Testing the most striking tropical marine biodiversity gradient on the planet: does it hold for sponges?

测试地球上最引人注目的热带海洋生物多样性梯度：它适用于海绵吗？

• 批准号: 2048457
• 负责人: Robert Toonen
• 金额: $ 95.97万
• 依托单位: University of Hawaii
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2024-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2048457&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Testing; most; striking; tropical; marine

Coral reefs are among the most species-rich ecosystems on the planet, occupying only about 1% of the seafloor, but housing more than a quarter of known marine biodiversity. Sometimes called the rainforests of the sea, coral reefs have great intrinsic biological, cultural and economic value. Nearly a billion people across the planet rely on coral reef ecosystems as a significant source of their diet, and the annual economic benefits of coral reefs are estimated to be around $9.9 Trillion USD. Thus, the global decline of coral reefs by an estimated 30-50% since the 1980s is of considerable concern as scientists struggle to understand whether species are being lost before they are even discovered. While coral reefs are spectacularly diverse, the majority of this biodiversity actually lives hidden deep within the three-dimensional framework of the reef itself. This hidden (or cryptic) community of organisms are both dramatically understudied and fundamentally important for the persistence of coral reefs. Sponges are a dominant group among these cryptic organisms within the reef which provide food from the bottom of the food chain and help sustain coral reef biodiversity. Despite the vital ecological role of sponges on coral reefs, little is known about their diversity, abundance or species ranges across the Indo-Pacific. For example, the most striking marine biodiversity gradient on the planet is described from several of the visibly dominant groups on coral reefs, including corals and reef fishes. From the global hotspot of species richness in the Indo-Pacific Coral Triangle there is a sharp eastward decline in species numbers to more remote oceanic islands in the Central Pacific, such as the Hawaiian Archipelago. However, no survey to date has evaluated whether the diversity of poorly known cryptic coral reef species, such as sponges, show the same pattern as the visible species that dominate the surface of the reef. Summer training modules introduce at-risk Pacific Islander youth to coral reef biodiversity to recruit and train a new generation of sponge taxonomists. Identification guides are being produced to help resource managers in establishing a baseline of sponge diversity, which allows resource managers to identify and protect native species, improves detection of alien species introductions and serves as a tool for monitoring changes in the ecosystem in response to human impacts. The work is being disseminated widely through scientific literature, public and professional presentations, popular press articles, and an educational display about sponges and coral reef biology in collaboration with the Waikīkī Aquarium.This important knowledge gap is addressed by analyzing an existing backlog of standardized sampling devices (ARMS) collected from throughout the Pacific Ocean to determine whether sponges that live largely unseen within the reef framework follow the same diversity gradient as has been previously reported for fish and corals. By integrating taxonomy with multi-locus DNA barcoding and metabarcoding, this project is documenting species richness and biodiversity patterns among the cryptic sponge community across five ecoregions spanning over 10,000 km of the tropical Pacific. These collections include many new species and are providing vouchered DNA barcodes to existing reference databases that currently include fewer than 1% of sponge species across the planet. Sponges are a rich source for pharmaceutical development, so discovery of new species also provides opportunity for exploration of natural products from both the sponges and culturable microbes associated with them. By examining sponge species occurrence and diversity along both environmental and anthropogenic gradients in each ecoregion, the data also address whether coral reef sponges can serve as indicators of human impacts. Collectively, these results are transforming our knowledge of tropical Pacific sponge biodiversity, species ranges, and providing much-needed reference barcodes to global sequence databases. By determining whether sponges show the same Indo-Pacific richness gradient as reported in fishes and corals, this project is testing how well generalizations made from the visible subset of species that live on the surface of coral reefs apply to rest of coral reef biodiversity. This study is greatly advancing our knowledge of Pacific coral reef sponges and will ultimately inform the scale over which vital ecological roles performed by this understudied taxon, such as the production of nutrients at the bottom of the food chain, are acting across the Pacific.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.

珊瑚礁是地球上物种最丰富的生态系统之一，仅占海底的1%左右，但却拥有已知海洋生物多样性的四分之一以上。珊瑚礁有时被称为海洋雨林，具有巨大的内在生物、文化和经济价值。全球有近10亿人依赖珊瑚礁生态系统作为饮食的重要来源，珊瑚礁的年度经济效益估计约为9.9万亿美元。因此，自20世纪80年代以来，全球珊瑚礁估计减少了30-50%，这引起了相当大的关注，因为科学家们正在努力了解物种是否在被发现之前就已经消失了。虽然珊瑚礁有着惊人的多样性，但大多数生物多样性实际上深藏在珊瑚礁本身的三维框架内。这种隐藏的（或神秘的）生物群落既没有得到充分的研究，又对珊瑚礁的持久性至关重要。海绵是珊瑚礁内这些隐秘生物中的优势群体，它们从食物链的底部提供食物，并帮助维持珊瑚礁的生物多样性。尽管海绵在珊瑚礁上起着至关重要的生态作用，但人们对它们在印度太平洋地区的多样性、丰度或物种范围知之甚少。例如，地球上最引人注目的海洋生物多样性梯度是由珊瑚礁上几个明显的优势群体描述的，包括珊瑚和珊瑚礁鱼类。从物种丰富度的全球热点印度洋-太平洋珊瑚三角区开始，物种数量急剧向东下降至太平洋中部更偏远的海洋岛屿，如夏威夷群岛。然而，迄今为止还没有调查评估过鲜为人知的隐蔽珊瑚礁物种（如海绵）的多样性是否与主导珊瑚礁表面的可见物种表现出相同的模式。夏季培训单元向处于危险中的太平洋岛民青年介绍珊瑚礁生物多样性，以招募和培训新一代海绵分类学家。目前正在编制鉴定指南，以帮助资源管理人员确定海绵多样性的基线，使资源管理人员能够确定和保护本地物种，改进对外来物种引进的检测，并作为监测生态系统因人类影响而发生变化的工具。这项工作正在通过科学文献、公众和专业报告、通俗报刊文章以及与waik<e:1> ki水族馆合作举办的关于海绵和珊瑚礁生物学的教育展览广泛传播。这一重要的知识差距是通过分析从整个太平洋收集的现有积压的标准化采样设备（ARMS）来解决的，以确定在珊瑚礁框架内生活的海绵是否遵循与先前报道的鱼类和珊瑚相同的多样性梯度。通过将分类学与多位点DNA条形码和元条形码相结合，该项目记录了热带太平洋5个生态区中超过1万公里的隐海绵群落的物种丰富度和生物多样性模式。这些收集包括许多新物种，并为现有的参考数据库提供担保的DNA条形码，这些数据库目前只包括地球上不到1%的海绵物种。海绵是药物开发的丰富资源，因此新物种的发现也为探索海绵及其相关可培养微生物的天然产物提供了机会。通过考察每个生态区沿环境和人为梯度的海绵物种发生和多样性，数据还探讨了珊瑚礁海绵是否可以作为人类影响的指标。总的来说，这些结果正在改变我们对热带太平洋海绵生物多样性和物种范围的认识，并为全球序列数据库提供急需的参考条形码。通过确定海绵是否表现出与鱼类和珊瑚相同的印度太平洋丰富度梯度，该项目正在测试从生活在珊瑚礁表面的可见物种子集中得出的结论适用于其他珊瑚礁生物多样性的程度。这项研究极大地提高了我们对太平洋珊瑚礁海绵的认识，并将最终告知这种未被充分研究的分类单元所发挥的重要生态作用的规模，例如食物链底部的营养物质的生产，正在跨太平洋发挥作用。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。

项目成果

Unveiling hidden sponge biodiversity within the Hawaiian reef cryptofauna

揭示夏威夷珊瑚礁加密动物群中隐藏的海绵生物多样性

• DOI: 10.1007/s00338-021-02109-7
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Coral Reefs
• 影响因子: 3.5
• 作者: Vicente, Jan;Webb, Maryann K.;Paulay, Gustav;Rakchai, Wachirawit;Timmers, Molly A.;Jury, Christopher P.;Bahr, Keisha;Toonen, Robert J.
• 通讯作者: Toonen, Robert J.