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

气候变化威胁到种群，因为生物体的物理特征或表型可能不适应新的环境。最终，生物是生存还是灭绝将取决于它们在适应方向上改变表型的能力。对于经历可预测的环境波动的长寿、广泛分散的生物，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中发挥重要作用。本项目旨在解决加勒比基础珊瑚物种鹿角珊瑚（Acropora cervicornis）表型可塑性原因和后果的关键问题。了解表型可塑性在推动珊瑚移植成功中的作用，对于致力于保护和恢复珊瑚礁的珊瑚礁从业者和管理者来说也是必不可少的信息。这是因为在美国管辖水域和更广泛的加勒比地区，珊瑚礁生态系统的恢复严重依赖于精选珊瑚基因型或基因独特的个体的无性繁殖或“无性”繁殖，然后将其移植到新的环境中。通过与世界上领先的珊瑚礁恢复组织之一莫特海洋实验室的直接合作，这项工作的结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角色传达给更广泛的利益相关者群体。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主要数据收集和翻译，为珊瑚科学和保护的教育、培训和更广泛的社区参与提供机会。本项目旨在生成关于形态可塑性在自然基础物种生态进化动力学中的作用的定量经验数据。研究人员将利用已知具有可塑性能力变异的颈喙a.c ervicornis基因型的克隆重复进行以下研究：(1)通过室内水流操纵实验研究适应性形态可塑性的机制基础，以验证形态可塑性变异是由骨骼沉积中钙化和精细尺度结构变化的潜在变化驱动的假说；(2)量化可能限制形态可塑性进化的成本和/或权衡，通过实地和实验室实验相结合的方式，测试对气候压力源（温度和酸化）和生殖投资的响应中依赖于环境的权衡；(3)在群落和生态系统水平上，通过创建形态可塑性能力不同的颈角棘鱼珊瑚礁，量化鱼类和无脊椎动物群落组成和多样性的变化，以及珊瑚礁在生产和钙化方面的功能，评估可塑性的生态后果。综上所述，这项工作将通过研究生物组织水平对环境适应的影响，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。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.