Collaborative Research: ORCC: The role of adaptive plasticity in coral response to climate change

气候变化威胁着种群，因为生物体的物理特征或表型可能不适应新的条件。最终，生物体是生存还是灭绝将取决于它们将表型向适应性方向转变的能力。对于经历可预测的环境波动的长寿、广泛分布的生物体，如珊瑚，可塑性或个体一生中产生的表型变化，预计将在应对气候变化方面发挥重要作用。该项目旨在解决加勒比海珊瑚基本物种鹿角珊瑚表型可塑性的原因和后果的关键问题。表型可塑性在推动珊瑚移植成功方面的作用的知识也是从事珊瑚礁保护和恢复工作的珊瑚礁从业人员和管理人员的重要信息。这是因为在美国管辖的沃茨和更广泛的加勒比海地区恢复珊瑚礁生态系统，在很大程度上依赖于选定的珊瑚基因型或遗传独特的个体的克隆或“无性”繁殖，然后将其移植到新的环境中。通过与世界领先的珊瑚礁恢复组织之一Mote海洋实验室的直接合作，这项工作的成果将应用于美国佛罗里达群岛正在进行的珊瑚礁恢复。调查结果还将通过PI在各种咨询小组中的作用传达给更广泛的利益相关者社区。最后，该项目将直接让高中生、本科生和研究生参与这项工作的初级数据收集和翻译，为教育、培训和更广泛的社区参与珊瑚科学和保护提供机会，该项目旨在生成关于形态可塑性在自然界基础物种生态进化动态中的作用的定量经验数据。A.已知表现出可塑性能力变化的颈角类基因型将被用于：（1）通过基于实验室的水流操纵实验来研究适应性形态可塑性的机制基础，以检验形态可塑性的变化是由骨骼沉积中的钙化和细尺度结构变化的潜在变化驱动的假设;（2）通过实地和实验室实验相结合的方式，量化可能限制形态可塑性演变的成本和/或权衡，以测试对气候压力因素的反应中与环境相关的权衡（温度和酸化）和生殖投资;（3）在群落和生态系统水平上评估可塑性的生态后果。这些珊瑚礁在形态可塑性和由此产生的鱼类和无脊椎动物群落组成和多样性的量化变化以及珊瑚礁在生产和钙化方面的功能方面的能力各不相同。总之，这项工作将填补我们对可塑性及其在气候适应中的作用的理解的经验空白，通过调查对环境适应的影响，在生物组织的各个层次。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。

Climate change threatens populations because an organism’s physical characteristics, or phenotype, may be ill-suited to new conditions. Ultimately, whether organisms persist or go extinct will depend on their ability to shift their phenotypes in an adaptive direction. For long-lived, broadly dispersing organisms that experience predictable environmental fluctuations, like coral, plasticity, or phenotypic changes produced within an individual’s lifetime, is predicted to play a significant role in the response to climate change. This project aims to address key questions on the causes and consequences of phenotypic plasticity in a foundational Caribbean coral species, Acropora cervicornis. Knowledge of the role of phenotypic plasticity in driving the success of coral transplants is also essential information for reef practitioners and managers working to conserve and restore reefs. This is because the restoration of reef ecosystems in US jurisdictional waters and the broader Caribbean relies heavily on clonal or “vegetative” propagation of select coral genotypes, or genetically unique individuals, which are then transplanted to new environments. Through direct collaboration with one of the leading reef restoration organizations in the world, Mote Marine Laboratory, results of this work will be applied to ongoing restoration of reefs in the Florida Keys, USA. Findings will also be communicated to the broader stakeholder community through the PIs' roles in various advisory groups. Finally, the project will directly involve high school students, undergraduates and graduate students in primary data collection and translation of this work, providing opportunities for education, training and broader community engagement with coral science and conservation.This project aims to generate quantitative empirical data on the role of morphological plasticity in the eco-evolutionary dynamics of a foundation species in nature. Clonal replicates of A. cervicornis genotypes that are known to exhibit variation in their capacity for plasticity will be used to: (1) Investigate the mechanistic basis of adaptive morphological plasticity through a lab-based water flow manipulation experiment to test the hypothesis that variation in morphological plasticity is driven by underlying changes in calcification and fine-scale structural variation in skeletal deposition; (2) Quantify costs and/or trade-offs that may limit the evolution of morphological plasticity through a combination of field and lab-based experiments testing for context-dependent trade-offs in the response to climate stressors (temperature and acidification) and reproductive investment; and (3) Evaluate the ecological consequences of plasticity at the community and ecosystem levels by creating A. cervicornis reefs that differ in their capacity for morphological plasticity and quantifying changes in the resulting composition and diversity of fish and invertebrate communities, as well as the function of the reefs in terms of their production and calcification. Taken together, this work will fill an empirical gap in our understanding of plasticity and its role in climate adaptation through investigating the effects on environmental adaptation across levels of biological organization.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.