A Proposal for a Workshop on Global Environmental Change & Biological Evolution in the Ocean

海洋生物学将如何应对和改变海洋环境中正在发生的、由全球变化驱动的全面变化，目前几乎是未知的。今天的生物体和群落将在多大程度上能够适应和进化，以应对快速的政权更迭？当前优势群体的反应能很好地预测未来生物群落对人为变化应激源的反应方式吗？当与潜在的生物、种群和生态系统层面的适应相结合时，我们如何准确地模拟同时发生的多种环境变化的未来影响？与与主要全球变化进程相关的时间尺度相比，浮游生物生态关键功能群的进化变化的时间尺度如何？最后，进化生物学和多变量制度尺度的变化对海洋支持健康食物网和储存人为二氧化碳的能力有什么影响？研究人员将在北卡罗来纳州达勒姆的国家进化合成中心召开一次由NSF支持的催化研讨会，约12人受邀参加。这个由海洋生态学家和进化生物学家组成的小组将讨论以下问题：通过结合海洋学和进化生物学的综合方法来解决对海洋快速环境变化的生物反应，最引人注目的问题是什么？如何利用对当今生物体和群落的研究来预测对快速政权更迭的长期适应和生物学反应？能否开发准确的模型来预测多种环境变化对生物、种群和生态系统水平适应的未来影响？假设实验进化实验是容易处理的，那么最好的策略是什么(微观世界、中观世界和生物体的选择？首次催化会议的参与者将组成一个指导委员会，该委员会将于2009年夏天在卡塔琳娜岛的南加州大学箭牌研究所会议设施举行的一次会议上概述一个更大的社区研讨会的计划，以解决这些问题。更广泛的影响这项活动的主要更广泛的影响是努力使进化界和海洋生态界共同规划一个强有力的科学办法来解决气候和环境变化将如何影响海洋生物、种群和群落的问题。这些信息将在研讨会上作为后续活动传达给更大的科学界。

How the biology of the ocean will react to and modify the ongoing comprehensive global change-driven alterations in the marine environment is presently virtually unknown. To what extent will present day organisms and communities be able to adapt to and evolve in response to rapid regime shifts? Are the responses of currently dominant groups a good predictor of the way that future biological communities will react to anthropogenic change stressors? How can we accurately model the future effects of simultaneous multiple environmental changes, when coupled with potential organismal-, population- and ecosystem-level adaptation? How do the timescales of evolutionary change in ecologically critical functional groups of planktonic organisms compare to the timescales that are relevant for major global change processes? And finally, what implications do evolutionary biology and multi-variate regime scale shifts have for the ability of the ocean to support healthy food webs and store anthropogenic CO2? The investigators will convene an NSF-supported catalysis workshop of about 12 invited participants, to be held at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, Durham, North Carolina. This small selected group, comprised of ocean ecologists and evolutionary biologist, will address the following questions:What are the most compelling questions that are best addressed by an integrative approach combining oceanography and evolutionary biology to address biological responses to rapid environmental change in the ocean? How can studies of present-day organisms and communities be used to predict long-term adaptations and biological responses to rapid regime shifts? Can accurate models be developed to predict future effects of multiple environmental changes on organismal, population, and ecosystem-level adaptations? Assuming experimental evolution experiments are tractable, what are the best strategies (microcosms, mesocosms, and choices of organism? Participants from this initial catalysis meeting will form a steering committee that will outline plans for a larger community workshop to address these issues in a meeting to be held at USC Wrigley Institute conference facility on Catalina Island in the summer of 2009. Broader Impacts The primary broader impact of this activity is the effort to bring the evolutionary community together with the marine ecology community to plan a robust scientific approach to the problem of make long term predictions about how climate and environmental change will affect ocean organisms, populations and communities. The information will be communicated to the greater scientific community in a workshop as a follow-on activity.