Collaborative Research: Dynamic Marine Landscapes: Feedbacks and spatial patterns of corals and their associated fishes

近岸栖息地，如珊瑚礁、海草床和牡蛎礁，提供许多服务，包括减少风暴保护、营养循环和水净化。由于人类活动，其中许多栖息地都经历了广泛的损失和碎片化。这种损失威胁到这些生态系统为人类提供的服务，以及生活在其中的鱼类和无脊椎动物的非凡生物多样性。然而，关于这些栖息地仍有许多未知之处，这使得人们很难理解栖息地丧失的可能影响或栖息地恢复的好处。本研究的重点是珊瑚礁生态系统的栖息地丧失和破碎化。这项研究的重点是了解栖息地丧失和碎片化如何影响南太平洋珊瑚礁上鱼类和甲壳类动物的生物多样性。由于生活在珊瑚中的许多生物为珊瑚提供了重要的好处，如防御珊瑚捕食者和清除沉积物，这项研究还试图更好地了解与珊瑚相关的鱼类和无脊椎动物的生物多样性和丰度的变化如何影响珊瑚抵御未来影响的能力，如沉积和食珊瑚海星的爆发。了解栖息地丧失是否会改变珊瑚在日益紧张的世界中承受压力的能力，对于制定有效的战略来管理和保护珊瑚礁及其为社会提供的许多服务至关重要。许多海洋系统的特点是形成栖息地的基础物种，这些物种拥有多样性的居住者，其动态被认为推动整个生态系统的弹性。因此，人们普遍关注海草床、牡蛎礁、海藻森林和珊瑚礁等生物栖息地的持续丧失和碎片化。然而，如果没有对海洋景观生态学的更全面的了解，我们很难预测栖息地的退化或恢复将如何改变生态系统的动态、功能和弹性。大多数海洋景观生态学的研究都集中在生物多样性和生物多样性的空间格局上，但很少探讨这些格局的原因和后果。居住者密度变化的一个重要但尚未被研究的后果是，它可能改变居住者与其生物栖息地的相互作用。由于居住者可能有益于生物栖息地，也可能损害生物源栖息地，因此居住者密度的变化会影响栖息地的生长和生存。因此，栖息地驱动的栖息地密度的变化应该反馈到改变栖息地的动态和栖息地的空间格局。总而言之，我们对景观生态学中为什么存在格局，这些格局如何改变居住者的种群动态和空间格局以及他们的栖息地，以及栖息地退化或恢复的影响的理解是有限的。这项建议的中心目标是审查居住者丰度和生物栖息地数量之间的非线性关系的原因和后果。具体地说，我们将：(I)研究导致栖息地密度空间变化的基于栖息地的机制；(Ii)量化栖息地驱动的居住者密度如何反馈改变栖息地的生长和生存；以及(Iii)应用这些知识来了解栖息地和居住者的双向互动如何影响长期动态，创造新的空间模式，并推动系统对干扰的反应和恢复的变化。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Nearshore habitats such as coral reefs, seagrass beds, and oyster reefs perform a number of services including reducing storm protection, nutrient cycling, and water purification. Many of these habitats have experienced widespread loss and fragmentation due to human activities. This loss threatens the services these ecosystems provide to humans as well as the extraordinary biodiversity of fishes and invertebrates that live within them. However, there is still a lot that is unknown about these habitats which makes it difficult to understand the likely impacts of habitat loss or the benefits of habitat restoration. This research focuses on habitat loss and fragmentation in coral reef ecosystems. The focus of the research is to understand how habitat loss and fragmentation affects the biodiversity of fish and crustaceans on coral reefs in the South Pacific. Because many creatures living within the coral offer important benefits to the coral such as defense from coral predators and removal of sedimentation, this research also seeks to better understand how changes in the biodiversity and abundance of fish and invertebrates associated with corals, affect the capacity of corals to withstand future impacts, such as sedimentation and outbreaks of coral-eating seastars. Understanding whether habitat loss alters the capacity of corals to withstand stress in an increasingly stressful world is critical to devise effective strategies to manage and protect coral reefs and the many services they provide to society. Many marine systems are characterized by habitat-forming foundation species, which harbor a diversity of occupants, and whose dynamics are thought to drive resilience of entire ecosystems As a result, there is widespread concern over the ongoing loss and fragmentation of biogenic habitats such as seagrass beds, oyster reefs, kelp forests, and coral reefs. Yet, without a more complete understanding of marine landscape ecology, we struggle to predict how the degradation or restoration of habitat will alter ecosystem dynamics, function, and resilience. Most research in marine landscape ecology has focused on spatial patterns of occupant abundance and biodiversity; however, the causes and consequences of these patterns are rarely explored. An important but understudied consequence of variation in occupant density is that it may alter how occupants interact with their biogenic habitat. Because occupants can benefit biogenic habitat or harm biogenic habitat, changes in occupant density can affect habitat growth and survival. Consequently, habitat-driven variation in occupant density should feed back to alter habitat dynamics and the spatial patterning of the habitat. In summary, we are limited in our understanding of why patterns in landscape ecology exist, how these patterns alter the population dynamics and spatial patterns of the occupants as well as their habitat, and what the implications of habitat degradation or restoration will be. The central objective of this proposal is to examine the causes and consequences of the nonlinear relationship between occupant abundance and the amount of biogenic habitat. Specifically, we will: (i) examine the habitat-based mechanisms that produce spatial variation in occupant density; (ii) quantify how habitat-driven occupant density feeds back to alter habitat growth and survival; and (iii) apply this knowledge to understand how bidirectional habitat-occupant interactions affect the long-term dynamics, create novel spatial patterns, and drive variation in how systems respond to and recover from 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.