Collaborative Research: Using an Energetics Framework to Forecast the Interactive Effects of Abiotic and Biotic Stressors on Intertidal Mussels

环境变化对动植物的影响是有目共睹的，许多研究表明，环境变化不仅改变了物种的生理健康，还可以改变物种之间相互作用的方式。它还表明，环境变化最初可检测到的一些影响可能在于有机体生长和繁殖能力的变化，而不仅仅是致命性。该项目将开发一个框架，用于研究极端环境变化对缅因湾生态和经济上重要的双壳类物种--贻贝的影响，该物种正在以异常快的速度变暖。重要的是，我们的建模框架第一次能够解释温度变化与捕食者存在时发生的额外压力的相互作用。因此，这些模型不仅将促进我们对多种应激源如何影响自然界中的动物的基本理解，而且还将提供一种机制，用于预测现实野外条件下环境变化的影响，而这些条件通常被基于实验室的实验所忽视。该项目还将创建新的方法，利用尖端虚拟现实技术结合实地实践经验学习，向高中生传授极端变化对当地环境的影响。该项目旨在开发一种预测能量学(动态能量预算)方法，以定量探讨非生物(温度)和生物(捕食风险)应激源对潮间带贻贝的潜在交互影响。该项目解决的中心问题是，如果只将重点放在非生物或生物应激源的单独影响而不是组合影响上，那么对环境变化影响的预测可能会有多不可靠？迫切需要一个考虑环境变化对多种相互作用物种的影响的框架。这个项目建立在一个能量模型的基础上，该模型已经被参数化，以量化温度和食物供应对贻贝的影响，该项目扩展了研究捕食风险--被吃掉的恐惧--如何在有捕食者存在的更现实的野外条件下改变温度敏感性的方法。该团队之前的工作表明，捕食风险的影响与预测的气候情景所造成的影响相当，甚至超过这些影响，但很少有人尝试将这些风险影响置于生物能量学框架内，特别是在海洋系统中。这项建议利用两个研究小组高度互补的方法来开发一个预测框架，以检验在现实的田间和营养相互作用条件下，非生物和生物应激源对重要生态系统工程师的生长、最大尺寸和繁殖的累积影响。

The impacts of environmental change on animals and plants is well established, and numerous studies have shown that not only does environmental change alter the physiological health of species, it also can alter the ways in which species interact with one another. It also suggests that some of the first detectable impacts of environmental change may lie in alterations in the ability of organisms to grow and reproduce, rather than just lethality. This project will develop a framework for looking at the impacts of extreme environmental change on an ecologically and economically important bivalve species, the mussel Mytilus edulis, in the Gulf of Maine, which is warming at an unusually fast rate. Importantly, our modeling framework is, for the first time, able to account for the interactions of temperature change with the additional stresses that occur in the presence of predators. These models will therefore not only advance our basic understanding of how multiple stressors affect animals in nature, but also will provide a mechanism for predicting the impacts of environmental change under realistic field conditions that are often ignored by laboratory-only based experiments. The project also will create novel methods for teaching high school students about the impacts of extreme change on their local environments using cutting-edge virtual-reality technology coupled with hands-on experiential learning in the field.This project seeks to develop a predictive energetics (Dynamic Energy Budget) approach to quantitatively explore the potentially interactive effects of abiotic (temperature) and biotic (risk of predation) stressors on intertidal mussels. The central question that addressed by this project is, how unreliable may predictions of the impacts of environmental change be if a focus is placed only on the isolated rather than combined influence of abiotic or biotic stressors? A framework that considers the effects of environmental change on multiple, interacting species is sorely needed. Building upon an energetics model already parameterized to quantify the effects of temperature and food availability on the mussel Mytilus edulis, this project expands the approach to examine how predation risk - the "fear of being eaten" - may alter thermal sensitivity under more realistic field conditions where predators are present. Previous work by this team has shown that the effects of predation risk are comparable to, or exceed those, caused by predicted climate scenarios, but very few attempts have been made to place these risk effects within a bioenergetics framework, especially in marine systems. This proposal capitalizes on the highly complementary approaches of two research groups to develop a predictive framework examining the cumulative effects of abiotic and biotic stressors on growth, maximum size and reproduction of an important ecosystem engineer under realistic field and trophic interaction conditions.