Collaborative Research: The role of a keystone pathogen in the geographic and local-scale ecology of eelgrass decline in the eastern Pacific

病原体可能是许多生态系统中未被识别的关键物种，尽管致病生物的大小很小，但它们对其他物种和栖息地造成巨大影响。然而，疾病流行的诱因可能涉及不断变化的环境条件和相关生物群落之间复杂的相互作用。在海洋中，由于对这些不同影响如何相互作用以决定对疾病的易感性和复原力的认识不足，对疾病爆发的了解一直受到阻碍。该项目将群落和疾病生态学的研究与微生物基因组学、地理空间分析和最先进的计算方法相结合，以前所未有的方式了解大叶藻（一种支持整个北半球沿海和河口生态系统的重要植被类型）萎缩性疾病的原因和后果。这项研究在了解日益增长但却鲜为人知的海洋疾病威胁、疾病生态学如何与环境变化相互作用以及其对横跨北美太平洋沿岸23度的广泛生态系统和依赖大鳗草的沿海社区的影响方面推进了前沿。这项研究将为更好地管理受威胁的海草生态系统提供信息，这些生态系统提供重要的服务，包括渔业栖息地、侵蚀控制、碳储存和养分径流的捕获。这项研究将促进下一代的综合方法，包括参与该项目的高中生、本科生、研究生和博士后，每个研究机构将努力从代表性不足的群体中招募参与者。根据该奖项制定的最佳实践，包括伊利沙疾病应用程序和无人机测绘，将由专业和公民科学家与全球海洋观测系统（GOOS）协调开发海草范围作为基本海洋变量，以更广泛地监测海草疾病和沿海栖息地质量。海洋疾病流行的触发因素可能很复杂，由于对宿主-疾病相互作用的多方面生态背景了解不足，阻碍了了解它们的进展。这个项目的首要目标是解开气候变化导致大叶藻耗损病流行的直接和间接相互作用的网络，以及它对受到威胁但重要的大叶藻生态系统的影响。该研究的核心是对大叶藻群落组成、微生物组和疾病流行率进行比较、跨尺度的调查，沿着纬度和海洋的热梯度，提供了响应环境变化的第一张沿海疾病动态图。现场采样将与景观尺度上大叶藻的动态联系起来，使用无人机系统（无人机）量化大叶藻范围和栖息地质量的高分辨率变化。实验将测试不同的生物群落如何调节病原体对大叶藻生态系统的影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

Pathogens may be unrecognized key species in many ecosystems, causing massive impacts on other species and habitats despite the microscopic size of disease-causing organisms. Yet the triggers to disease epidemics likely involve complex interactions among changing environmental conditions and associated biological communities. In the ocean, understanding disease outbreaks has been hindered by inadequate knowledge of how these various influences interact to determine susceptibility and resilience to disease. This project integrates research in community and disease ecology with microbial genomics, geospatial analysis, and state-of-the-art computational approaches toward an unprecedented understanding of the causes and consequences of wasting disease in eelgrass, an important vegetation type supporting coastal and estuarine ecosystems throughout the northern hemisphere. The research advances frontiers in understanding the growing but poorly appreciated threat of marine diseases, how disease ecology interacts with environmental change, and its consequences for the extensive ecosystems and coastal communities that depend on eelgrass, across 23 degrees of latitude along the Pacific coast of North America. The research will inform better management of threatened seagrass ecosystems, which provide important services including fisheries habitat, erosion control, carbon storage, and capture of nutrient runoff. The research will foster integrative approaches in the next generation, including high school students, undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs working on the project, and each investigator's institution will work to recruit participants from under-represented groups. Best practices developed under this award, including the Eelisa disease app and drone mapping, will be disseminated for broader surveillance of seagrass disease and coastal habitat quality by both professional and citizen scientists in coordination with the Global Ocean Observing System's (GOOS) develpoment of seagrass extent as an Essential Ocean Variable.The triggers to marine disease epidemics are likely complex, and progress in understanding them has been hindered by a poor understanding of the multifaceted ecological context of the host-disease interaction. This project's overarching goal is to disentangle the web of direct and indirect interactions by which changing climate mediates prevalence of eelgrass wasting disease, and its consequences for threatened but important eelgrass ecosystems. The centerpiece is a comparative, cross-scale survey of eelgrass community composition, microbiome, and disease prevalence along thermal gradients of latitude and exposure to the ocean, providing the first coast-wide picture of disease dynamics in response to environmental change. In situ sampling will be linked to dynamics of eelgrass at landscape scales using unmanned aerial systems (drones) to quantify high-resolution changes in eelgrass extent and habitat quality. Experiments will test how the diverse biological community mediates impacts of the pathogen on eelgrass ecosystems.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.