CAREER: Species Interactions of Coral Reef Benthic Cyanobacterial Mats: Within-Mat Diversity Promotes Both Facilitation and Top-Down Control

职业：珊瑚礁底栖蓝藻垫的物种相互作用：垫内多样性促进便利化和自上而下的控制

• 批准号: 2239425
• 负责人: Sophie McCoy
• 金额: $ 147.09万
• 依托单位: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-01-15 至 2028-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2239425&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Species; Interactions; Coral; Reef

Nuisance algal blooms are a massive conservation challenge to global ecosystems. Benthic cyanobacterial mats (BCMs) can be persistent in time and spatially expansive on coral reefs, posing additional environmental threats through physical smothering of and chemical interactions with other reef organisms, including corals. This research seeks to understand processes that lead to bloom longevity, such as metabolic cooperation between microbial species, and to study natural mechanisms of bloom control, such as the combination of large-bodied predators, reef fish, and viruses. The research team leverages research results towards coral reef management to develop globally-applicable SCUBA diver interventions to control cyanobacterial blooms and develops training materials and lead workshops for the Caribbean dive and snorkel tourism industries to scale up the use of diver interventions over the 5-year project. The education plan focuses on high-investment training of undergraduate research interns from UNC’s transfer student population together with training opportunities for postdoctoral researchers, graduate, undergraduate, and high school students, generates data to be integrated into publicly available undergraduate-level bioinformatics case studies, and develops K-12 educational materials through the International Microbiology Literacy Initiative.Understanding ecological processes that lead to prolonged blooms are a major research gap addressed by this research, which focuses on metabolic facilitation and top-down controls on BCMs. The research makes three major contributions to our knowledge of the functional ecology of marine cyanobacterial mats via (1) mechanistic characterization of within-mat metabolic handoffs, (2) identification of viral-driven changes to within-mat metabolic cooperation, and (3) description of interactions between micro- (viral) and macro-scale (fish) predation. Regardless of whether specific hypotheses are supported, the data generated by this research greatly advance the field of viral trophic ecology by testing ecological theory using a mechanistic hypothesis to understand biogeochemical outcomes of functional mosaics between density-dependent lysis-lysogeny switches. This project is expected to produce evidence for the roles of cooperative interactions among mat-building bacteria and bloom control by multiple predators including reef fish and viruses. Viral ecology is difficult to study in natural microbial systems, and thus this project contributes to our knowledge about the ecological roles of viruses in natural contexts.This award is supported by the Biological Oceanography and Ocean Education Programs.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.

有害的藻华对全球生态系统是一个巨大的保护挑战。底栖蓝藻藻垫（bcm）可以在时间和空间上持续在珊瑚礁上扩张，通过对包括珊瑚在内的其他珊瑚礁生物的物理窒息和化学相互作用，对环境构成额外的威胁。这项研究旨在了解导致藻华寿命延长的过程，如微生物物种之间的代谢合作，并研究控制藻华的自然机制，如大型捕食者、珊瑚鱼和病毒的结合。研究小组利用珊瑚礁管理方面的研究成果，开发全球适用的水肺潜水员干预措施，以控制蓝藻繁殖，并为加勒比潜水和浮潜旅游业开发培训材料和领导讲习班，以扩大潜水员干预措施的使用，为期5年的项目。该教育计划的重点是对北卡罗来纳大学转学生群体中的本科研究实习生进行高投资培训，并为博士后研究人员、研究生、本科生和高中生提供培训机会，生成数据以整合到公开的本科生物信息学案例研究中，并通过国际微生物学素养倡议开发K-12教育材料。了解导致藻华延长的生态过程是本研究的主要研究空白，本研究侧重于代谢促进和自上而下控制bcm。该研究通过以下三个方面为我们了解海洋蓝藻垫的功能生态学做出了主要贡献：(1)垫内代谢传递的机制表征；(2)确定病毒驱动的垫内代谢合作的变化；(3)描述微观（病毒）和宏观（鱼类）捕食之间的相互作用。无论具体假设是否得到支持，该研究产生的数据都极大地推动了病毒营养生态学领域的发展，通过一种机制假设来测试生态学理论，以了解密度依赖的裂解-溶生开关之间功能嵌合体的生物地球化学结果。该项目预计将为包括珊瑚鱼和病毒在内的多种捕食者在造垫细菌之间的合作相互作用和水华控制中的作用提供证据。病毒生态学很难在自然微生物系统中进行研究，因此该项目有助于我们了解病毒在自然环境中的生态作用。该奖项由生物海洋学和海洋教育项目支持。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。