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，提供了许多服务，包括减少风暴保护、营养循环和水净化。由于人类活动，许多这些栖息地经历了广泛的丧失和破碎。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，关于这些栖息地还有很多未知之处，这使得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的丧失和破碎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，例如防御珊瑚捕食者和消除沉积，因此本研究还试图更好地了解与珊瑚相关的生物多样性和鱼类和无脊椎动物的丰富程度的变化如何影响珊瑚抵御未来影响的能力，例如沉积和吃珊瑚的海星的爆发。了解栖息地的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，对于制定有效的策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栖息地形成的基础物种，它们拥有多样性的居住者，其动态被认为是驱动整个生态系统的恢复力。因此，人们普遍关注生物栖息地的持续丧失和破碎化，如海草床、牡蛎礁、海带林和珊瑚礁。然而，如果对海洋景观生态学没有更全面的了解，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、功能和恢复力。海洋景观生态学的研究主要集中在海洋生物丰度和生物多样性的空间格局上；然而，这些模式的原因和后果很少被探索。居住者密度变化的一个重要但尚未得到充分研究的后果是，它可能改变居住者与其生物栖息地的相互作用方式。由于居住者对生物栖息地有利或有害，因此居住者密度的变化会影响栖息地的生长和生存。因此，生境驱动的人口密度变化应反馈到生境动态和生境空间格局。总之，我们对景观生态格局存在的原因、这些格局如何改变人口动态和居住者及其栖息地的空间格局以及栖息地退化或恢复的影响的理解是有限的。本提案的中心目标是研究居住者丰度与生物栖息地数量之间非线性关系的原因和后果。具体而言，我们将：(i)研究产生居住者密度空间变化的基于生境的机制；（ii）量化由生境驱动的居民密度如何反馈改变生境的生长和生存；（iii）运用这些知识来理解生境与居住者的双向互动如何影响长期动态，创造新的空间模式，并驱动系统如何响应干扰并从干扰中恢复的变化。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。

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.