REU Site: Coral Reef Biodiversity and Resilience on Little Cayman

珊瑚礁维持着海洋中最高的生物多样性，也是地球上最受威胁的生态系统之一。该奖项为位于小开曼群岛的中加勒比海洋研究所(CCMI)的本科生新研究体验(REU)项目提供资金。CCMI REU项目将为24名本科生提供一个独特的机会，在三年内探索对维持珊瑚礁生物多样性和弹性至关重要的基本生态过程。参与的学生将有难得的机会在一个当地发展压力较小的偏远加勒比海小岛上进行研究。这个地点的珊瑚礁正在从1998年的厄尔尼诺事件中恢复过来，在那次事件中，高海面温度导致全球范围内的珊瑚死亡。推动经济复苏的过程仍不得而知。因此，REU提供了丰富和及时的机会，从多个角度密切审查生态系统压力和恢复。该REU的多学科科学导师团队正在研究旨在了解气候变化和海洋酸化(OA)以及珊瑚礁上的物理、化学和生态干扰造成的全球和局部威胁的主题。研究基本的生物、群落和生态系统功能的实验和实地工作将是这项研究的组成部分。这项由皇家理工学院本科生进行的研究将增进我们对珊瑚礁在多个空间和时间尺度上对干扰的适应能力的过程的了解。该奖项的共同资金由生物科学局提供。

Coral reefs maintain the highest biological diversity in the ocean and are also among the most threatened ecosystems on earth. This award provides funding for a new Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at the Central Caribbean Marine Institute (CCMI) located on Little Cayman Islands. The CCMI REU program will provide a unique opportunity for 24 undergraduate students over three years to explore fundamental ecological processes critical to maintaining coral reef biodiversity and resilience. Participating students will have a rare opportunity to conduct research on a small remote Caribbean island with low local development pressure. Coral reefs at this site are recovering from the 1998 El Nino event during which high sea surface temperatures killed corals on a global scale. The processes that are driving this recovery are still unknown. Therefore, this REU affords rich and timely opportunities to closely examine ecosystem stress and recovery from a number of perspectives. The multidisciplinary team of scientific mentors included in this REU are researching topics aimed at understanding global and local threats from climate change and ocean acidification (OA), and physical, chemical, and ecological disturbances on coral reefs. Experiments and field work examining fundamental organismal, community and ecosystem functions will be integral to this research. The research conducted by REU undergraduate participants will advance our knowledge of the processes that drive coral reef resilience to disturbances on multiple spatial and temporal scales. Co-funding for this award is provided by the Directorate for Biological Sciences.