A Proposal for a Workshop on Global Environmental Change & Biological Evolution in the Ocean

海洋生物将如何应对和改变正在发生的由全球变化驱动的海洋环境全面变化，目前几乎还不得而知。现今的生物和群落在多大程度上能够适应和进化以应对快速的政权转变？目前占主导地位的群体的反应是未来生物群落对人为变化压力的反应方式的良好预测吗？我们如何能够准确地模拟同时发生的多种环境变化的未来影响，再加上潜在的生物体，人口和生态系统层面的适应？生态关键功能群的进化变化的时间尺度与主要全球变化过程相关的时间尺度相比如何？最后，进化生物学和多变量制度规模变化对海洋支持健康食物网和储存人为二氧化碳的能力有什么影响？研究人员将在北卡罗来纳州达勒姆的国家进化合成中心召开一个由NSF支持的约12名受邀参与者的催化研讨会。这一小组由海洋生态学家和进化生物学家组成，将解决以下问题：什么是最引人注目的问题，最好通过海洋学和进化生物学相结合的综合方法来解决海洋环境快速变化的生物反应？如何利用对现代生物和群落的研究来预测对快速政权转变的长期适应和生物反应？能否开发出精确的模型来预测未来多种环境变化对生物体、种群和生态系统水平适应的影响？假设实验性进化实验是容易处理的，那么最好的策略是什么（微观世界、中观世界和生物体的选择？来自这个初步催化会议的与会者将组成一个指导委员会，该委员会将概述一个更大的社区讲习班的计划，以解决这些问题，在一次会议上将于2009年夏天在南加州大学箭牌研究所会议设施的卡塔利纳岛举行。更广泛的影响这项活动的主要更广泛的影响是努力把进化界与海洋生态界聚集在一起，计划一个强大的科学方法来解决气候和环境变化将如何影响海洋生物，种群和社区的长期预测问题。作为后续活动，将在一次讲习班上向广大科学界通报这些信息。

How the biology of the ocean will react to and modify the ongoing comprehensive global change-driven alterations in the marine environment is presently virtually unknown. To what extent will present day organisms and communities be able to adapt to and evolve in response to rapid regime shifts? Are the responses of currently dominant groups a good predictor of the way that future biological communities will react to anthropogenic change stressors? How can we accurately model the future effects of simultaneous multiple environmental changes, when coupled with potential organismal-, population- and ecosystem-level adaptation? How do the timescales of evolutionary change in ecologically critical functional groups of planktonic organisms compare to the timescales that are relevant for major global change processes? And finally, what implications do evolutionary biology and multi-variate regime scale shifts have for the ability of the ocean to support healthy food webs and store anthropogenic CO2? The investigators will convene an NSF-supported catalysis workshop of about 12 invited participants, to be held at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, Durham, North Carolina. This small selected group, comprised of ocean ecologists and evolutionary biologist, will address the following questions:What are the most compelling questions that are best addressed by an integrative approach combining oceanography and evolutionary biology to address biological responses to rapid environmental change in the ocean? How can studies of present-day organisms and communities be used to predict long-term adaptations and biological responses to rapid regime shifts? Can accurate models be developed to predict future effects of multiple environmental changes on organismal, population, and ecosystem-level adaptations? Assuming experimental evolution experiments are tractable, what are the best strategies (microcosms, mesocosms, and choices of organism? Participants from this initial catalysis meeting will form a steering committee that will outline plans for a larger community workshop to address these issues in a meeting to be held at USC Wrigley Institute conference facility on Catalina Island in the summer of 2009. Broader Impacts The primary broader impact of this activity is the effort to bring the evolutionary community together with the marine ecology community to plan a robust scientific approach to the problem of make long term predictions about how climate and environmental change will affect ocean organisms, populations and communities. The information will be communicated to the greater scientific community in a workshop as a follow-on activity.