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

动态能量收支（DEB）模型描述了个体生物同化和利用能量和碳、氮、磷等基本元素的速率。 由此产生的理论提供了一个强大的概念框架，将亚有机体（生物化学，遗传和生理）过程与有机体性能（生长，繁殖，死亡率）联系起来，从而与生态和进化变化联系起来。这个项目将探讨在生物组织的许多层次上广泛的生化和生理控制机制的后果。 将同时努力发展新的一般理论和一个特别的应用：石珊瑚生物学。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环境，在这种环境中，生物组织水平之间的传统区分失败，并且生理、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许多组织层次的关键生物过程，无论是在网站内部还是网站之间。有与莫雷阿珊瑚礁LTER研究人员密切合作的详细计划。 一所研究型大学（加州大学圣巴巴拉分校）和一所面向教学、为少数民族服务的机构（加州州立大学北岭分校）的研究人员之间的合作产生了独特的教育机会。其中包括研究生培训方面的合作努力，本科生课程的新模块，以及少数民族学生直接参与开发新理论及其实证测试。

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.