RAPID: Ecological Reversal of Evolutionary Trends During a Climate Anomaly: Plasticity, Adaptation, and Integration of Environmental Change into Genomic and Organismal Architecture

该项目力求了解在有记录以来最近一次极端厄尔尼诺扰动之后导致鱼类外观发生巨大变化的因素。然后，该项目将研究这些形态变化对水母、其共生体和水母的猎物的影响。有趣的是，这些鱼的外观变化反映了自末次冰盛期以来15,000年的变化。罕见扰动的暂时性产生了相当大的紧迫性，以研究这一意外的自然事件。比较当前的扰动和随后的“正常”条件，并与海洋中的祖先一样的姐妹种群进行比较，有可能迅速推进对生物体的基因型和表型之间的相互作用的理解，以及在生态和进化背景下的环境。该项目将培养一名综合生物学研究生，提高对社会经济重要生态系统的理解，支持地方政府资源管理人员的决策，并提高对水母可塑性的理解，这可能有助于形成水母水华的后果。研究结果将纳入新的混合在线普通教育课程的教育和外联材料。水母鞭毛虫的生态表型变异与非生物环境和水母湖种群规模的巨大变化有关，水母湖与严重的厄尔尼诺现象有关，反映了居住在帕劳一套海洋湖泊和邻近海洋地点的种群的进化趋势。该项目将采样和描述这种极端扰动的关键环境和生物体细节，从而研究环境变化如何与差异表达和/或基因座选择相互作用，以修正生态和进化时间尺度上的功能表型变异。 方法包括在呈现两种特征形态中的每一种的两个时间点测量水母鞭毛虫的形态和行为表型;从那些表型不同的水母中取样用于基因组、表观遗传和转录组学分析;稳定同位素分析;微生物组分析;以及环境的非生物和生物特征的表征，包括温度、盐度、氧气、pH值、水的透明度、营养物，叶绿素a、浮游细菌、浮游植物和浮游动物。将在邻近海洋的祖先样姐妹种群（亚种）中收集可比数据。这些测量将揭示是否类似的套位点参与塑料和适应性反应，以改变环境，即是否有支持的概念，遗传同化的乳房。它们还将为理解生物体对全球逐渐和快速气候变化的反应提供信息，并将产生关于整个scyphozoon生命树同源结构变化的新假设。

This project seeks to understand the factors that lead to dramatic changes in the appearance of jellyfishes following the most recent extreme El Niño perturbation on record. The project will then examine the consequences of these changes in morphology for the jellyfish, its symbiont, and the prey of the jellyfish. Intriguingly, the changes in appearance of the jellyfishes mirror changes seen during the 15,000 years since the Last Glacial Maximum. The temporary nature of the rare perturbation generates considerable urgency to study this unanticipated natural event. Comparison of current perturbed and subsequent "normal" conditions, and comparisons with an ancestor-like sister population in the ocean, has the potential to rapidly advance understanding of interactions between an organism's genotype and phenotype, and its environment in both ecological and evolutionary contexts. The project will train a graduate student in integrative biology, improve understanding of a socio-economically important ecosystem, supporting decisions by local government resource managers, and improve understanding of plasticity in jellyfish which may contribute to, and shape, the consequences of jellyfish blooms. Results will be incorporated into education and outreach materials for a new hybrid online general education course. Ecophenotypic variation of Mastigias medusae that is associated with dramatic changes in abiotic environment and population size in Jellyfish Lake associated with a severe El Niño mirrors evolutionary trends seen among populations inhabiting a suite of marine lakes and adjacent ocean locations in Palau. This project will sample and describe key environmental and organismal details of this extreme perturbation, enabling examination of how environmental changes interact with differential expression and/or selection of loci to amend functional phenotypic variation on ecological and evolutionary time-scales. Methods include measurement of morphological and behavioral phenotypes of Mastigias medusae at two time-points presenting each of two characteristic morphologies; tissue sampling from those phenotypically distinct medusae for genomic, epigenetic, and transcriptomic analyses; stable isotope analyses; microbiome analyses; and characterization of abiotic and biotic characteristics of the environment, including temperature, salinity, oxygen, pH, water clarity, nutrients, chl a, bacterioplankton, phytoplankton, and zooplankton. Comparable data will be collected in an ancestor-like sister population (subspecies) from the adjacent ocean. These measurements will reveal whether similar suites of loci are involved in plastic and in adaptive responses to changing environments, i.e. whether there is support for the concept of genetic assimilation in Mastigias. They will also inform the understanding of organismal responses to gradual and rapid climate change globally, and will generate novel hypotheses regarding variation in homologous structures across the scyphozoan tree of life.