Collaborative Research: Turbulence-spurred settlement: Deciphering a newly recognized class of larval response

合作研究：湍流引发的沉降：破译一类新认识的幼虫反应

• 批准号: 1356966
• 负责人: Brian Gaylord
• 金额: $ 30.51万
• 依托单位: University of California-Davis
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-02-01 至 2018-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1356966&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Turbulence; spurred; settlement

Overview: With this award the investigators will explore a habitat-scale oceanographic process that has the potential to integrate studies of larval delivery with an understanding of how larvae respond to substrate-associated cues. This work will build on published and preliminary data indicating that turbulent shear characteristic of high-energy near shore environments primes larvae to initiate settlement and to transform into the juvenile stage. These prior findings suggest that: 1) Because turbulence intensity varies predictably as a function of the strength of wave breaking and other factors, turbulence could operate as an indicator for larvae of their approach to suitable habitat, providing a link between larger-scale dispersal phenomena, and near-bottom search and selection behaviors; and. 2) The larval response to turbulence acts in an unprecedented fashion. In contrast to typical cues, turbulence does not induce settlement directly, but rather spurs otherwise "pre-competent" larvae that are refractory to chemical cues to become "competent", thereby causing them to acquire responsiveness to such cues and undergo settlement. The interdisciplinary team has combined expertise in larval biology, sensory ecology, and organism-flow interactions necessary to address this topic. They will employ a phylogenetically robust approach to explore the scope and adaptive significance of the turbulence response in a widespread and ecologically important class of organisms (echinoids; sea urchins and their relatives), and will determine whether the response is aligned with environmental conditions characteristic of these organisms' adult habitat. They will also test for ecologically important functional consequences of precocious, turbulence-induced settlement. This work will provide a detailed look at an entirely new class of settlement inducer, one with strong potential for changing current conceptualizations of dispersing larval stages, their ability to detect signatures of habitat across multiple scales, and the ways in which organism-level traits might influence population connectivity.Intellectual Merit : How organisms with dispersing life stages find their way back to adult habitat is a fundamental question in marine ecology. Considerable research has explored links between transport, delivery, settlement, and recruitment, with important advances in knowledge. However, a complete understanding of the larval recruitment process remains elusive. Standard tools for estimating dispersal (e.g., numerical circulation models) have limited spatial resolution, which prevents them from predicting at scales below a few hundred meters how larvae will interact with the shore. Studies investigating larval attachment have focused on chemical, tactile, or near-bottom hydrodynamic cues active across microns to centimeters. The novelty of the present project is that it will focus on processes at habitat scales -- between transport and settlement -- where there is a gap in the understanding of processes. Broader Impacts: This project will provide a framework for integrating key concepts of propagule dispersal and settlement, two fundamental but largely disjunct themes in marine science. The understanding that will come from this study will provide key information for ecosystem based management of coastal marine resources. The findings of the study will be communicated via publications and conference presentations. There will also be a robust education and public outreach effort. The investigators will develop a "Surfing to Settlement" virtual lab activity based on their research that will be incorporated into the VirtualUrchin web platform, a widely exploited educational resource at Stanford that gets thousands of unique users per month. Through connections to the San Francisco Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, they will integrate the "Surfing to Settlement" activity into one of NERRs professional development workshops for central California educators, thus disseminating this resource to and gaining valuable feedback from dozens of teachers and thousands of students. The project will also continue an existing partnership with a local community college (Santa Rosa Community College) that provides a means for undergraduates who would otherwise get little exposure to the research enterprise to receive training and mentorship in the scientific process via extended internships. In addition, the investigators will expand development of a high-quality video/photo resource that documents early development, larval morphology and behavior in a phylogenetically broad array of animal phyla, and will disseminate this resource to the public via an existing collaboration with the internationally known Monterey Bay Aquarium.

概述：有了这个奖项，研究人员将探索一个栖息地尺度的海洋学过程，该过程有可能将幼虫分娩的研究与幼虫如何对基质相关线索作出反应的理解结合起来。这项工作将建立在已发表的和初步数据的基础上，这些数据表明，高能近岸环境的湍流剪切特征使幼虫开始定居并转变为幼鱼阶段。这些研究结果表明：1)湍流强度随波浪破碎强度和其他因素的变化而变化，湍流可以作为幼虫接近合适栖息地的一个指标，在更大规模的扩散现象和近底搜索和选择行为之间提供了联系；和。2)幼虫对湍流的反应是前所未有的。与典型的线索不同，湍流并不直接诱导幼虫定居，而是刺激那些对化学线索不敏感的“前能力”幼虫变得“有能力”，从而使它们获得对这些线索的反应并经历定居。跨学科团队结合了幼虫生物学，感官生态学和生物流动相互作用方面的专业知识，以解决这一主题。他们将采用一种系统发育稳健的方法来探索一种广泛存在且具有重要生态意义的生物（棘蚴、海胆及其近亲）的湍流反应的范围和适应性意义，并将确定这种反应是否与这些生物成年栖息地的环境条件特征相一致。他们还将测试过早的、湍流引起的定居对生态的重要功能后果。这项工作将详细介绍一种全新的聚落诱导剂，这种诱导剂具有很大的潜力，可以改变目前分散幼虫阶段的概念，它们能够在多个尺度上检测栖息地的特征，以及生物体水平的特征可能影响种群连通性的方式。智力价值：具有分散生命阶段的生物体如何找到回到成年栖息地的方式是海洋生态学中的一个基本问题。相当多的研究探索了运输、交付、结算和招聘之间的联系，并取得了重要的知识进展。然而，对幼虫招募过程的完整理解仍然是难以捉摸的。估计扩散的标准工具（例如，数值环流模型）具有有限的空间分辨率，这使它们无法在几百米以下的尺度上预测幼虫如何与海岸相互作用。调查幼虫依恋的研究集中在化学、触觉或近底部的流体动力学线索上，这些线索活跃在微米到厘米之间。当前项目的新颖之处在于，它将关注栖息地尺度上的过程——在交通和定居之间——在对过程的理解上存在差距。更广泛的影响：该项目将提供一个框架，整合繁殖体扩散和定居的关键概念，这是海洋科学中两个基本但在很大程度上脱节的主题。这项研究将为沿海海洋资源的生态系统管理提供关键信息。这项研究的结果将通过出版物和会议报告进行通报。还将大力开展教育和公众宣传工作。研究人员将根据他们的研究开发一个“冲浪到定居”的虚拟实验室活动，该活动将被纳入VirtualUrchin网络平台，这是斯坦福大学广泛利用的教育资源，每月有数千名独立用户。通过与旧金山湾国家河口研究保护区的联系，他们将把“从冲浪到定居”的活动整合到nerr为加州中部教育工作者举办的专业发展研讨会中，从而向数十名教师和数千名学生传播这一资源，并从他们那里获得宝贵的反馈。该项目还将继续与当地社区学院（圣罗莎社区学院）的现有合作伙伴关系，为本科生提供一种途径，否则他们将很少接触研究企业，通过延长实习时间，在科学过程中接受培训和指导。此外，研究人员将扩大高质量视频/照片资源的开发，以记录动物门的早期发育，幼虫形态和行为，并将通过与国际知名的蒙特利湾水族馆的现有合作向公众传播这些资源。