Collaborative Research: Dimensions: Evolutionary Ecology of Sponges and Their Microbiome Drives Sponge Diversity on Coral Reefs

珊瑚礁是海洋环境中的热带雨林，受到污染、过度捕捞、沿海开发和气候变化等各种压力因素的严重威胁。珊瑚礁研究界对除珊瑚礁上的珊瑚以外的其他生物群的生态和进化越来越感兴趣，特别是海绵。海绵是一类对珊瑚礁健康至关重要的非常古老的生物，因为它们在营养循环中发挥作用，为许多其他珊瑚礁生物提供食物和家园，并能够合成对珊瑚礁具有生态重要性和生物医学界感兴趣的各种化合物。如果没有生活在海绵体内的共生微生物(例如细菌)，这些重要功能中的许多都是不可能的。在这个项目中，研究人员将研究海绵宿主与其微生物群之间在上述生态角色中的关系。与人类微生物群一样，了解海绵微生物群可能是了解它们的生态和生物多样性的关键。研究人员将结合经典的生态学方法，结合复杂的生物化学和分子分析，揭示共生体在海绵生态和进化中的作用。新汉普郡大学和密西西比大学都将为本科生和研究生以及退伍军人和博士后研究人员提供培训机会，特别是来自代表性不足群体的培训机会。此外，研究人员还将制定独特的推广计划，对公众进行珊瑚礁生态系统重要性的教育。这项研究的目标是研究海绵与其微生物群之间的关系，并揭示加勒比海盆地珊瑚礁海绵的系统发育、遗传和功能生物多样性。这项研究将更好地了解海绵作为珊瑚礁群落生物多样性的主要功能组成部分。这一变革性的项目将审查与全世界海绵群落有关的重要范例，这些范例将为珊瑚礁上海绵的综合生物多样性提供独特的见解，并加强我们对这一广泛但未被研究的海洋生物群体的生态和进化的了解。这是至关重要的，因为海绵仍然是许多珊瑚礁上的主要分类群，特别是在过去三十年珊瑚覆盖率区域下降之后，而且海绵对浅海珊瑚礁群落的生态重要性是明确的。此外，许多海绵拥有一组不同的共生微生物，这些微生物在海绵自身及其居住的珊瑚礁群落的营养循环中发挥关键作用，许多海绵可能会将光自养衍生的能量转移到更高的营养水平。随着浅层珊瑚礁的持续减少，珊瑚礁的系统发育、遗传和功能多样性将越来越多地出现在硬珊瑚以外的分类群中，如软珊瑚和海绵。研究人员预测，海绵宿主和微生物群的共同进化导致了新的功能特性，从而导致海绵的生态位多样化和物种形成。为了评估这一点，他们将量化加勒比海绵的营养模式(例如，DOM和POC吸收、光自养)以及化学防御的产生。这些特征状态将在海绵宿主及其微生物群的系统发育组成，以及宿主和共生体在遗传水平上的功能活动(即转录组和转录组)的背景下进行分析。这些数据将为海绵及其微生物群的共同进化提供独特的见解，以及这些共生生物如何影响珊瑚礁群落中海绵的功能属性。

Coral reefs, the tropical rain forests of the marine environment, are under significant threat from a variety of stressors such as pollution, overfishing, coastal development and climate change. There is increasing interest by the coral reef research community in the ecology and evolution of other groups of organisms besides corals on coral reefs with sponges being of particular interest. Sponges are a very old group of organisms essential to reef health because of their roles in nutrient cycling, providing food and homes for many other reef organisms, and their ability to synthesize diverse chemical compounds of ecological importance on the reef, and of interest to the biomedical community. Many of these important functions would not be possible without the symbiotic microbes (e.g., bacteria) that live within sponges. In this project, the investigators will examine relationships between the sponge host and its microbiome in the ecological roles described above. Like the human microbiome, understanding the sponge micobiome may be the key to understanding their ecology and biodiversity. The investigators will use a combination of classical ecological approaches combined with sophisticated biochemical and molecular analyses to unravel the role of the symbionts in the ecology and evolution of sponges. Both the University of New Hampshire and the University of Mississippi will provide training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students as well as veterans and post-doctoral researchers, especially from underrepresented groups. Additionally, the investigators will develop unique outreach programs for public education on the importance of coral reef ecosystems.The goal of this study is to examine the relationships between marine sponges and their microbiomes, and reveal the phylogenetic, genetic, and functional biodiversity of coral reef sponges across the Caribbean basin. This research will provide a better understanding of sponges as a major functional component of the biodiversity of coral reef communities. This transformative project will examine important paradigms relative to sponge communities worldwide that will provide unique insights into the integrative biodiversity of sponges on coral reefs and enhance our understanding of the ecology and evolution of this extensive, yet understudied, group of marine organisms. This is essential because sponges continue to emerge as the dominant taxon on many coral reefs, particularly following regional declines in coral cover over the last three decades, and their ecological importance to shallow coral reef communities is unequivocal. In addition, many marine sponges host a diverse assemblage of symbiotic microorganisms that play critical functional roles in nutrient cycling within sponges themselves and in the coral reef communities where they reside, and many sponges can potentially transfer photoautotrophically derived energy to higher trophic levels. As shallow coral reefs continue to decline, the phylogenetic, genetic, and functional diversity of coral reefs will increasingly be found in taxa other than scleractinian corals, such as soft corals and sponges. The investigators predict that co-evolution of the sponge host and microbiome leads to emergent functional properties that result in niche diversification and speciation of sponges. To assess this, they will quantify trophic modes (e.g., DOM and POC uptake, photo-autotrophy) of sponges in the Caribbean, as well as the production of chemical defenses. These character states will be analyzed in the context of the phylogenetic composition of the sponge hosts and their microbiomes, and the functional activities of the host and symbionts at the genetic level (i.e., transcriptomics and metatranscriptomics). These data will provide unique insights into the co-evolution of sponges and their microbiomes, and how these symbioses influence the functional attributes of sponges within coral reef communities.