Metacommunity Dynamics at Hydrothermal Vents

在这个项目中，研究人员将开发新的数学模型，研究生活在深海热液喷口的生物的种群动力学。深海热液喷口是海底火山活动导致热的、富含化学物质的流体流出的区域。1977年，这些喷口的发现揭示了出人意料的新奇和多样化的生物，挑战了深海作为人烟稀少的沙漠的主流观点。最近国际上开采富含铜、金、银和锌的热液喷口矿床的努力引起了激烈的辩论，因为深海矿物开采可能会摧毁各种喷口群落，并改变周围的海底栖息地。调查人员将扩展他们的模型，以分析采矿活动的潜在影响。将综合新模型的结果，以满足潜在利益攸关方的需要，包括为海底采矿和海洋保护区提供咨询、管理和开展活动的组织。研究成果将作为报告分发，并在国际海底管理局和深海管理倡议组织的利益攸关方会议上传播。研究团队将与平面艺术家、视频制作人和教育工作者合作，为NOAA球体上的科学(SOS)系统开发新的教育演示文稿。这些新内容将通过开放访问整个SOS用户网络进行分发，并纳入美国和其他20个国家和地区100多个科学中心的SOS计划。本科生将通过伍兹霍尔海洋研究所的暑期学生奖学金计划和伍兹霍尔伙伴教育计划参与该项目。这两个项目为学生提供了真实的研究体验；PEP项目吸引了未被充分代表的少数族裔学生，并为他们提供了海洋科学的短期课程和研究实习以及6周的研究项目。元群落理论在建模喷口生态系统方面比其他方法具有重要的优势，所提出的工作将促进我们对这些社区的理解，以及更广泛地发展元社区模型的策略。这项拟议的工作大大扩展了研究人员以创新方式开发的用于喷口系统的早期元社区模型。这些分析将消除许多初始限制，并增加重要的考虑因素，包括依赖于站点的转移概率和具有共同特征的附近站点的集群。用两个可供选择的扩散核来模拟扩散特性的选择也将促进人们的理解。研究人员将使用斑块占用模型来检验先前工作中没有考虑的公认的演替模式，并将进行敏感性分析，以评估不确定性较高的参数的作用，如幼虫持续时间和扩散距离、斑块干扰率和恢复时间。工作计划的这一要素将用于确定未来实地研究的优先顺序，强调模型在指导研究方案方面可以发挥的作用。

In this project, the researchers will develop new mathematical models to study the population dynamics of organisms that live at deep-sea hydrothermal vents, areas of the seafloor where volcanic activity causes hot, chemical-rich fluids to exit. The discovery of these vents in 1977 revealed unexpectedly novel and diverse organisms, challenging the prevailing view of the deep sea as a sparsely populated desert. Recent international efforts to mine hydrothermal vent deposits rich in copper, gold, silver and zinc are intensely debated, as deep-sea mineral mining can destroy diverse vent communities and alter the surrounding seafloor habitat. The investigators will extend their models to analyze the potential effects of mining activities. Results from new models will be synthesized to meet the needs of potential stakeholders, including organizations that advise, manage, and conduct activities related to seafloor mining and Marine Protected Areas. Research products will be disseminated as reports and in stakeholder meetings such as those organized by the International Seabed Authority and the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative. The research team will work with graphic artists, video producers, and educators to develop new educational presentations for the NOAA Science on a Sphere® (SOS) system. This new content will be distributed via open access to the entire SOS Users Network and incorporated into SOS programs at over 100 science centers across the U.S. and in 20 other countries. Undergraduate students will participate in the project through the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Summer Student Fellowship Program and the Woods Hole Partnership Education Program. These two programs provide students with authentic research experiences; the PEP program attracts underrepresented minority students, and offers them a short course in marine science and a research internship along with a 6-wk research project.Metacommunity theory offers important advantages over alternative approaches in modeling vent ecosystems, and the proposed work will advance both our understanding of these communities and strategies for developing models of metacommunities more generally. The proposed work substantially expands earlier metacommunity models for vent systems developed by the researchers in innovative ways. The analyses will remove many initial constraints and add important considerations including site-dependent transition probabilities and clustering of nearby sites with shared characteristics. The options for modeling dispersal properties with two alternative dispersal kernels will also advance understanding. The researchers will examine recognized successional patterns not considered in the previous work using patch occupancy models, and they will carry out sensitivity analyses to evaluate the role of parameters for which uncertainty is high, such as larval duration and dispersal distance, patch disturbance rates and recovery times. This element of the work plan will serve to prioritize future field research, emphasizing the role that models can play in guiding research programs.