OCE-PRF: The landscape of hybridization and adaptation across reef depth in a coral community

OCE-PRF：珊瑚群落中跨珊瑚礁深度的杂交和适应景观

• 批准号: 2126069
• 负责人: Jennifer Hoey
• 金额: $ 22.37万
• 依托单位: California Academy of Sciences
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-12-01 至 2024-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2126069&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: OCE; PRF; landscape; hybridization; adaptation

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).Corals support some of the most diverse habitats in the world and provide people with income, food, and protection. However, corals are threatened by climate change, overfishing, and pollution. Some corals are better than others at tolerating harsher conditions. Corals also live at different depths that experience variation in temperature, light, and water flow. Understanding how corals adapt to their local habitats will help us understand how corals might survive into the future. Hybridization, where genes are exchanged among populations or species, is an important way for some organisms to adapt to changes in the environment. This process may be important for corals to successfully adapt to changing environments, as well. This research seeks to answer the question: Does hybridization help corals adapt to local environmental conditions at different reef depths? This research will help to identify the processes that are important for coral adaptation in a changing world, aiding in the conservation of vulnerable coral reef systems. The Fellow will participate in outreach events on the California Academy of Sciences museum floor, mentor high school interns, and develop curricula to help share this research with a broad audience. By training interns, scientists, and educators in climate change communication, she will amplify essential public messages about the ecological and societal impacts of climate change. The identification of underlying adaptive mechanisms is a crucial first step towards understanding the capacity of species to adapt in a rapidly changing world. Hybridization and introgression (hybridization followed by back-crossing) may be particularly important for rapid evolution to changing environmental conditions, but investigations into their roles in adaptation to new environments has only begun. Hybridization, especially at range boundaries where species overlap, may be a rapid means of increasing standing genetic variation or introducing pre-adapted alleles into a population, with likely consequences for phenotypes, speciation, and community composition. The goal of this project is to develop a framework for predicting hybrid occurrence from environmental and ecological factors while simultaneously identifying adaptive loci and testing hybrid performance across replicated environmental gradients in a coral community. Using a suite of observational, experimental, statistical, and computational methods spanning molecular to community-levels, this research will test for 1) hybridization, 2) adaptive introgression, and 3) genome-phenome linkages in a genus of corals (Madracis spp.) in the Caribbean. This work will increase our understanding of how hybridization and adaptation interact across reef depths to influence coral health. This project also offers opportunities to engage in outreach, grow networks of science and climate change communicators, and train the next generation of STEM leaders.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.

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。珊瑚支持着世界上一些最多样化的栖息地，并为人们提供收入、食物和保护。然而，珊瑚受到气候变化、过度捕捞和污染的威胁。有些珊瑚比其他珊瑚更能耐受更恶劣的环境。珊瑚也生活在不同的深度，经历温度、光线和水流的变化。了解珊瑚如何适应它们当地的栖息地，将有助于我们了解珊瑚未来可能如何生存。杂交，即在种群或物种之间交换基因，是一些生物适应环境变化的重要方式。这一过程可能对珊瑚成功适应不断变化的环境也很重要。这项研究试图回答一个问题：杂交是否有助于珊瑚适应不同珊瑚礁深度的当地环境条件？这项研究将有助于确定在不断变化的世界中对珊瑚适应至关重要的过程，从而有助于保护脆弱的珊瑚礁系统。这位研究员将参加加州科学院博物馆地板上的外联活动，指导高中实习生，并制定课程，帮助与广大观众分享这项研究。通过对实习生、科学家和教育工作者进行气候变化传播方面的培训，她将扩大有关气候变化对生态和社会影响的基本公共信息。确定潜在的适应机制是了解物种适应快速变化世界的能力的关键的第一步。杂交和导入(杂交后回交)对于快速进化以适应不断变化的环境条件可能特别重要，但关于它们在适应新环境中的作用的研究才刚刚开始。杂交，特别是在物种重叠的范围边界，可能是一种快速增加现有遗传变异或将预适应等位基因引入种群的手段，可能会对表型、物种形成和群落组成产生影响。该项目的目标是开发一个框架，用于根据环境和生态因素预测杂交发生，同时确定适应基因，并测试珊瑚群落中复制的环境梯度的杂交表现。利用一套从分子到群落水平的观察、实验、统计和计算方法，这项研究将测试一种珊瑚属(Madracis spp.)的1)杂交、2)适应性渗透和3)基因组-表型组联系。在加勒比海。这项工作将增加我们对杂交和适应如何在珊瑚礁深处相互作用以影响珊瑚健康的理解。该项目还提供了参与外展、扩大科学和气候变化传播者网络以及培训下一代STEM领导人的机会。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。