Collaborative Research: Comparative ecology of a keystone pathogen in dynamics of a vegetated coastal ecosystem

病原体可能是许多生态系统中未被认识到的关键物种，对其他物种和栖息地造成巨大影响，尽管致病微生物的规模很小。然而，疾病流行的触发因素可能涉及不断变化的环境条件和相关生物群落之间的复杂相互作用。在海洋中，由于对这些不同的影响如何相互作用来确定疾病的易感性和复原力的了解不足，阻碍了对疾病爆发的理解。该项目将群落和疾病生态学的研究与微生物基因组学、地理空间分析和最先进的计算方法相结合，以前所未有的方式理解eelgras枯萎疾病的原因和后果，eelgras是支撑整个北半球海岸和河口生态系统的重要植被类型。这项研究在了解海洋疾病日益增长但缺乏认识的威胁、疾病生态学如何与环境变化相互作用及其对北美太平洋沿岸23度纬度地区依赖鳗草的广泛生态系统和沿海社区的后果方面取得了进展。这项研究将为更好地管理受威胁的海草生态系统提供信息，这些生态系统提供重要的服务，包括渔业栖息地、侵蚀控制、碳储存和营养径流捕获。这项研究将在下一代培养综合方法，包括高中生、本科生、研究生和从事该项目的博士后，每个研究机构将努力从代表性不足的群体中招募参与者。在该奖项下制定的最佳做法，包括Eelisa疾病应用程序和无人机绘图，将由专业和公民科学家与全球海洋观测系统(GOOS)将海草范围作为基本海洋变量进行协调，传播用于更广泛地监测海草疾病和沿海栖息地质量。海洋疾病流行的触发因素可能很复杂，由于对宿主-疾病相互作用的多方面生态背景缺乏了解，阻碍了对它们的理解。该项目的总体目标是理清直接和间接相互作用的网络，气候变化通过这些网络调节鳗草消耗性疾病的流行，及其对受到威胁但重要的鳗草生态系统的后果。其核心是对鳗草群落组成、微生物群和疾病流行率的跨尺度比较调查，沿着纬度和暴露在海洋中的温度梯度进行调查，提供了应对环境变化的第一幅海岸范围的疾病动态图景。将使用无人驾驶航空系统(无人机)在景观尺度上将现场采样与eelgras的动态联系起来，以量化eelgras范围和栖息地质量的高分辨率变化。实验将测试不同的生物群落如何调节病原体对鳗草生态系统的影响。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Pathogens may be unrecognized key species in many ecosystems, causing massive impacts on other species and habitats despite the microscopic size of disease-causing organisms. Yet the triggers to disease epidemics likely involve complex interactions among changing environmental conditions and associated biological communities. In the ocean, understanding disease outbreaks has been hindered by inadequate knowledge of how these various influences interact to determine susceptibility and resilience to disease. This project integrates research in community and disease ecology with microbial genomics, geospatial analysis, and state-of-the-art computational approaches toward an unprecedented understanding of the causes and consequences of wasting disease in eelgrass, an important vegetation type supporting coastal and estuarine ecosystems throughout the northern hemisphere. The research advances frontiers in understanding the growing but poorly appreciated threat of marine diseases, how disease ecology interacts with environmental change, and its consequences for the extensive ecosystems and coastal communities that depend on eelgrass, across 23 degrees of latitude along the Pacific coast of North America. The research will inform better management of threatened seagrass ecosystems, which provide important services including fisheries habitat, erosion control, carbon storage, and capture of nutrient runoff. The research will foster integrative approaches in the next generation, including high school students, undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs working on the project, and each investigator's institution will work to recruit participants from under-represented groups. Best practices developed under this award, including the Eelisa disease app and drone mapping, will be disseminated for broader surveillance of seagrass disease and coastal habitat quality by both professional and citizen scientists in coordination with the Global Ocean Observing System's (GOOS) develpoment of seagrass extent as an Essential Ocean Variable.The triggers to marine disease epidemics are likely complex, and progress in understanding them has been hindered by a poor understanding of the multifaceted ecological context of the host-disease interaction. This project's overarching goal is to disentangle the web of direct and indirect interactions by which changing climate mediates prevalence of eelgrass wasting disease, and its consequences for threatened but important eelgrass ecosystems. The centerpiece is a comparative, cross-scale survey of eelgrass community composition, microbiome, and disease prevalence along thermal gradients of latitude and exposure to the ocean, providing the first coast-wide picture of disease dynamics in response to environmental change. In situ sampling will be linked to dynamics of eelgrass at landscape scales using unmanned aerial systems (drones) to quantify high-resolution changes in eelgrass extent and habitat quality. Experiments will test how the diverse biological community mediates impacts of the pathogen on eelgrass ecosystems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.