Collaborative research: Coral community resilience: testing the role of hidden diversity in pocilloporid corals at Moorea

虽然世界上大多数珊瑚礁都受到多种干扰的威胁，这些干扰使珊瑚覆盖率下降，但法属波利尼西亚莫奥雷亚的珊瑚礁是一个引人注目的例外。然而，目前尚不清楚是什么使莫雷阿岛的珊瑚群落成为全球珊瑚覆盖率下降趋势的一个例外，也不清楚是什么推动了该岛周围恢复模式的空间变化。外礁最近的恢复浪潮主要是Pocillopora属珊瑚（花椰菜珊瑚）。虽然这种珊瑚的殖民地看起来彼此相似，但它们实际上代表了多个“隐藏”的物种，这些物种在遗传上是不同的，但在视觉上是无法区分的。形态上的相似性使得很难在野外识别物种，这往往迫使研究人员将这些珊瑚集中到一个单一的群体中，这阻碍了对珊瑚恢复的全面了解。这些隐藏物种之间的生态差异仍然知之甚少，但它们可能是保持生态系统处于珊瑚主导状态的关键因素。该项目正在研究“隐藏的多样性”如何提供一种“生态保险”，为这个岛屿周围的造礁珊瑚群落提供生态和进化选择，使珊瑚礁免受不可预测和不利的环境条件的影响。如果多个神秘物种对干扰和压力表现出多样性的反应，那么与所有物种都以同样的方式反应相比，它增加了群落在撞击后恢复和重组的能力。通过研究莫雷阿的珊瑚礁，该项目提供了独特的，重要的和可转移的知识，以更好地了解灾难性破坏后驱动珊瑚群落恢复的基本机制，并将提供急需的信息，以更好地管理珊瑚礁，并有利于它们保持在珊瑚主导的状态。在该项目期间，佛罗里达州立大学的一名博士生和一名博士后研究员得到了支持和指导，并为将从事该项目的一名技术人员提供了一个专业成长计划。研究人员正在与来自佛罗里达学校的科学教育工作者合作，引入海洋生物学俱乐部，为FSU和加州州立大学北岭分校的参与者提供外展机会，让高中学生和教师参与该项目核心的研究主题。该项目将测试一个假设，即在Pocilloppora属中存在形态相似但遗传上不同的珊瑚谱系，法属波利尼西亚Mo'orea外礁以Pocilloppora为主的珊瑚群落的恢复。通过创建一个多样化的投资组合的Pocilloppora社区的能力，恢复和重组后的干扰，隐藏的生态差异珊瑚谱系在他们的干扰反应，预计将促进社区的复原力。一个经过充分研究的遗传标记将用于区分不同谱系的珊瑚群。基于实地的项目，与莫雷阿珊瑚礁长期生态研究（MCR-LTER）网站位于同一地点，将确定如何pocilloporid谱系在其分布和丰度，空间和时间模式的年度招聘，共生体组成，以及定居后的增长和生存的差异。这些数据将被用来建立积分投影模型（IPM），比较人口之间的差异血统的敏感性大小依赖的扰动，以及他们的能力，人口增长后的干扰。从实地项目和IPM的结果将被合成，估计响应多样性的谱系相异性的多元分散，并评估它预测的程度在网站之间的变化pocilloporid覆盖率的恢复率，估计经验MCR-LTER时间序列。这个项目的智力价值在于发展新的和可转移的理解：i）一个生态上重要的珊瑚属内的生态差异，ii）为什么Mo'orea的pociloporids是全球珊瑚覆盖率下降趋势的例外，以及iii）潜在的潜在反应多样性作为一个基本机制，决定珊瑚群落在干扰后重建和重组的能力。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

While most coral reefs in the world are threatened by multiple disturbances that are driving coral cover downward, the coral reefs at Mo'orea, French Polynesia, provide a striking exception. However, it is not yet clear what makes the coral communities of Mo'orea an exception to the trend of global decline in coral cover, and what drives spatial variation in recovery patterns around the island. The most recent wave of recovery on the outer reefs is dominated by corals in the genus Pocillopora (the cauliflower coral). While the colonies of this coral all look similar to one another, they actually represent multiple 'hidden' species that are genetically divergent but visibly indistinguishable. The morphological similarity makes it hard to identify species in the field, and this often forces researchers to pool these corals into a single group, which has impeded a full understanding of coral recovery. The ecological differences among these hidden species remain poorly understood, but they may be a crucial factor keeping the ecosystem in a coral-dominated state. This project is studying how 'hidden diversity' provides a form of 'ecological insurance' that provides reef-building coral communities around this island with ecological and evolutionary options that buffer reefs from unpredictable and unfavorable environmental conditions. If multiple cryptic species exhibit a diversity of responses to disturbance and stress, then it increases the ability of the community to recover and re-organize after impacts compared to that if all the species responded the same way. By studying the reefs at Mo'orea, this project provides unique, important, and transferable knowledge to better understand fundamental mechanism driving coral community recovery following catastrophic damage, and will provide much-needed information to better manage coral reefs and favor them remaining in a coral-dominated state. A PhD student and a postdoctoral researcher at Florida State University (FSU) are being supported and mentored during the project, and a program of professional growth is being provided for a technician who will work on the project. The investigators are working with science educators from Florida schools to introduce marine biology clubs that will provide outreach opportunities for FSU and California State University Northridge participants to engage high school students and teachers in the research themes at the core of this project.This project will test the hypothesis that the presence of morphologically similar yet genetically divergent lineages of corals in the genus Pocillopora drives rapid recovery of coral communities dominated by Pocillopora on the outer reefs of Mo'orea, French Polynesia. By creating a diverse portfolio in the capacity of the Pocillopora community to recover and reorganize after disturbance, hidden ecological differences among coral lineages in their response to disturbance is expected to promote community resilience. A well-studied genetic marker will be used to distinguish coral colonies among different lineages. Field-based projects, co-located with Moorea Coral Reef-Long-Term Ecological Research (MCR-LTER) sites, will determine how pocilloporid lineages differ in their distribution and abundance, spatial and temporal patterns of annual recruitment, symbiont composition, and post-settlement growth and survival. These data will be used to build Integral Projection Models (IPMs) to compare population differences among lineages in their sensitivity to size-dependent perturbations, and their capacity for population growth following disturbance. Results from the field projects and IPMs will be synthesized to estimate response diversity as the multivariate dispersion of lineage dissimilarity, and to assess the extent to which it predicts variation among sites in the recovery rate of pocilloporid percent cover, estimated empirically from the MCR-LTER time series. The intellectual merits of this project lie in developing new and transferable understanding of: i) the ecological differences within an ecologically important coral genus, ii) why pocilloporids at Mo'orea are an exception to the global trend of declining coral cover, and iii) the potential for hidden response diversity to act as a fundamental mechanism determining the capacity for coral communities to reestablish and reorganize following disturbances.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.