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。 珊瑚礁研究界对珊瑚礁上除珊瑚以外的其他生物群体的生态和进化越来越感兴趣，海绵尤其令人感兴趣。 海绵是一个非常古老的生物群体，对珊瑚礁的健康至关重要，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的各种化学化合物，并引起生物医学界的兴趣。 如果没有共生微生物，这些重要功能中的许多是不可能的（例如，细菌），生活在海绵中。 在这个项目中，研究人员将研究海绵宿主及其微生物组在上述生态作用中的关系。 像人类微生物组一样，了解海绵微生物组可能是了解其生态和生物多样性的关键。 研究人员将使用经典的生态学方法与复杂的生物化学和分子分析相结合，以揭示共生体在海绵生态学和进化中的作用。新罕布什尔州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研究人员。 此外，研究人员将制定独特的外展计划，为公众教育的重要性，珊瑚礁生态系统。这项研究的目标是检查海绵和它们的微生物之间的关系，并揭示整个加勒比海盆地的珊瑚礁海绵的系统发育，遗传和功能的生物多样性。这项研究将使人们更好地了解海绵是珊瑚礁群落生物多样性的一个主要功能组成部分。 这一变革性项目将研究与全球海绵群落相关的重要范例，这将为珊瑚礁上海绵的综合生物多样性提供独特的见解，并增强我们对这一广泛但研究不足的海洋生物群体的生态和进化的理解。 这是必不可少的，因为海绵继续成为许多珊瑚礁的主要分类，特别是在过去三十年珊瑚覆盖面积减少之后，它们对浅水珊瑚礁群落的生态重要性是明确的。 此外，许多海绵还拥有各种共生微生物，这些微生物在海绵本身和它们所居住的珊瑚礁群落的营养循环中发挥着关键的功能作用，许多海绵还可能将光合自养产生的能量转移到更高的营养水平。 随着浅水珊瑚礁的持续减少，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除石珊瑚以外的分类群中，如软珊瑚和海绵。研究人员预测，海绵宿主和微生物组的共同进化导致了海绵生态位多样化和物种形成的新兴功能特性。 为了评估这一点，他们将量化营养模式（例如，DOM和POC的吸收，光自养）的海绵在加勒比地区，以及生产的化学防御。 这些特征状态将在海绵宿主及其微生物组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，转录组学和元转录组学）。 这些数据将为海绵及其微生物组的共同进化以及这些共生体如何影响珊瑚礁群落内海绵的功能属性提供独特的见解。

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.