Larval dispersal in a changing ocean: patterns, causes, and consequences

在世界各地的海洋中，气候变化和其他一系列人为压力正在使海洋栖息地退化。没有任何地方的变化比珊瑚礁更剧烈，珊瑚礁正在以越来越高的频率和强度经历毁灭性的热应力事件。面对这种可怕的威胁，迫切需要了解支撑生物多样性在快速变化的海景中持续存在的生态过程。一个基本的过程是扩散，这是大多数海洋物种在幼虫阶段进行的。尽管几十年来在描述扩散模式方面取得了进展，但我们仍然缺乏关于大多数物种扩散规模的基本知识。此外，我们对目前海洋条件下扩散变异的驱动机制，以及气候引起的个体表型和海景质量的变化将如何影响未来的扩散，了解得很少。 在接下来的五年里，我的实验室将研究海景的异质性(即栖息地质量、损失和碎片化)如何影响幼虫的扩散。我们将重点关注加勒比海库拉索岛周围珊瑚礁上的小型栖息地专家鱼类。这些物种是理想的研究物种，因为它们占据无脊椎动物的宿主(例如珊瑚、海绵)；因此，它们的持久性与它们赖以生存的造礁无脊椎动物的健康密切相关。借鉴野外生物学、分子生态学、保护生物学和海景生态学的技术，我们将解决三个主要目标。首先，我们将使用遗传亲子关系分析中的创新技术，量化跨越强烈环境梯度的区域扩散模式。其次，我们将通过探索栖息地质量如何影响幼虫的扩散表型和成虫的繁殖策略来开始揭示驱动所观察到的扩散模式的生物学机制。第三，我们将把这些独特的经验数据整合到模型中，预测鱼类种群将如何应对旨在缓解正在进行的海景退化的替代保护策略。 总体而言，这项研究计划将提供亟需的生态过程经验数据，这些过程是海洋生物多样性在面临持续开发和栖息地退化时持续存在的基础。这将对我们理解人类世幼虫的扩散做出重要贡献，并将对珊瑚礁气候智能保护规划产生直接影响，珊瑚礁是世界上最危险的海洋生态系统。更广泛地说，我们为研究幼虫在动态珊瑚礁海景上的扩散而建立的框架可以为其他区域的工作提供参考，包括被三个大洋包围的加拿大国家，这些国家都正在经历气候变化的影响。这笔赠款还将为5名研究生和10名本科生提供培训，他们将同时解决海洋生态学中的相关问题和保护生物学中的应用问题。

Throughout the world's oceans, climate change and a suite of other anthropogenic stressors are degrading marine habitats. Nowhere are these changes more acute than on coral reefs, which are experiencing devastating thermal stress events at increasing frequencies and intensities. In the face of such dire threats, there is an urgent need to understand the ecological processes that underpin biodiversity persistence in rapidly changing seascapes. One essential process is dispersal, which the majority of marine species undertake during a larval phase. Despite decades of progress towards describing dispersal patterns, we still lack fundamental knowledge about the scale of dispersal for most species. Moreover, we have a poor understanding of the mechanisms driving dispersal variability under present oceanic conditions, as well as how climate-induced changes to individual phenotypes and seascape quality will affect dispersal in the future. Over the next five years, my lab will investigate how seascape heterogeneity (i.e. habitat quality, loss, and fragmentation) influences larval dispersal. We will focus on microhabitat specialist fishes on reefs surrounding the Caribbean island of Curaçao. These are ideal study species because they occupy invertebrate hosts (e.g. corals, sponges); thus, their persistence is tightly linked to the health of the reef-building invertebrates they live on. Drawing on techniques from field biology, molecular ecology, conservation biology, and seascape ecology, we will address three major objectives. First, we will quantify regional patterns of dispersal across a strong environmental gradient using innovative techniques in genetic parentage analysis. Second, we will begin to unravel the biological mechanisms driving the observed dispersal patterns by exploring how habitat quality affects larval dispersal phenotypes and adult reproductive tactics. Third, we will integrate these unique empirical data into models that predict how fish populations will respond to alternative conservation strategies aimed at mitigating ongoing seascape degradation. Collectively, this research program will provide much-needed empirical data on ecological processes that underlie marine biodiversity persistence in the face of continued exploitation and habitat degradation. It will make important contributions to our understanding of larval dispersal in the Anthropocene and will have direct implications for climate-smart conservation planning on coral reefsthe world's most imperiled marine ecosystem. More generally, the framework we establish for studying larval dispersal on dynamic reef seascapes can inform work in other regions, including Canadaa country surrounded by three oceans that are all experiencing the effects of climate change. This grant will also provide training to five graduate and 10 undergraduate students, who will simultaneously address consequential questions in marine ecology and applied issues in conservation biology.