CAREER: Targets of natural selection in reef-building corals

珊瑚是海洋中最具生物多样性的生态系统的工程师、建造者和砖块。令人担忧的是，世界各地的珊瑚礁正在减少，在持续的气候变化的影响下挣扎着生存。珊瑚礁的未来取决于珊瑚通过进化适应来跟踪全球变暖的能力。这个项目将是第一个解决珊瑚在自然界中适应的遗传学问题。它的首要目标是确定通过自然选择修改的基因，以帮助珊瑚应对不断变化的环境。该项目将整合比较基因组学、种群基因组学和数量遗传学方法，以建立此类基因的清单，并验证它们对珊瑚适宜性的影响。该项目将阐明海洋环境演变的基本机制。它还将提供遗传标记来评估个别珊瑚礁的灭绝风险，这将极大地帮助确定保护工作的优先顺序，以确保珊瑚礁在未来的持久性。此外，还将有丰富的机会加强本科生层面的生物多样性教育，在K-12学校推动基础科学作为一种专业，并提高公众对气候变化的认识。

Corals are the engineers, builders, and bricks of the most biologically diverse ecosystem in the ocean. Alarmingly, coral reefs worldwide are in decline, struggling to survive the effects of ongoing climate change. The future of coral reefs relies on the ability of corals to track global warming with evolutionary adaptation. This project will be the first to address genetics of coral adaptation in nature. Its overarching goal is to identify the genes that are modified by natural selection to help corals cope with the changing environment. The project will integrate comparative genomic, population genomic, and quantitative genetic approaches to build an inventory of such genes and to verify their effect on coral fitness. This project will elucidate fundamental mechanisms of evolution in the marine environment. It will also provide genetic markers to assess the risk of extinction of individual reefs, which will greatly help prioritizing conservation efforts to ensure the persistence of coral reefs in the future. In addition, there will be rich opportunities to enhance biodiversity education at the undergraduate level, promote basic science as a profession in K-12 schools, and raise public awareness of climate change.