Collaborative Research: Homeostasis, Stoichiometry and Dynamic Energy Budgets at Multiple Levels of Biological Organization

动态能量收支(DEB)模型描述了单个生物体吸收和使用能量以及碳、氮和磷等基本元素的速度。由此产生的理论提供了一个强大的概念框架，将亚有机体(生化、遗传和生理)过程与有机体的表现(生长、繁殖、死亡)联系起来，从而与生态和进化变化联系起来。这个项目将探索在生物组织的多个层面上广泛的生化和生理控制机制的后果。在开发新的、普遍的理论和一个特定的应用方面将会有平行的努力：石珊瑚的生物学。在该系统中，宿主、其共生体以及细胞内和细胞外微生物群落的相互作用创造了一种背景，在这种背景下，生物组织水平之间的传统差异消失了，生理、生态和进化过程的时间尺度重叠。这一新理论将具有广泛的生物学和生态学适用性。新方法的潜在用户包括美国的长期生态研究(LTER)社区，他们需要理论来比较和对比多个组织级别的关键生物过程，无论是在地点内部还是在地点之间。与Moorea珊瑚礁LTER的研究人员密切合作有详细的计划。研究型大学(加州大学圣巴巴拉分校)和面向教学、为少数群体服务的机构(加州州立大学北岭分校)的研究人员之间的合作带来了独特的教育机会。这些措施包括在研究生培训方面的合作努力，本科生班级的新模块，以及少数族裔学生直接参与开发新的理论及其实证测试。

Dynamic energy budget (DEB) models describe the rates at which individual organisms assimilate and use energy and essential elements such as carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. The resulting theory offers a powerful conceptual framework for relating suborganismal (biochemical, genetic, and physiological) processes to organismal performance (growth, reproduction, mortality), and thereby to ecological and evolutionary change. This project will explore the consequences at many levels of biological organization of a broad range of biochemical and physiological control mechanisms. There will be parallel efforts at developing new, general theory and on one particular application: the biology of stony corals. In that system, the interactions of a host, its symbionts and both intra-cellular and extracellular microbial communities create a context where traditional distinctions between levels of biological organization fail, and where the time scales of physiological, ecological, and evolutionary processes overlap. This new theory will have wide biological and ecological applicability. Potential users of the new approach include the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) community within the United States who require theory to compare and contrast critical biological processes at many levels of organization, both within and among sites. There are detailed plans for close collaboration with researchers at the Moorea Coral Reef LTER. There are distinctive educational opportunities deriving from the collaboration between researchers at a research university (University of California, Santa Barbara) and a teaching oriented, minority-serving institution (California State University Northridge). These include cooperative efforts in graduate student training, new modules for undergraduate classes, and the direct involvement of minority students in developing new theory and its empirical tests.