RAPID: Collaborative Proposal: Dynamics of storm-mediated asexual reproduction in Florida Keys corals post-Hurricane Irma

造礁珊瑚可以通过碎裂过程进行克隆繁殖。克隆繁殖可以维持种群的丰富性，尽管有性繁殖很差，这是佛罗里达群岛主要造礁珊瑚物种的长期问题。因此，了解无性(克隆)繁殖的生态动态对于预测珊瑚礁的未来和规划保护工作至关重要。该项目将利用飓风伊尔玛对佛罗里达群岛珊瑚礁造成的广泛物理破坏来表征风暴驱动的碎片的程度，量化碎片的存活率，并将结果与丰富珊瑚物种的现有克隆结构进行比较。通过将详细的现场调查与新的基因组工具相结合，该项目将第一次评估在过去25年中影响佛罗里达群岛的最重大干扰事件之后，社区层面上控制珊瑚克隆繁殖的生态动态。调查人员是加勒比珊瑚恢复联合会下属的恢复遗传学工作组的成员，并将利用这一渠道向相关利益攸关方介绍结果。本科生和研究生研究人员将参与这个项目的各个方面。成果还将通过开放获取系列讲座和基于社交媒体的外联活动与更广泛的公众分享，以增加对珊瑚生态和影响珊瑚礁衰退的因素的知识。为了促进快速数据共享，该项目产生的手稿将被张贴到预印服务器上，数据和计算方法将在开放获取的储存库中免费提供。对于佛罗里达群岛的几种关键的造礁珊瑚，如Acropora和Orbecella spp.，无性繁殖仍然是补充当地种群的唯一选择。该项目将利用飓风伊尔玛造成的物质破坏来测试有关影响碎片介导的无性珊瑚繁殖率的因素的具体假设。该项目将珊瑚碎片和碎片存活率的调查与碎片和整个当地珊瑚群落的全面基因分型相结合，以确定自然克隆并将碎片归因于来源殖民地。该项目将测试飓风驱动的碎片化和存活模式是否与珊瑚物种现有的克隆结构相关，以评估风暴对佛罗里达州珊瑚无性繁殖的长期影响。该项目还将确定无性繁殖是否更多地取决于初始碎片率或碎片存活率。最后，本项目将研究片段存活率与源克隆群大小之间的关系。积极的关系可能表明自然选择增加了无性繁殖，这意味着佛罗里达群岛的珊瑚礁正在朝着更高的无性进化。

Reef-building corals can reproduce clonally through the process of fragmentation. Clonal reproduction can maintain population abundance in spite of poor sexual reproduction, a chronic problem for major reef-building coral species in the Florida Keys. Understanding the ecological dynamics of asexual (clonal) reproduction is therefore essential for predicting the reefs' future and planning of conservation efforts. This project will take advantage of the extensive physical damage to reefs in the Florida Keys caused by Hurricane Irma to characterize the extent of storm-driven fragmentation, quantify the rate of fragment survival, and compare the results to the existing clonal structure of abundant coral species. By combining detailed site surveys with novel genomic tools, this project will be the first to assess the ecological dynamics governing clonal reproduction of corals on a community-level following the most significant disturbance event to impact the Florida Keys in the last 25 years. The investigators are members of the Restoration Genetics Working Group, a part of the Caribbean Coral Restoration Consortium and will utilize this channel to present results to relevant stake-holders. Undergraduate and graduate student researchers will participate in all aspects of this project. Results will also be shared with the broader public through open-access lecture series and social-media based outreach initiatives to increase knowledge of coral ecology, and factors affecting reef decline. To promote rapid data sharing, manuscripts resulting from this project will be posted to preprint servers and both data and computational methods will be made freely available on open access repositories.For several key reef-building corals in the Florida Keys, such as Acropora and Orbicella spp., asexual reproduction remains the only option to replenish local populations. This project will capitalize on the physical damage caused by Hurricane Irma to test specific hypotheses about factors affecting the rate of fragmentation-mediated asexual coral reproduction. This project combines surveys of coral fragmentation and fragment survival with comprehensive genotyping of fragments and the whole local coral community to identify natural clones and attribute fragments to source colonies. This project will test whether hurricane-driven fragmentation and survival patterns correlate with the existing clonal structure across coral species, to evaluate the long-term impact of storms in contributing to asexual propagation of Florida corals. This project will also determine whether asexual reproduction depends more on the rate of initial fragmentation or the rate of fragment survival. Finally, this project will investigate the relationship between fragment survival rate and the size of the source clonal group. A positive relationship could indicate natural selection for increased asexual reproduction, implying that Florida Keys reefs are evolving towards higher asexuality.