RUI: NSF-BSF: PurSUiT:The Indo-Pacific zooxanthellate octocorals: an integrated approach to species delimitation, phylogenetics and biogeography

珊瑚礁为全球5亿多人提供食物、生计和海岸保护。然而，这些生态系统受到的威胁最大，一些研究预测，珊瑚礁可能无法存活到下个世纪。由于缺乏对构成珊瑚礁结构和功能的绝大多数无脊椎动物的基本知识，理解珊瑚礁群落正在发生变化的方式的努力受到阻碍。此外，不断变化的海洋条件似乎正在改变石珊瑚和章鱼之间的动态，这将从根本上改变珊瑚礁的结构和功能，加勒比珊瑚礁群落就证明了这一点，这些珊瑚礁群落越来越多地由非造礁章鱼主导。然而，与经过充分研究的石珊瑚相比，目前人们对大多数八珊瑚的基本生态学知之甚少，包括有多少物种和哪些物种共存，或者它们的种群在空间和时间上如何变化，这些信息对于确定哪些物种可能受到气候变化的威胁，哪些物种可能反而受益是必要的。缺乏基本信息在很大程度上是由于难以区分和正确识别八珊瑚物种，再加上缺乏方便获取的资源以便于识别。该项目将通过以下方式解决这一根本问题：(1)将分子遗传分析与高分辨率显微镜相结合，以区分从整个印度-太平洋收集的八角珊瑚物种；(2)检查和重新描述主要博物馆收藏的历史标本，以便利为这些物种正确命名；(3)在一个可供公众访问的门户网站内汇编信息，使世界各地的用户能够生成物种清单和互动检索表，以确定珊瑚礁栖息的八角珊瑚。该项目代表了美国和以色列研究人员之间的合作。项目参与者包括来自大洛杉矶地区未得到充分服务的社区的博士后、以色列研究生、本科生和高中生。对印度-太平洋(IP)地区浅水、虫黄藻软珊瑚(Alcyoniidae、Nephtheidae和Xeniidae)的划定和验证将有助于在未来对珊瑚礁生态和生物多样性的研究中确定物种，使人们更好地了解由于全球海洋变化而严重恶化的时代珊瑚礁群落的动态。DNA条形码、超辐射元素和外显子的靶向富集化序列捕获以及高分辨率扫描电子显微镜的形态特征记录将整合在一起，以确定博物馆现有的约5000个软珊瑚标本以及整个印度-太平洋地区的新收藏品中的物种。同时，所有可用的类型材料都将用现代成像进行记录，必要时重新描述，并进行排序，以便于将正确的(或新的)二项式分配给物种。经地理参照、经专家验证的标本数据将在一个可公开获得、可搜索的数据库中汇编，该数据库有能力生成区域物种清单和交互式分类检索表。通过识别跨知识产权的物种边界，将能够识别具有高度物种丰富度、高度地方性或可能值得特别保护的独特谱系的地理区域。重建IP软珊瑚物种的完全分解的系统发育将允许与生态上相似的硬珊瑚物种相比，测试关于它们的生物地理分布、多样化的速率和时间的假设，总体上有助于我们了解IP的宏观进化过程，并为珊瑚礁生物区的保护和管理战略提供信息。该奖项反映了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。

Coral reefs provide food, livelihoods and coastal protection for more than 500 million people worldwide. Yet these ecosystems are among those most threatened, with some studies predicting that coral reefs may not survive into the next century. Efforts to understand the ways in which coral reef communities are changing are impeded by a lack of basic knowledge of the vast majority of the invertebrate animals that contribute to their structure and function. Additionally, changing ocean conditions appear to be shifting the dynamics between stony corals and octocorals in ways that will fundamentally alter the structure and function of reefs, as evidenced by Caribbean reef communities that are increasingly dominated by non-reef-building octocorals. Relative to the well-studied stony corals, however, little is currently known about the basic ecology of most octocorals, including how many and which species co-occur or how their populations vary over space and time, information that is necessary to determine which species may be imperiled by climate change and which may instead be benefitting. This lack of basic information is due in large part to the difficulty of distinguishing and correctly identifying octocoral species, coupled with a dearth of easily accessible resources to facilitate their identification. This project will address this fundamental problem by (1) combining molecular genetic analyses with high-resolution microscopy to discriminate species of octocorals collected from throughout the Indo-Pacific; (2) examining and re-describing historical specimens housed in major museum collections to facilitate the correct assignment of names to those species; and (3) compiling the information within a publicly accessible web portal that will allow users worldwide to generate species checklists and interactive keys for identifying reef-dwelling octocorals. The project represents a collaboration between researchers from the U.S. and Israel. Project participants include a post-doc, Israeli graduate students, undergraduates and high school students from underserved communities in the greater Los Angeles area.Delimitation and validation of shallow-water, zooxanthellate soft corals (families Alcyoniidae, Nephtheidae and Xeniidae) from across the Indo-Pacific (IP) will facilitate the identification of species in future studies of coral reef ecology and biodiversity, leading to increased understanding of the dynamics of coral reef communities in an era of severe deterioration due to global ocean change. DNA barcoding, target-enriched sequence capture of ultraconserved elements and exons, and documentation of morphological characters using high-resolution scanning electron microscopy will be integrated to delimit species among ~5000 specimens of soft corals currently available in museums as well as new collections from across the Indo-Pacific. Simultaneously, all available type material will be documented with modern imaging, re-described as necessary, and sequenced to facilitate assignment of correct (or new) binomens to species. Georeferenced, expert-validated specimen data will be compiled within a publicly available, searchable database with the capability to generate regional species checklists and interactive taxonomic keys. Recognition of species boundaries across the IP will enable the identification of geographic regions with high species richness, high endemicity or phylogenetically unique lineages that may merit special protection. Reconstruction of fully resolved phylogenies for the IP soft coral species will allow the testing of hypotheses about their biogeographic distribution and rates and timing of diversification in comparison to the ecologically similar scleractinian corals, contributing in general to our understanding of macroevolutionary processes in the IP as well as informing conservation and management strategies for reef biota.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.