EAR-PF: Morphological and ecological disparity of Spiriferida (Brachiopoda) at local, regional, and global scales

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。朱迪思·斯克拉法尼博士被授予NSF EAR博士后奖学金，在桑德拉·卡尔森博士的指导下，在加州大学戴维斯分校进行研究、专业发展和外展活动。评估地球历史上气候扰动期间不断变化的生态系统可以为生态系统如何应对人为气候变化提供重要线索。该项目将侧重于浅海海底群落在第二次大规模灭绝(约4.4亿年前)后的恢复，并调查某些生物特征的演变是否与丰度的增加和生态群落的生存有关。这项工作的结果将被纳入与加州大学戴维斯分校双语教师教育计划合作开发的高中地球科学课程。浅海生态系统对于维持海洋生物多样性和支持近岸环境产生的经济和文化服务十分重要。这意味着更好地了解复杂的生态动态和传播信息以增加解决这些问题的科学家的多样性是重要的。这项研究的具体目标是聚焦于在中晚古生代占主导地位的蜘蛛目，以：1)确定形态空间占据是否与全球赋存的环境亲和力相关，以及2)从区域地层学沿着环境梯度量化丰度。这项研究将从大陆/全球和地方/区域尺度产生大量关于蜘蛛纲的新标本和现场数据，以检查在较小尺度上获得的数据、分析和结果是否可以有意义地外推到较大空间尺度上的趋势。结合来自多个空间和分类尺度的数据是必要的，以解决化石记录中的生态等级尺度问题，并了解全球显生目动物趋势与当地标本和基于现场的数据之间的保真度。需要研究局部部分和全球假设之间的关系，以了解导致海洋生态系统结构、稳定和崩溃的宏观生态和宏观进化过程。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。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Dr. Judith Sclafani has been awarded an NSF EAR Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct research, professional development, and outreach activities at the University of California Davis under the mentorship of Dr. Sandra Carlson. Evaluating changing ecosystems during intervals of climate perturbation in Earth’s history can offer important clues to how ecosystems might respond to anthropogenic climate change. This project will focus on the recovery of shallow marine seafloor communities after the second largest mass extinction (~440 million years ago) and investigate whether the evolution of certain biological traits correlates with increased abundance and survivorship with ecological communities. Results of this work will be incorporated into high school Earth Science lessons developed in partnership with the bilingual teacher education program at UC Davis. Shallow marine ecosystems are important for maintaining ocean biodiversity and supporting the economic and cultural services derived from nearshore environments. This means that it is important to both better understand the complex ecological dynamics at play and disseminate information to increase the diversity of scientists addressing these problems.The specific goal of this study is to focus on the order Spiriferida, which was dominant in the middle-late Paleozoic, to: 1) determine whether morphospace occupation is correlated with environmental affinity from global occurrences, and 2) quantify abundance along an environmental gradient from regional stratigraphy. This study will generate substantial new specimen and field-based data about Spiriferida from both continental/global and local/regional scales to examine if data, analyses, and results obtained at smaller scales can be meaningfully extrapolated to trends at larger spatial scales. Combining data from multiple spatial and taxonomic scales is necessary to address ecological hierarchical scaling in the fossil record and understand the fidelity between global Phanerozoic trends and local specimen and field-based data. Studies of the relationship between local sections and global hypotheses are needed to understand the macroecological and macroevolutionary processes responsible for ocean ecosystem structure, stability, and collapse.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.