CREST-PRF: Utilizing innovative 3D reconstruction techniques to enhance our understanding of the biology and ecology of Hawaiian ecosystems

卓越研究中心在科学和技术博士后研究奖学金（CREST-PRF）的CREST计划内的轨道支持开始CREST中心研究人员具有显着的潜力，并为他们提供培训和研究经验，将拓宽视野，促进跨学科的互动，并建立他们在科学界的领导地位。该CREST-PRF项目与夏威夷大学希洛分校热带保护生物学和环境科学中心（CREST-TCBES）的研究重点保持一致。热带和亚热带的社区依赖陆地和海洋生态系统提供的经济、生态和文化服务。最近的研究提供的证据表明，夏威夷的生态系统正在表现出健康和疾病减少的迹象，这种情况可能与夏威夷群岛的快速发展有关。该项目将提高研究干扰和压力源对生境结构和关键生态过程的影响的能力，方法是在不同的干扰制度下建立海洋和陆地生态系统的高分辨率三维生境重建。这项工作将促进科学进步，并有助于保护影响人类繁荣和福祉的宝贵生态系统服务。K-12学生和当地社区将参与该项目，以支持教育和多样性。交互式数据可视化和沉浸式虚拟现实技术将在线托管，以吸引观众，同时提供教育材料。这项研究将提供新的外联产品，以吸引全球受众并扩大对科学的参与。该项目将应用创新技术，通过整理3D重建、分子表征、生物信息学和统计建模来推进生态和生物研究。该项目的研究目标旨在表征真核生物-原核生物共生的分子概况，并解决有关环境变化如何在多个时空尺度上影响生态系统的基本问题。研究方法将整合3D运动重建技术和数据可视化工具，为破译分子和生态过程中发生的模式和关系提供新的背景。该项目的关键要素是1）创建用于检查真核生物-原核生物共生的研究生物的3D重建，以及2）为研究地点开发3D栖息地地图，用于检查人为和环境变化对几种生物的群落结构和生理反应的作用。数据可视化工具将允许用多种形式的生物和生态数据注释3D模型，以统计学方式检查3D空间背景下实验变量之间的关系。这种创新的方法可以测试的假设，真核生物-原核生物共生体的基因表达和代谢产物丰度的研究生物体表现出相互影响。拟议的研究还将量化3D栖息地结构，以测试人为干扰和栖息地碎片化影响生物体的遗传结构，生存，繁殖成功和声信号的假设。拟议的CREST-PRF的成果将为开发新的网络应用程序提供基础，以显示CREST所有子项目的数据和调查结果，从而扩大CREST投资在夏威夷大学希洛分校的影响。

The Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology-Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (CREST-PRF) track within the CREST program supports beginning CREST Center investigators with significant potential and provides them with training and research experiences that will broaden perspectives, facilitate interdisciplinary interactions and establish them in positions of leadership within the scientific community. This CREST-PRF project is aligned with the research focus of the CREST Center for Tropical Conservation Biology and Environmental Science (CREST-TCBES) at the University of Hawaii-Hilo. Communities in the tropics and subtropics depend on the economical, ecological, and cultural services provided by terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Recent research has provided evidence that Hawaiian ecosystems are exhibiting signs of reduced health and disease, a scenario likely related to rapid development in the Hawaiian Islands. This project will improve the capability of studying the impacts of disturbance and stressors on habitat structure and critical ecological processes by creating high-resolution three-dimensional (3D) habitat reconstructions of both marine and terrestrial ecosystems across a gradient of disturbance regimes. This work will promote the progress of science and help preserve valuable ecosystem services that affect the prosperity and welfare of humans. K-12 students and local communities will be engaged in this project to support education and diversity. Interactive data visualizations and immersive virtual reality technologies will be hosted online to captivate audiences while providing educational material. This study will provide new outreach products designed to engage global audiences and broaden participation in science. This project will apply innovative techniques to advance ecological and biological research by collating 3D reconstruction, molecular characterization, bioinformatics, and statistical modeling. The research goals of this project aim to characterize the molecular profiles of eukaryote-prokaryote symbioses and address fundamental questions about how environmental change affects ecological systems at multiple spatial and temporal scales. The research methods will integrate 3D structure-from-motion reconstruction technology and data visualization tools to provide a new context for which to decipher patterns and relationships occurring in both molecular and ecological processes. The key elements of the project are 1) creating 3D reconstructions of study organisms used for examining eukaryote-prokaryote symbioses, and 2) developing 3D habitat maps for study sites used to examine the role of anthropogenic and environmental change on the community structure and physiological responses of several organisms. The data visualization tools will allow for annotating the 3D models with multiple forms of biological and ecological data to statistically examine relationships among the experimental variables in a 3D spatial context. This innovative approach can test the hypothesis that eukaryote-prokaryote symbioses exhibit reciprocal effects on gene expression and metabolite abundance of the study organisms. The proposed research will also quantify 3D habitat structure to test the hypothesis that anthropogenic disturbance and habitat fragmentation affects the genetic structure, survival, reproductive success, and acoustic signaling of organisms. The outcomes of the proposed CREST-PRF will provide the basis to develop new web applications to display data and findings from all CREST sub-projects, thus amplifying the impact of the CREST investment at the University of Hawaii-Hilo.