FSML: A culture facility for small marine organisms at Shannon Point Marine Center

香农角海洋中心(SPMC；https://www.wwu.edu/spmc/))历史上一直依靠养殖方法来研究小型海洋生物如何生长、摄食和应对海洋酸化等环境压力。单细胞藻类和非光合作用原生生物也被用作其他海洋生物的食物，这些海洋生物是SPMC研究的重点，包括较大的浮游动物、濒危的平托鲍鱼和受威胁的太平洋鲱鱼。该合同支持购买用于养殖小型海洋生物，特别是单细胞浮游(自由漂浮)藻类及其直接消费者的设备。新的培养设施将供不同水平的学生在课堂和独立研究环境中使用，并将让主校园的新教师参与海洋实验室的研究。该设施还将支持加强与地区资源管理的协作。新的仪器将能够分离和鉴定小型海洋生物(立体显微镜)，在培养中维护这些生物(环境室、层流罩、高压灭菌器)，并表征它们的丰度和状况(流式细胞仪)。SPMC依赖于分离和养殖小型海洋生物的能力的研究领域包括原生生物化学信号和防御生态学、海洋酸化对区域浮游动物和仔鱼生物学的影响、无脊椎动物发育生物学和生态学、化学防御研究和共生研究。将需要所要求的隔离和养殖设施的新研究领域包括濒危平托鲍鱼的养殖和将海洋酸化研究扩大到受威胁的太平洋鲱鱼种群。学生将通过多种途径参与培养设施，包括夏季REU计划(待定)、我们的海洋和河口科学研究生计划，以及为海洋和海岸科学新本科专业设想的顶峰项目。将使用该养殖设施的几个项目将对区域保护产生影响，包括测试鲱鱼幼体的饮食与发育关系，以及开发濒危平托鲍鱼的养殖方法。通过这些和其他途径，养殖设施将与对水产养殖试点项目(例如普吉特湾恢复基金、华盛顿生态部)或环境影响研究(例如西澳海洋酸化中心)感兴趣的地区机构和利益攸关方形成或加强现有的伙伴关系。最后，培养设施将提高我们为世界各地的研究人员提供异养甲藻和纤毛虫培养的能力，这项服务已导致浮游生物生态学、生物地球化学和系统发生学方面的许多重要出版物。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。

The Shannon Point Marine Center (SPMC; https://www.wwu.edu/spmc/) has historically relied on culture methods to study how small marine organisms grow, feed, and respond to environmental pressures such as ocean acidification. Single-celled algae and non-photosynthetic protists are also used as foods for other marine organisms that are the focus of research at SPMC, including larger zooplankton, endangered pinto abalone, and threatened Pacific herring. This award supports the acquisition of equipment used for culturing small marine organisms, particularly single-celled planktonic (free-floating) algae and their direct consumers. The new culture facility will be used by students at a variety of levels in both classroom and independent research settings, and will involve new faculty from the main campus in research at the marine laboratory. The facility will also support increased collaboration with area resource management. The new instrumentation will enable isolation and identification of small marine organisms (stereomicroscope), maintenance of these organisms in culture (environmental chambers, laminar flow hood, autoclave) and characterization of their abundance and condition (flow cytometer). Research areas at SPMC that are dependent on the ability to isolate and culture small marine organisms include protist chemical signaling and defense ecology, ocean acidification effects on regional zooplankton and larval fish biology, invertebrate developmental biology and ecology, chemical defense studies, and symbiosis research. New research areas that will require the requested isolation and culturing facilities include culture of endangered pinto abalone and expansion of ocean acidification studies to threatened stocks of Pacific herring. Student involvement with the culture facility will occur through multiple avenues, including a summer REU program (pending), our graduate Marine and Estuarine Science program, and the capstone projects envisioned for the new undergraduate major in Marine and Coastal Sciences. Several of the projects that will use the culture facility have regional conservation impacts, including testing larval herring diet-development relationships, and developing methods for culture of endangered pinto abalone. Through these and other avenues, the culture facility will form or strengthen existing partnerships with area agencies and stakeholders who have interest in aquaculture pilot projects (e.g. Puget Sound Restoration Fund, Washington Department of Ecology) or environmental impact research (e.g. WA Ocean Acidification Center). Finally, the culture facility will improve our ability to provide cultures of heterotrophic dinoflagellates and ciliates to researchers worldwide, a service that has led to numerous significant publications in plankton ecology, biogeochemistry, and phylogenetics.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.