Facility improvements to establish capacity for coral reef resilience research assessing genetic adaptation and physiological acclimatization

珊瑚构成了热带珊瑚礁的建筑框架，支撑着地球上最具生产力和生物多样性的海洋生态系统。由于珊瑚礁特别脆弱，了解生物和种群如何通过范围扩大、生理适应或遗传适应来应对海洋变暖是很重要的。在开曼群岛的中央加勒比海洋研究所，过去22年来连续收集的数据提供了珊瑚礁的长期生态记录，并提供了对当地珊瑚礁生态系统近期表现和全球压力事件（如珊瑚白化）影响的见解。这一长期数据集可以为该地区乃至全球珊瑚礁的恢复能力提供独特的见解和证据。该奖项将利用这一研究历史和基础设施来研究驱动珊瑚礁系统恢复力的生理和分子机制。它将为科学家提供一个急需的机会，从物种和群落水平到基因组和微生物水平，在生态系统的各个层面上，解开人为和气候对珊瑚礁进化、适应和恢复力的影响。新的基础设施包括一个室外环境，其中环境参数可以独立修改以进行操作实验，以及一个相邻的分子实验室，可以保存、提取和处理实验样品。目前对气候胁迫和极端条件下驱动珊瑚礁生态系统和生物适应和进化机制的研究将通过实验操纵环境条件（如光和温度）的能力以及获得分子设施来处理和保存基因组比较样本的能力而得到推进。可以进行操作实验和分子分析的资源将吸引访问研究人员与CCMI的常驻科学家合作，研究与珊瑚礁恢复和适应有关的问题。新的基础设施将扩大为本科生和研究生提供的公共宣传和教育项目。有关CMMI的更多信息，请访问https://reefresearch.org/.This该奖项反映了NSF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。

Corals form the architectural framework for tropical reefs, supporting the most productive and biologically diverse marine ecosystems on Earth. Because coral reefs are especially vulnerable, it is important to understand how organisms and populations can respond to ocean warming either through range expansion, physiological acclimatization, or genetic adaptation. At the Central Caribbean Marine Institute in the Cayman Islands, data collected continuously over the last 22 years offers a long-term ecological record of thereefs and provides insight into the recent performance of the local reef ecosystem and impacts of global stress events, such as coral bleaching. This long-term dataset can provide unique insight and evidence of resilience capacity of coral reefs in the region and potentially globally. This award will leverage this research history with infrastructure to study the physiological and molecular mechanisms that drive resilience of coral reef systems. It will provide a much-needed opportunity for scientists to disentangle anthropogenic and climate influences on coral reef evolution, adaption, and resilience at all levels of the ecosystem, from species and community levels to genomic and microbial levels. The new infrastructure consists of an outdoor mesocosm in which environmental parameters can be modified independently for manipulative experiments, and an adjacent molecular laboratory that will enable preservation, extraction and processing of experimental samples. Current research on the mechanisms driving coral reef ecosystem and organismal adaptation and evolution during climate stress and extreme will be advanced by the capacity to experimentally manipulate environmental conditions, such as light and temperature, as well as access to a molecular facility to process and preserve samples for genomic comparisons. Resources that enable manipulative experiments and molecular analyses, will attract visiting researchers to examine questions related to reef resilience and adaptation in collaboration with resident scientists at CCMI. Public outreach and educational programs serving undergraduate and graduate level students will be expanded by the new infrastructure. For more information about CMMI, please visit https://reefresearch.org/.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.