NSFGEO-NERC: Linking species traits to marine ecosystem functioning

人类正在改变地球上生命的多样性，改变生态系统中物种的数量和组成。了解这些变化将如何影响自然系统的功能是至关重要的。这个项目评估了一种很有前景的方法，通过将物种的物理特征——它们的形状和形态——与它们在群落和生态系统中发挥的关键作用联系起来，来预测生物多样性变化的影响。这些特征和紧急角色之间的联系没有得到很好的描述，特别是在沿海海洋环境中。该项目包括在美国西海岸和欧洲海岸（通过与英国自然环境研究委员会的合作）沿岩石海岸线的环境条件梯度筛选海藻物种的特征-潮汐高度，暴露于强烈海浪和纬度。该项目包括在有大量公众接触的地区进行实验和推广，研究人员将与社区、大学和博物馆的推广人员合作，将这项研究传播给更广泛的受众。该项目包括课程开发和推广机制，并培训海洋科学方面的本科生、研究生和博士后研究人员。该项目还支持一个视觉艺术展览，向公众展示海藻物种的消失。研究人员正在使用一套创新的方法来了解海藻的功能特征和新兴功能属性之间的联系，提供了一个前所未有的连接海藻形态学，生理学和生态学的数据集：(i)描述海藻群落的功能结构，以及这种结构如何在环境梯度中变化；（ii）评估这套容易测量的特征与生理和生态过程的关系；（iii）在美国和欧洲海岸线的多个地点测量物种和特征，跨越纬度、波浪暴露和潮汐高度的梯度。（iv）评估沿这些梯度的功能冗余变化，以量化群落相互作用和生态系统功能对物种丧失的脆弱性。这些方法和途径有助于探索藻类形态和功能之间的关系，并提供对海藻多样性变化的功能后果的见解，有可能改变对海洋生物多样性的理解。这些将海藻的功能性状、功能群和在群落和生态系统水平过程中的作用联系起来的进展，加强了对生物多样性变化影响的预测，特别是沿着环境梯度和物种范围的变化，并作为对物种在群落和生态系统中作用的机制理解的模板。这是一个由美国国家科学基金会地球科学理事会（NSF/GEO）和英国国家环境研究委员会（NERC）通过NSF/GEO-NERC牵头机构协议共同资助的项目。该协议允许美国/英国提交一份联合提案，并由其调查员拥有最大比例预算的机构进行同行评审。在成功地共同确定一个奖项推荐后，每个机构资助预算的比例，以支持各自国家机构的科学家。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。

Humans are modifying the diversity of life on Earth, changing the number and composition of species in ecosystems. It is essential to understand how these changes will affect how natural systems function. This project evaluates a promising method for predicting the impacts of biodiversity change by linking species’ physical characteristics – their shapes and forms – to the key roles that they play in communities and ecosystems. These links between traits and emergent roles are poorly described, especially in coastal marine environments. This project involves screening the traits of seaweed species along gradients in environmental conditions on rocky shorelines – tide height, exposure to heavy surf, and latitude – along the U.S. West Coast and (via a partnership with the Natural Environment Research Council in the United Kingdom) the coast of Europe. This project includes experiments and outreach in regions with substantial exposure to the public, and the investigators will work with community, university, and museum outreach personnel to communicate this research to broader audiences. The project includes mechanisms for curriculum development and outreach and trains undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in marine science. The project also supports a visual arts exhibit for public display that illustrates the loss of seaweed species. The investigators are using a suite of innovative approaches to understand the links between functional traits and emergent functional attributes of seaweeds, providing an unprecedented dataset linking seaweed morphology, physiology, and ecology: (i) characterizing the functional structure of seaweed communities and how that structure changes across environmental gradients, (ii) evaluating how that suite of easily measured traits is related to physiological and ecological processes, (iii) measuring species and traits at multiple sites along U.S. and European coastlines spanning gradients in latitude, wave exposure, and tidal elevation, and (iv) evaluating changes in functional redundancy along these gradients to quantify vulnerability of community interactions and ecosystem functioning to species loss These methods and approaches facilitate exploration of relationships between algal form and function and provide insights into the functional consequences of changes in seaweed diversity, with the potential to transform understanding of marine biodiversity across levels of biological organization. These advances in linking seaweeds’ functional traits, functional groups, and roles in community- and ecosystem-level processes enhance prediction of the impacts of changing biodiversity – especially along environmental gradients and species ranges – and serve as a template for a mechanistic understanding of the roles of species in communities and ecosystems.This is a project jointly funded by the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Geosciences (NSF/GEO) and the National Environment Research Council (NERC) of the United Kingdom (UK) via the NSF/GEO-NERC Lead Agency Agreement. This Agreement allows a single joint US/UK proposal to be submitted and peer-reviewed by the Agency whose investigator has the largest proportion of the budget. Upon successful joint determination of an award recommendation, each Agency funds the proportion of the budget that supports scientists at institutions in their respective countries.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.