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: 1357077
• 负责人: Matthew Ferner
• 金额: $ 2.4万
• 依托单位: San Francisco State University
• 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=1357077&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规模的海洋学过程，该过程有可能将幼虫交付的研究与了解幼虫如何对基质相关线索作出反应相结合。这项工作将建立在已发表的和初步的数据表明，湍流剪切特性的高能量附近的海岸环境总理幼虫开始解决，并转化为少年阶段。这些先前的发现表明：1）由于湍流强度作为波浪破碎强度和其他因素的函数可预测地变化，湍流可以作为幼虫接近合适栖息地的指示器，提供大规模扩散现象之间的联系，以及近底搜索和选择行为; 2)幼虫对湍流的反应是前所未有的。与典型的线索相反，湍流不会直接诱导定居，而是刺激否则“前主管”幼虫，是难治性的化学线索成为“主管”，从而使他们获得响应这些线索，并进行结算。该跨学科团队结合了幼虫生物学，感官生态学和有机体流相互作用方面的专业知识，以解决这一问题。他们将采用一种生物遗传学上稳健的方法来探索一种广泛的、具有生态重要性的生物（海胆、海胆及其亲属）中湍流响应的范围和适应意义，并将确定这种响应是否与这些生物成年栖息地的环境条件特征相一致。他们还将测试早熟的、由遗传诱导的定居点的生态重要功能后果。这项工作将详细介绍一种全新的定居诱导剂，这种诱导剂具有很大的潜力，可以改变目前对分散幼虫阶段的概念化，它们在多个尺度上检测栖息地特征的能力，以及生物体水平特征可能影响种群连通性的方式。具有分散生命阶段的生物如何找到返回成年栖息地的途径是海洋生态学中的一个基本问题。大量研究探索了运输、交付、定居和招聘之间的联系，并在知识方面取得了重要进展。然而，幼虫招募过程的完整理解仍然难以捉摸。用于估计扩散的标准工具（例如，数值环流模型）的空间分辨率有限，这使它们无法预测几百米以下的尺度下幼虫将如何与海岸相互作用。调查幼虫附着的研究集中在化学，触觉，或近底部的水动力学线索活跃在微米到厘米。本项目的新奇在于，它将侧重于生境规模的进程-运输和定居之间的进程，因为在这方面对进程的理解存在差距。更广泛的影响：该项目将提供一个框架，以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基本上互不相关的主题。从这项研究中获得的认识将为基于生态系统的沿海海洋资源管理提供关键信息。研究结果将通过出版物和会议报告进行交流。 还将开展强有力的教育和公共宣传工作。 研究人员将根据他们的研究开发一个“冲浪到定居点”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开发的教育资源，每月有数千名独立用户。通过与旧金山弗朗西斯科湾国家河口研究保护区的联系，他们将把“冲浪到定居点”活动纳入加州中部教育工作者的NERRs专业发展讲习班之一，从而将这一资源传播给数十名教师和数千名学生，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）的现有伙伴关系，为那些否则很少接触研究企业的本科生提供一种手段，通过长期实习接受科学过程中的培训和指导。此外，研究人员将扩大高质量视频/照片资源的开发，记录早期发育，幼虫形态和行为在一系列广泛的动物门，并将通过与国际知名的蒙特雷湾水族馆现有的合作向公众传播这一资源。