Collaborative Research: NSFGEO-NERC: Community And Structural Collapse During Mass Extinctions (CASCaDE)

合作研究：NSFGEO-NERC：大规模灭绝期间的群落和结构崩溃（CASCaDE）

• 批准号: 2334455
• 负责人: Pincelli Hull
• 金额: $ 7.33万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-08-15 至 2026-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2334455&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; NSFGEO; NERC; Community

We live in a time of widespread change to the natural systems that make our planet habitable. The climate is warming and we are in the midst of a biodiversity crises arising from our extensive and expanding use of natural resources and spaces. What do these changes mean for the future of planet? The fossil record provides us with the means to understand the resilience and collapse of ecosystems due to rapid climate change. Here the researchers will use the fossil record to explore why some intervals of earth history are particularly prone to mass extinction, while others are not. To do this, they will examine changes in fossil communities across intervals of global warming using cutting-edge approaches from food web modeling. Their results will allow them to assess the relative importance of network structure and composition, versus changes in the productivity of systems, to the stability of ecosystems during times of rapid global warming, like those we are living in today. More technically, the research will answer the question of why rapid warming events of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic consistently trigger mass extinction, whereas similarly extreme climatic events of the Cenozoic do not? The researchers will test the hypothesis that it is the evolution of modern ecosystem structures established in the aftermath of the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction that has made Cenozoic communities relatively resilient to the effects of global warming as compared to those in the past. To do this they will i) reconstruct marine food webs across global warming events while accounting for preservation bias; ii) estimate productivity and biomass at the base of the marine food web through time; iii) predict primary and secondary extinctions using by advancing and applying food web modeling approaches; and iv) test the role of network structure in the stability of Cenozoic marine ecosystems.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.

我们生活在一个自然系统发生广泛变化的时代，这些变化使我们的星球变得适宜居住。气候正在变暖，我们正面临着由于我们对自然资源和空间的广泛和扩大使用而产生的生物多样性危机。这些变化对地球的未来意味着什么？化石记录为我们提供了了解气候快速变化导致的生态系统恢复力和崩溃的方法。在这里，研究人员将利用化石记录来探索为什么地球历史上的某些时期特别容易发生大规模灭绝，而另一些时期则不然。为此，他们将使用食物网建模的尖端方法来研究全球变暖期间化石群落的变化。他们的结果将使他们能够评估网络结构和组成相对于系统生产力的变化，在全球快速变暖时期（就像我们今天生活的那样）对生态系统稳定性的相对重要性。从技术上讲，这项研究将回答这样一个问题：为什么古生代和中生代的快速变暖事件始终会引发大规模灭绝，而新生代类似的极端气候事件却不会？ 研究人员将检验这样一个假设：与过去相比，白垩纪-古近纪大规模灭绝后建立的现代生态系统结构的演变使新生代群落对全球变暖的影响相对具有弹性。为此，他们将i）在全球变暖事件中重建海洋食物网，同时考虑到保护偏差； ii) 估算海洋食物网底部随时间变化的生产力和生物量； iii) 通过推进和应用食物网建模方法来预测初级和次级灭绝； iv) 测试网络结构在新生代海洋生态系统稳定性中的作用。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。