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

近岸栖息地，如珊瑚礁，海草床和牡蛎礁执行许多服务，包括减少风暴保护，营养循环和水净化。由于人类活动，这些生境中有许多已经普遍丧失和破碎。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，仍然有很多关于这些栖息地的未知之处，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。这项研究的重点是珊瑚礁生态系统中栖息地的丧失和破碎。研究的重点是了解栖息地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承受未来影响的能力，例如沉积和爆发吃珊瑚的海星。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。此外，这项研究促进了恢复工作，通过指导不同群体的本科生、研究生和博士后研究员加强了科学工作队伍，并使法属波利尼西亚和美国的公众参与科学研究和知识。许多海洋系统的特点是栖息地形成的基础物种，其中包含了多样性的居住者，其动态被认为是推动整个生态系统的恢复力，因此，人们普遍关注海草床，牡蛎礁，海带森林和珊瑚礁等生物栖息地的持续丧失和破碎。然而，如果没有对海洋景观生态学更全面的了解，我们很难预测栖息地的退化或恢复如何改变生态系统的动态，功能和恢复力。大多数海洋景观生态学的研究都集中在居民丰度和生物多样性的空间格局，然而，这些模式的原因和后果很少探索。一个重要的，但未充分研究的结果，在居住密度的变化是，它可能会改变居住者如何与他们的生物栖息地相互作用。由于居住者可以有益于生物栖息地或损害生物栖息地，居住者密度的变化会影响栖息地的生长和生存。因此，栖息地驱动的居住密度的变化应该反馈到改变栖息地动态和栖息地的空间格局。总之，我们是有限的，在我们的理解为什么景观生态模式存在，这些模式如何改变人口动态和空间格局的居住者以及他们的栖息地，以及栖息地退化或恢复的影响。这项建议的中心目标是研究的原因和后果之间的非线性关系的居民丰度和生源栖息地的数量。 具体而言，研究人员：（i）研究以生境为基础的机制，产生居住者密度的空间变化;（ii）量化生境驱动的居住者密度如何反馈，以改变生境的增长和生存;以及（iii）应用这些知识来理解双向栖息地-居住者相互作用如何影响长期动态，创造新的空间模式，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进行评估，被认为值得支持的搜索.

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 affect 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 sediment, 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. Furthermore, this research facilitates restoration efforts, enhance the scientific workforce through mentorship of a diverse group of undergraduates, graduate students and a postdoctoral fellow, and engage the public in both French Polynesia and the United States in scientific research and knowledge. 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 alters 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 the implications of habitat degradation or restoration. 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, the investigators: (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.