Collaborative Research: RAPID: A multi-scale approach to predicting coral disease spread: leveraging an outbreak on coral-dense isolated reefs

海洋疾病对海洋生态系统具有破坏性影响，这项工作直接为了解海洋中的疾病传播提供了信息。为了了解2022年夏末在花园银行国家海洋保护区开始的疾病爆发的原因和传播模式，（墨西哥湾西北部，墨西哥湾），一个由生态学家，海洋连通性和疾病建模师，微生物学家和珊瑚免疫学家组成的团队（来自赖斯大学、维尔京群岛大学（UVI）、路易斯安那州立大学（LSU）和伍兹霍尔海洋研究所）正在监测珊瑚的健康状况，并对他们的组织进行活检这些数据有助于开发一个模型，预测珊瑚疾病的传播及其对墨西哥湾具有经济价值的珊瑚礁的影响。该项目支持研究生在多个少数民族服务机构的多学科领域和实验室研究经验，并为本科生提供建模，生态和分子分析技术的实践培训。UVI和路易斯安那州立大学在EPSCoR管辖区，有不同的学生团体，包括许多代表性不足的少数民族（URM）学生。研究团队合作为URM学生提供STEM领域的研究经验。项目调查结果通过虚拟公共节目广泛传播给疾病咨询理事会，并通过直接向花园银行国家海洋保护区管理人员提供最新情况。在过去的四十年里，疾病摧毁了包括珊瑚礁在内的海洋沿海环境中的生态系统工程师。最近对白色鼠疫和石珊瑚组织丧失病的研究结果表明，珊瑚物种的免疫特性可以影响抗病能力，因此可以预测加勒比海爆发后的珊瑚群落结构。于二零二二年八月下旬，在Flower Garden Banks（墨西哥湾西北部，GoM）记录到一种未识别的多物种急性组织损失疾病，其体征和物种易感性特征令人联想到白色鼠疫或SCEMPLATE。这种疾病对FGB产生了重大影响，并可能在整个墨西哥湾蔓延，提供了一个机会来测试关于珊瑚群落组成和病原体传播对疾病传播的影响的假设在爆发的早期阶段;很少有研究在相对孤立，深，珊瑚密集的珊瑚礁上研究这一点。跨学科的研究团队采用photomosaics和殖民地的命运跟踪，分层的分子数据集和显微镜方法，以及疾病水库和传播的建模，以评估疾病的病因，并有助于开发一个可推广的框架疾病在珊瑚礁上传播。通过分析珊瑚礁规模的群落组成与海景规模的传播对疾病传播和持续性的影响，这项工作有助于揭示孤立的潜在抵抗力和恢复力，珊瑚-该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查进行评估来支持的搜索.

Marine diseases have devastating impacts on ocean ecosystems and this work directly informs understanding of disease transmission in the ocean. To understand the cause and patterns of spread of a disease outbreak that began in late summer of 2022 at the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary (northwest Gulf of Mexico, GoM), a team of ecologists, ocean connectivity and disease modelers, microbiologists, and coral immunologists (from Rice University, the University of Virgin Islands (UVI), Louisiana State University (LSU), and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) is monitoring the health of corals, and biopsy their tissues. This data aid in developing a model that predicts coral disease transmission and its impacts on economically valuable coral reefs in the GoM. This project supports multidisciplinary field and laboratory research experiences of graduate students at multiple minority-serving institutions, and provides undergraduate students with hands-on training in modeling, ecological and molecular analysis techniques. UVI and LSU are in EPSCoR jurisdictions and have diverse student bodies, including numerous under-represented minority (URM) students. The research team collaboratively provides URM students with research experiences in STEM fields. Project findings are being broadly communicated through virtual public programming, to the Disease Advisory Council, and via direct updates to managers of the Flower Garden Bank National Marine Sanctuary. Over the last four decades, diseases decimated ecosystem engineers in marine coastal environments, including coral reefs. Recent results from studies of white plague and stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) show coral species immune traits can influence disease resistance and therefore predict of coral community structure post-outbreak in the Caribbean. In late August of 2022, an unidentified multi-species acute tissue loss disease with signs and species susceptibility characteristics reminiscent of white plague or SCTLD was documented at the Flower Garden Banks (northwest Gulf of Mexico, GoM). This disease is having significant impacts on FGB and could become widespread across the GoM, offering an opportunity to test hypotheses about the influence of coral community composition and pathogen dispersal on disease spread during the early stages of an outbreak; few studies examine this on relatively isolated, deep, coral-dense reefs. The interdisciplinary research team employs photomosaics and colony fate-tracking, layered molecular datasets and microscopy approaches, as well as modeling of disease reservoirs and dispersal to assess the etiology of the disease and contribute to the development of a generalizable framework for disease spread on reefs. By parsing the impacts of reef-scale community composition versus seascape-scale dispersal in disease transmission and persistence, this work helps reveal the potential resistance and resilience of isolated, coral-dense reefs to diseases that decimate these ecosystems across the wider Caribbean.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.