biodiversity to recruit and train a new generation of sponge taxonomists. Identification guides are being produced to help resource managers in establishing a baseline of sponge diversity, which allows resource managers to identify and protect native species, improves detection of alien species introductions and serves as a tool for monitoring changes in the ecosystem in response to human impacts. The work is being disseminated widely through scientific literature, public and professional presentations, popular press articles, and an educational display about sponges and coral reef biology in collaboration with the Waikīkī Aquarium.This important knowledge gap is addressed by analyzing an existing backlog of standardized sampling devices (ARMS) collected from throughout the Pacific Ocean to determine whether sponges that live largely unseen within the reef framework follow the same diversity gradient as has been previously reported for fish and corals. By integrating taxonomy with multi-locus DNA barcoding and metabarcoding, this project is documenting species richness and biodiversity patterns among the cryptic sponge community across five ecoregions spanning over 10,000 km of the tropical Pacific. These collections include many new species and are providing vouchered DNA barcodes to existing reference databases that currently include fewer than 1% of sponge species across the planet. Sponges are a rich source for pharmaceutical development, so discovery of new species also provides opportunity for exploration of natural products from both the sponges and culturable microbes associated with them. By examining sponge species occurrence and diversity along both environmental and anthropogenic gradients in each ecoregion, the data also address whether coral reef sponges can serve as indicators of human impacts. Collectively, these results are transforming our knowledge of tropical Pacific sponge biodiversity, species ranges, and providing much-needed reference barcodes to global sequence databases. By determining whether sponges show the same Indo-Pacific richness gradient as reported in fishes and corals, this project is testing how well generalizations made from the visible subset of species that live on the surface of coral reefs apply to rest of coral reef biodiversity. This study is greatly advancing our knowledge of Pacific coral reef sponges and will ultimately inform the scale over which vital ecological roles performed by this understudied taxon, such as the production of nutrients at the bottom of the food chain, are acting across the Pacific.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.

珊瑚礁是地球上最丰富的物种生态系统之一，仅占据了海底的1％，但居住的海洋生物多样性超过四分之一。有时被称为海洋的雨林，珊瑚礁具有巨大的内在生物学，文化和经济价值。整个地球上有近十亿人依靠珊瑚礁作为其饮食的重要来源，珊瑚礁的年度经济利益估计约为9.9万亿美元。这是，自1980年代以来，全球珊瑚礁的衰落估计占30-50％，这是考虑到的关注，因为科学家难以在发现它们之前是否丢失了它们。尽管珊瑚礁是巨大的多样化，但这种生物多样性的大多数实际上生活在礁石本身的三维框架内。这种隐藏的生物体（或加密）社区都对珊瑚礁的持续存在很重要，基本上很重要。海绵是珊瑚礁内这些加密生物的主要群体，这些加密生物可以从食物链底部提供食物，并有助于维持珊瑚礁。尽管海绵对珊瑚礁的生态作用至关重要，但对整个印度太平洋的多样性，抽象或物种范围知之甚少。例如，地球上最引人注目的海洋生物多样性梯度是从珊瑚礁（包括珊瑚和礁鱼）上的几个可见的主要群体中描述的。从全球的印度太平洋珊瑚三角物种丰富度的热点从物种数量的急剧下降到中太平洋中部的偏远海洋岛屿，例如夏威夷群岛。但是，迄今为止，尚无调查评估众所周知的加密珊瑚礁物种的多样性（例如海绵）是否表现出与夏季训练模块主导的可见物种相同的模式，该模式是否会引入高风险的太平洋岛民青年对珊瑚礁生物多样性，以招募和训练新一代的发起人分类法医师。正在生产识别指南，以帮助资源经理建立赞助商多样性的基准，该基础使资源经理能够识别和保护本地物种，改善对外星物种的发现，并用作对人类影响的响应生态系统变化的工具。这项工作在整个科学文献，公共和专业演讲，流行的新闻文章以及有关海绵和珊瑚礁生物学的教育展示中得到广泛分解梯度以前报道了鱼类和珊瑚。通过将分类学与多洛克斯DNA条形码和元编码的多样性DNA结合在一起，该项目正在记录物种丰富性和生物多样性模式，跨过五个超过10,000公里的热带太平洋的加密赞助商社区中的物种。这些收藏包括许多新物种，并为现有参考数据库提供凭证DNA条形码，这些数据库目前包括整个地球上少于1％的赞助物种。海绵是药物开发的丰富来源，因此，新物种的发现还为探索与之相关的赞助商和文化微生物的天然产品提供了机会。通过检查每个生态区的环境和人为梯度沿着赞助物种的发生和多样性，数据还介绍了珊瑚礁海绵是否可以作为人类影响的指标。总的来说，这些结果正在改变我们对热带太平洋赞助商生物多样性，物种范围的了解，并为全球序列数据库提供了急需的参考条形码。通过确定赞助商是否表现出与鱼类和珊瑚报道的印度太平洋丰富度梯度相同的，该项目正在测试从居住在珊瑚礁表面上适用于珊瑚礁生物多样性的其余物种的可见子集中的概括。这项研究极大地促进了我们对太平洋珊瑚礁海绵的了解，并最终将告知这种理解的分类单元所作的重要生态作用的规模，例如食物链底部的营养生产，在整个太平洋地区都表现出来。该奖项在NSF的法定任务中反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过评估了基金会的范围，并通过评估了基金会的范围。

项目成果

Unveiling hidden sponge biodiversity within the Hawaiian reef cryptofauna

揭示夏威夷珊瑚礁加密动物群中隐藏的海绵生物多样性

• DOI: 10.1007/s00338-021-02109-7
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Coral Reefs
• 影响因子: 3.5
• 作者: Vicente, Jan;Webb, Maryann K.;Paulay, Gustav;Rakchai, Wachirawit;Timmers, Molly A.;Jury, Christopher P.;Bahr, Keisha;Toonen, Robert J.
• 通讯作者: Toonen, Robert J.