RAPID: Diversity and symbiotic relationships of annelids in a poorly known region of the deep Pacific

虽然海洋占地球表面的70%以上，但由于采样的困难和昂贵的性质，深海的多样性仍然被极大地忽视。基于对深海海底的有限采样，研究人员发现，这些环境中的生物多样性取决于温度、盐度、地貌和深度等因素。缺乏数据的一个领域是有时深达7,000米以上的海沟。考虑到海洋海沟的极端环境，它们可能拥有独特的物种集合，但这些地区的生物多样性几乎是完全未知的。环节动物，或节段蠕虫，是包括深海栖息地在内的海洋环境中群落的多样化和主要代表。然而，从深海采集的有限样本限制了我们从这些广泛的环境中描述环节动物生物多样性的能力。除了探索、描述和编目深海环节动物的生物多样性外，该项目还将产生两项新的外联活动。与北卡罗来纳大学威尔明顿分校的MarineQuest项目合作，将为K-12学生开发两项新的外展活动，以展示科考船上的生活，以及研究人员如何研究生物对深海生活的适应。该项目将在森肯堡研究所和自然历史博物馆的Angelika Brandt博士的领导下，在德国R/V Sonne号上从东北太平洋东阿留申海沟的哈达尔遗址和附近白令海大陆架的深海采集环节动物。样本将分别保存在福尔马林和RNAlater中进行形态和分子研究。目标是利用形态和分子测序技术记录和描述这些偏远和极端环境中的环节动物多样性及其共生体。传统的分类学、荧光原位杂交(FISH)和组学技术将被用来描述这一相对未被研究的深海区域的环节动物多样性，并确定与深海相比，半海底环节动物微生物群中是否有更多的共生类群。这一奖项反映了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。

While the oceans occupy more than 70% of the Earth’s surface, the diversity of the deep-sea is still vastly understudied due to the difficult and expensive nature of sampling. Based on the limited sampling of the deep seafloor, researchers have found that biodiversity in these environments is dependent upon factors, such as temperature, salinity, geomorphology, and depth. One area lacking data is oceanic trenches which sometimes reach depths over 7,000m. Given the environmental extremes of oceanic trenches, they may harbor unique sets of species but biodiversity from these regions is almost completely unknown. Annelids, or segmented worms, are a diverse and dominant representative of communities in marine environments, including deep-sea habitats. However, limited sampling from the deep sea has restricted our ability to characterize annelid biodiversity from these widespread environments. In addition to exploring, describing and cataloging the biodiversity of annelid worms from the deep sea, this project will result in two new outreach activities. In collaboration with the MarineQuest program at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, two new outreach activities for K-12 students will be developed to illustrate life aboard a research vessel and how researchers study adaptations of organisms to life in the deep sea. This project will collect annelids from hadal sites of the Eastern Aleutian Trench in the Northeast Pacific Ocean and abyssal depths of the nearby continental shelf in the Bering Sea aboard the German R/V Sonne under the leadership of Dr. Angelika Brandt of The Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum. The samples will be preserved in formalin and RNAlater for morphological and molecular work, respectively. The goal is to document and describe annelid diversity and their symbionts from these remote and extreme environments using morphological and molecular sequencing techniques. Traditional taxonomy, fluorescence in-situ hybridization (FISH), and -omics techniques will be used to characterize annelid diversity in this relatively unstudied region of the deep-sea and determine if there is a greater abundance of symbiotic taxa in annelid microbiomes at hadal depths compared to abyssal depths.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.