Unravelling the drivers of coral reproductive phenology and synchrony

揭示珊瑚繁殖物候和同步的驱动因素

• 批准号: 2603720
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Newcastle University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2603720
• 关键词: Unravelling; drivers; coral; reproductive; phenology

Scleractinian corals are the ecosystem engineers of coral reefs, one of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems on the planet. Coral reefs are home to a quarter of all marine species and support the wellbeing and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people worldwide through fisheries, tourism and coastal protection. Most coral species are broadcast spawners which relay on synchronous spawning events as an essential process for the replenishment and adaptation of populations. Most corals spawn synchronously during short seasonal periods and the timing of these events depends on environmental cues. Given most corals present a short time window in which they release gametes in the water column, fertilization depends on coral colonies adjusting their reproductive timing following the appropriate environmental cues. Moreover, they also depend on releasing gametes with a high degree of synchrony to ensure that outcrossing happen in beneficial environmental conditions. Sea surface temperature, solar insolation, wind speed, lunar phase and cycle have been demonstrated to influence coral spawning and be responsible for month or week of spawning but the mechanisms corals time this event to a particular day still remain unclear. Given the importance of several environmentalcuesin reproductive phenology, climate change impacts could disrupt spawning synchrony, with long-term consequences for population viability.Despite the key role thatcoral reefsplayfor maintaining ecosystem functions and the services they provide to many coastal communities,there is still a need to understand how global-scale human impacts affect coral reproductive timing and synchrony.Until recently, the described impacts of climate change on coral reproductive synchrony have been limitedby a lack of large-scale datasets on coral reproductive phenology, and technical challenges associated with experiments to manipulate seasonal environmental cycles.Previously,the effect of environmental parameters hasbeen studied using broadspatiotemporal scale(e.g., monthly averaged means)and,therefore,identifyingappropriate environmental cues for coral spawning synchrony remains a challenge. Duringmy Ph.D.I aim to i) determine which climate drivers are more relevant for spawning phenology and synchrony within taxa and ecoregions,ii) investigate which processes and climate drivers are behind different phenological strategies such as split spawning, highlysynchronousvs asynchronousreproductive strategies within assemblages,iii) Evaluate the responses of several taxa to changes in the selected drivers in order to determine which families or species could be more susceptible to experience disruptions in their reproductive phenology and possible breakdowns in spawning synchrony. For this task I will use present, past and predicted future climate scenarios to create ecological models, iv) to identify areas of higher risk to experience asynchronies in coral spawning, creating predictive species distribution models accounting for phenological changes. Such models will help to develop maps of risk of spawning breakdown identifying which species are more vulnerable to different drivers which could help to preserve coral reefs. I am working with a recently compiled, large database on coral spawning timing (CSD), including 6000 individual observations of the time or day of spawning for over 300 coral species, to investigate spatial and temporal patterns of spawning synchrony and phenology. I will use statistical models to test he effect of fine spatiotemporal scale climate drivers on spawning timing. Additionally, I will conduct field and laboratory experiments to test the effects of temperature, lunar cycle and light regime in order to disentangle their effect in coral spawning phenology synchrony.

巩膜珊瑚是珊瑚礁的生态系统工程师，珊瑚礁是地球上最生物多样性海洋生态系统之一。珊瑚礁是所有海洋物种中四分之一的家园，并通过渔业，旅游和沿海保护层支持全世界数亿人的福祉和生计。大多数珊瑚种类是广播产卵者，它们在同步产卵事件上传达，这是对种群补充和适应的基本过程。大多数珊瑚在短季节期间同步产卵，这些事件的时机取决于环境提示。鉴于大多数珊瑚都有一个短的时间窗口，它们在水柱中释放配子，因此施肥取决于珊瑚菌落在适当的环境提示下调整其生殖时机的珊瑚菌落。此外，它们还取决于释放具有高度同步的配子，以确保在有益的环境条件下发生脱落。已经证明，已经证明海面温度，太阳速度，风速，月相和周期会影响珊瑚产卵，并负责产卵的一个月或一周，但是珊瑚的机制时间尚不清楚。鉴于几种生殖物候学的重要性，气候变化的影响可能会破坏产卵的同步，对人群的长期后果，对人群的可行性产生长期后果。尽管如此，corcoral reefsplay的关键作用是维持生态系统功能及其对许多沿海社区提供的服务的关键作用，但仍需要对全球人类的影响，但仍需要对cor and corlods的影响。气候变化对珊瑚生殖同步的影响受到限制，这是由于缺乏大规模数据集对珊瑚生殖候物候学的缺乏，以及与实验相关的技术挑战，以操纵季节性环境周期，从而在季节性环境周期中操纵季节性的环境参数的效果，因此使用了宽阔的环境来确定环境（例如，一个月的范围）（例如，适当的范围）（例如），例如。产卵同步仍然是一个挑战。在我的博士学位期间。物种可能更容易在产卵同步中造成的殖民地物物学和可能的崩溃。对于这项任务，我将使用现在的和预测未来的气候场景来创建生态模型，iv），以确定在珊瑚产卵中体验异步的较高风险的领域，从而创建了预测性物种分布模型，这些模型占了物候变化。这样的模型将有助于开发产卵崩溃的风险地图，以确定哪些物种更容易受到不同驱动因素的影响，这可能有助于保存珊瑚礁。我正在与最近编译的大型数据库（CSD）合作，其中包括6000个对300多种珊瑚物种产卵的时间或日期的单独观察，以研究产卵同步和现象的空间和时间模式。我将使用统计模型来测试良好时空量表气候驱动因素对产卵时间的影响。此外，我将进行现场和实验室实验，以测试温度，月球循环和光制状态的影响，以使其在珊瑚产卵物候同步中的影响。