RAPID: Coral robustness: lessons from an "improbable" reef

珊瑚礁为沿海社区提供了宝贵的服务，但世界各地的珊瑚数量正处于前所未有的下降状态。研究有弹性的珊瑚礁对于珊瑚保护和恢复工作至关重要。自1582年西班牙征服者将马加德雷纳河改道进入卡塔赫纳湾以来，哥伦比亚卡塔赫纳湾一直在进行一项独特的珊瑚抗压能力自然实验。海湾南部入海口的瓦拉德罗礁在数百年的环境侮辱和不断变化的条件下幸存下来，珊瑚覆盖率高达80%。这一生物礁为检验生物稳健性理论提供了一个理想的系统。鉴于瓦拉德罗是一个高度扰动的系统，我们假设，尽管它可能比附近的原始珊瑚礁对扰动更强大，但它的生理效率将会较低。这个地点的一些大型星状珊瑚群(Orbecella Faveolata)在迪克运河修建之前就已经存在了。这些珊瑚标本包含了关于马格达莱纳河流域状况及其在十四世纪建造情况的宝贵信息。与哥伦比亚城市工业和农业发展相关的羽流浊度的变化可以记录为钙化率的变化和骨架微观结构的变化。哥伦比亚政府已宣布批准修建一条直通该珊瑚礁的航道，目标是最早于2016年秋季或2017年初开始疏浚。快速融资机制将使人们能够立即收集数据和信息，了解为什么这块珊瑚礁在数百年的环境压力下存活了下来，从而揭示出珊瑚及其微生物成分的哪些基因组合在世界其他珊瑚礁地区的类似条件下会表现得更好。珊瑚礁保护生物学将从这项研究中受益，因为它将产生数据，用于开发压力诊断工具来识别有弹性的珊瑚。该项目将通过培训一批不同的学生在全球舞台上有效地工作，同时促进与几个哥伦比亚研究人员和教育机构的富有成效的合作，帮助扩大对科学的参与。学生还将通过与最直接受到珊瑚礁退化影响的社会成员(例如渔民)的直接接触，获得文化上的同理心和敏感性。来自宾夕法尼亚州立大学的学生研究人员将与他们的哥伦比亚同行合作，开发一系列双语博客文章，记录该项目研究探险的文化和科学方面。这些博客帖子将提交给史密森海洋门户网站，供广泛传播，宾夕法尼亚州立大学的学生过去曾在那里发表过文章。麦地那实验室开发的一套教育珊瑚套件已被翻译成西班牙语，并将在卡塔赫纳和附近地区的当地学校使用。所有探险数据和元数据将被纳入全球珊瑚微生物组项目的互动门户网站，这是一个响应性的外联工具，使研究人员、学生和/或教师能够获取有关我们采样的每个珊瑚群的丰富信息，并通过任何联网设备虚拟探索世界各地的珊瑚礁。这项研究将产生信息，以了解与不同扰动制度下共生稳定性相关的功能特征。对相互移植过程中产生的微生物群修改的比较分析将使我们能够证明全息生物对急性和慢性应激源的可能不同反应，相对于没有暴露在显著扰动水平下的珊瑚。开发珊瑚钙化的当地生物光学模型和确定珊瑚全息生物的特征，将有助于区分局部浑浊对钙化的影响和可归因于宿主基因和(或)微生物群落组成和功能的差异。珊瑚骨架中记录的信息可以用来重建哥伦比亚在过去5个世纪中农业、工业和城市发展的速度，作为马格达莱纳河污水浊度的变化。

Coral reefs provide invaluable services to coastal communities, but coral populations worldwide are in a state of unprecedented decline. Studying resilient reefs is of primary importance for coral conservation and restoration efforts. A unique natural experiment in coral resilience to stress has been playing out in Cartagena Bay, Colombia since the Spanish conquistadors diverted the Magadalena River into the Bay in 1582. Varadero Reef at the southern mouth of the Bay has survived centuries of environmental insults and changing conditions with up to 80% coral cover. This reef provides an ideal system to test biological robustness theory. Given that Varadero is a highly perturbed system, we hypothesize that while likely more robust to perturbation than nearby pristine reefs, it will be less physiologically efficient. Some of the large star coral colonies (Orbicella faveolata) at this site have existed since before the construction of the Canal del Dique. These coral specimens contain invaluable information regarding the conditions of the Magdalena River wathershed and its construction in the XIV century. Changes in turbidity of the plume associated with the urban industrial and agricultural development of Colombia can be documented as variations in calcification rates and changes in the microstructure of the skeleton. The Colombian government has announced the approval for the construction of a shipping channel that will go right over this reef, with the goal to start dredging as early as Fall 2016 or early 2017. The RAPID funding mechanism would enable immediate collection of data and information of why this reef has survived centuries of environmental stress that can shed light on what genotype combinations of coral and its microbial constituents will fare better in similar conditions at other reef locations around the world. Coral reef conservation biology will benefit from this study by generating data for the development of stress diagnostic tools to identify resilient corals. This project will help broaden participation in science by training a diverse cohort of students to work effectively in the global arena while fostering productive collaborations with several Colombian researchers and educational institutions. Students will also gain cultural empathy and sensitivity through direct engagement with the members of society who are most directly impacted by coral reef degradation (e.g. fishermen). Student researchers from Penn State University will work alongside their Colombian counterparts to develop a series of bilingual blog posts to record the cultural and scientific aspects of this project's research expeditions. The blog postings will be submitted for wide dissemination to the Smithsonian's Ocean Portal where Penn State students have published in the past. An educational coral kit developed by the Medina Lab and extensively tested in schools in the US has been translated into Spanish and will be used in local schools in Cartagena and vicinities. All expedition data and metadata will be incorporated into the Global Coral Microbiome Project's interactive web portal, a responsive outreach tool allows researchers, students and/or teachers to access a wealth of information about every coral colony we sample and to virtually explore coral reefs around the world from any internet-enabled device. This research will generate information to understand functional traits related to symbioses stability under different perturbation regimes. Comparative analyses of microbiome modifications generated during the reciprocal transplantation will allow us to document possible differential responses of the holobionts to acute and chronic stressors relative to corals not exposed to significant levels of perturbation. The development of local bio-optical models of coral calcification and the characterization of the coral holobiont will permit the distinction between the effects in calcification attributed to local turbidity from those that can be ;attributed to differences in host genotype and/or microbial community composition and function. The information recorded in coral skeletons can be used to reconstruct the rates of agricultural, industrial and urban development of Colombia through the last 5 centuries as changes in the turbidity of the effluent of the Magdalena River.