Collaborative research: Patterns, causes, and consequences of synchrony in giant kelp populations

合作研究：巨型海带种群同步性的模式、原因和后果

• 批准号: 2140335
• 负责人: Thomas Bell
• 金额: $ 16.62万
• 依托单位: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
• 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: 2021-04-15 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2140335&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; research; Patterns; causes; consequences

Populations of organisms located in different, often far-apart places can change over time in similar ways. This natural phenomenon, known as synchrony, is important to many issues affecting societal well-being, such as those in medicine, public health, conservation, and natural resource management. For instance, synchrony is critical to the persistence, stability, and resilience of plant and animal populations, and can have cascading effects on biodiversity, ecosystem function, and associated benefits to society. However, many aspects of synchrony are poorly resolved. For example, understanding the influence of multiple potential drivers of synchrony—such as climatic events and predators—has been a longstanding challenge in ecology. Moreover, the causes of synchrony may change over space, time, and timescale (e.g., annual vs. decadal synchrony), but this potential is rarely explored, especially in marine ecosystems. The consequences of synchrony for the dynamics of diverse ecological communities, and the potential for synchrony to have cascading effects across ecosystem boundaries (e.g., from sea to land), are also understudied. Addressing these gaps is especially pressing because growing evidence indicates that climate change may alter patterns of synchrony, potentially leading to diminished spatial resilience of ecosystems. This project studies coastal kelp forests and sandy beach ecosystems to address several current gaps in the understanding of synchrony. The project generates knowledge to improve the understanding of these economically-valuable environments and the many organisms that they sustain. Broader impacts extend through the mentorship of researchers across career stages and student training in coastal ecology and data science. To improve educational opportunities for students from groups underrepresented in science, the project creates a Coastal-Heartland Marine Biology Exchange, in which undergraduates from the Midwest travel to California to carry out coastal field research, and undergraduates from Los Angeles interested in marine biology travel to Kansas to learn biostatistics. To benefit the management of kelp forests in California that have suffered dramatic declines in recent years, workshops will be hosted with coastal managers, conservation practitioners, and other stakeholders to identify restoration sites to enhance regional recovery, stability, and resilience. Methods, software, and data that are useable across scientific disciplines are published online following reproducible and transparent standards.The objective of this project is to investigate the patterns and causes of synchrony in giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) forests and the consequences for coastal ecosystem structure and function. By integrating and leveraging numerous long-term, large-scale datasets and analyzing them with new statistical techniques, the investigators assess how oceanographic conditions, propagule dispersal, and sea urchin herbivory interact to structure the synchrony and stability of giant kelp populations over the past 36 years across 10 degrees of latitude in the northeast Pacific Ocean. New wavelet modeling tools and other statistical techniques are used to quantify the drivers of synchrony and how they operate across geography, time, and timescales. Using a 20-year spatial timeseries of reef biodiversity, it will be determined how giant kelp and other factors induce synchrony in a speciose community of understory algae through ‘cascades of synchrony’. Moreover, the team tests the degree to which giant kelp synchrony propagates across ecosystem boundaries to sandy beaches through the transport and deposition of allochthonous organic matter (kelp wrack), and how such spatial subsidies produce bottom-up cascades of synchrony to beach invertebrates and shorebirds.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.

位于不同且通常相距很远的地方的生物体种群会随着时间的推移以类似的方式发生变化。这种被称为同步的自然现象对于影响社会福祉的许多问题都很重要，例如医学、公共卫生、保护和自然资源管理方面的问题。例如，同步性对于动植物种群的持久性、稳定性和恢复力至关重要，并且可能对生物多样性、生态系统功能以及相关的社会效益产生连锁效应。然而，同步的许多方面都没有得到很好的解决。例如，了解气候事件和捕食者等多个潜在同步驱动因素的影响一直是生态学领域的长期挑战。此外，同步的原因可能会随着空间、时间和时间尺度的变化而变化（例如，年度同步与十年同步），但这种潜力很少被探索，特别是在海洋生态系统中。同步对不同生态群落动态的影响，以及同步对跨生态系统边界（例如从海洋到陆地）产生级联效应的潜力也没有得到充分研究。解决这些差距尤为紧迫，因为越来越多的证据表明，气候变化可能会改变同步模式，可能导致生态系统的空间弹性减弱。该项目研究沿海海带森林和沙滩生态系统，以解决当前在同步性理解方面的几个差距。该项目产生知识，以增进对这些具有经济价值的环境及其赖以生存的许多生物体的了解。通过对研究人员在职业阶段的指导以及沿海生态学和数据科学方面的学生培训，产生更广泛的影响。为了改善科学领域中代表性不足群体的学生的教育机会，该项目创建了沿海-中心海洋生物学交流中心，其中中西部的本科生前往加利福尼亚州进行沿海实地研究，而对海洋生物学感兴趣的洛杉矶本科生前往堪萨斯州学习生物统计学。为了有利于加利福尼亚州近年来急剧减少的海带森林的管理，将与沿海管理者、保护从业者和其他利益相关者一起举办研讨会，以确定恢复地点，以增强区域的恢复、稳定性和复原力。跨科学学科可用的方法、软件和数据按照可重复和透明的标准在线发布。该项目的目的是调查巨藻森林同步的模式和原因以及对沿海生态系统结构和功能的影响。通过整合和利用大量长期、大规模数据集，并使用新的统计技术对其进行分析，研究人员评估了海洋条件、繁殖体扩散和海胆食草性如何相互作用，从而构建了过去 36 年东北太平洋 10 纬度地区巨型海带种群的同步性和稳定性。新的小波建模工具和其他统计技术用于量化同步驱动因素以及它们如何跨地理、时间和时间尺度运作。利用珊瑚礁生物多样性的 20 年空间时间序列，将确定巨型海带和其他因素如何通过“同步级联”在林下藻类的特殊群落中引起同步。此外，该团队还测试了巨型海带同步通过异地有机物（海带残骸）的运输和沉积跨越生态系统边界传播到沙滩的程度，以及这种空间补贴如何产生与海滩无脊椎动物和滨鸟自下而上的级联同步。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过评估认为值得支持。 利用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准。

项目成果

SBC LTER: REEF: Macrocystis pyrifera biomass and environmental drivers in southern and central California

SBC LTER：REEF：加州南部和中部的巨囊藻生物量和环境驱动因素

• DOI: 10.6073/pasta/27e795dee803493140d6a7cdc3d23379
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Environmental Data Initiative
• 作者: Barbara, Santa Coastal;Bell, Tom W;Cavanaugh, Kyle C;Reuman, Daniel;Castorani, Max C.;Sheppard, Lawrence;Walter, Jonathan
• 通讯作者: Walter, Jonathan