RUI: NSF-BSF: PurSUiT:The Indo-Pacific zooxanthellate octocorals: an integrated approach to species delimitation, phylogenetics and biogeography

珊瑚礁为全世界5亿多人提供食物、生计和海岸保护。然而，这些生态系统是最受威胁的，一些研究预测，珊瑚礁可能无法生存到下一个世纪。由于缺乏对构成珊瑚礁结构和功能的绝大多数无脊椎动物的基本知识，人们无法了解珊瑚礁群落的变化方式。此外，不断变化的海洋条件似乎正在改变石珊瑚和珊瑚虫之间的动态，从根本上改变珊瑚礁的结构和功能，加勒比珊瑚礁群落越来越多地由非造礁珊瑚虫主导就是证明。然而，相对于研究充分的石珊瑚，目前对大多数珊瑚的基本生态学知之甚少，包括有多少种和哪些物种共存，或者它们的种群如何随空间和时间变化，这些信息对于确定哪些物种可能受到气候变化的危害，哪些可能反而受益。缺乏基本资料的主要原因是难以区分和正确识别珊瑚物种，加上缺乏便于识别的方便获取的资源。该项目将通过以下方式解决这一根本问题：（1）将分子遗传分析与高分辨率显微镜相结合，以区分从整个印度-太平洋地区收集的珊瑚虫物种;（2）检查和重新描述主要博物馆收藏的历史标本，以便利正确命名这些物种;及（3）将资料汇编于一个可供公众查阅的门户网站，让世界各地的用户编制物种核对表及互动式检索表，以识别珊瑚礁栖珊瑚。该项目代表了美国和以色列研究人员之间的合作。项目参与者包括一名博士后、以色列研究生、本科生和来自大洛杉矶地区服务水平低下社区的高中生。（Alcyoniidae，Nephtheidae和Xeniidae）将有助于在未来的珊瑚礁生态和生物多样性研究中识别物种，从而加深对珊瑚礁群落在全球海洋变化导致严重退化的时代的动态的了解。DNA条形码，超保守元素和外显子的目标富集序列捕获，以及使用高分辨率扫描电子显微镜记录形态特征将被整合，以在博物馆现有的约5000个软珊瑚标本以及来自印度太平洋的新收藏品中划定物种。同时，所有可用的类型材料将记录与现代成像，重新描述，必要时，和测序，以促进正确的（或新的）binomens分配到物种。将在一个可供公众检索的数据库内汇编有地理参考、经专家验证的标本数据，该数据库有能力生成区域物种核对表和互动式分类检索表。在整个IP中识别物种边界将能够识别具有高物种丰富度、高地方性或可能值得特别保护的遗传学独特谱系的地理区域。重建IP软珊瑚物种的完全解析的遗传学，将允许测试关于其地理分布和多样化的速率和时间的假设，并与生态相似的石珊瑚进行比较，在总体上有助于我们对IP中宏观进化过程的理解，并为珊瑚礁生物群的保护和管理策略提供信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，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，认为值得支持。

Coral reefs provide food, livelihoods and coastal protection for more than 500 million people worldwide. Yet these ecosystems are among those most threatened, with some studies predicting that coral reefs may not survive into the next century. Efforts to understand the ways in which coral reef communities are changing are impeded by a lack of basic knowledge of the vast majority of the invertebrate animals that contribute to their structure and function. Additionally, changing ocean conditions appear to be shifting the dynamics between stony corals and octocorals in ways that will fundamentally alter the structure and function of reefs, as evidenced by Caribbean reef communities that are increasingly dominated by non-reef-building octocorals. Relative to the well-studied stony corals, however, little is currently known about the basic ecology of most octocorals, including how many and which species co-occur or how their populations vary over space and time, information that is necessary to determine which species may be imperiled by climate change and which may instead be benefitting. This lack of basic information is due in large part to the difficulty of distinguishing and correctly identifying octocoral species, coupled with a dearth of easily accessible resources to facilitate their identification. This project will address this fundamental problem by (1) combining molecular genetic analyses with high-resolution microscopy to discriminate species of octocorals collected from throughout the Indo-Pacific; (2) examining and re-describing historical specimens housed in major museum collections to facilitate the correct assignment of names to those species; and (3) compiling the information within a publicly accessible web portal that will allow users worldwide to generate species checklists and interactive keys for identifying reef-dwelling octocorals. The project represents a collaboration between researchers from the U.S. and Israel. Project participants include a post-doc, Israeli graduate students, undergraduates and high school students from underserved communities in the greater Los Angeles area.Delimitation and validation of shallow-water, zooxanthellate soft corals (families Alcyoniidae, Nephtheidae and Xeniidae) from across the Indo-Pacific (IP) will facilitate the identification of species in future studies of coral reef ecology and biodiversity, leading to increased understanding of the dynamics of coral reef communities in an era of severe deterioration due to global ocean change. DNA barcoding, target-enriched sequence capture of ultraconserved elements and exons, and documentation of morphological characters using high-resolution scanning electron microscopy will be integrated to delimit species among ~5000 specimens of soft corals currently available in museums as well as new collections from across the Indo-Pacific. Simultaneously, all available type material will be documented with modern imaging, re-described as necessary, and sequenced to facilitate assignment of correct (or new) binomens to species. Georeferenced, expert-validated specimen data will be compiled within a publicly available, searchable database with the capability to generate regional species checklists and interactive taxonomic keys. Recognition of species boundaries across the IP will enable the identification of geographic regions with high species richness, high endemicity or phylogenetically unique lineages that may merit special protection. Reconstruction of fully resolved phylogenies for the IP soft coral species will allow the testing of hypotheses about their biogeographic distribution and rates and timing of diversification in comparison to the ecologically similar scleractinian corals, contributing in general to our understanding of macroevolutionary processes in the IP as well as informing conservation and management strategies for reef biota.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.