CAREER: Species Interactions of Coral Reef Benthic Cyanobacterial Mats: Within-Mat Diversity Promotes Both Facilitation and Top-Down Control

滋扰藻类大量繁殖是全球生态系统面临的巨大保护挑战。底栖蓝细菌垫(BCMS)在时间上和空间上可以在珊瑚礁上持久存在，通过物理窒息和与包括珊瑚在内的其他珊瑚礁生物的化学作用构成额外的环境威胁。这项研究试图了解导致水华寿命的过程，如微生物物种之间的新陈代谢合作，并研究水华控制的自然机制，如大型捕食者、珊瑚鱼和病毒的组合。研究小组利用珊瑚礁管理方面的研究成果，制定全球适用的潜水员干预措施，以控制蓝藻的繁殖，并为加勒比潜水和浮潜旅游业开发培训材料和领导讲习班，以在5年期项目中扩大潜水员干预措施的使用。该教育计划的重点是对北卡罗来纳大学转学学生群体中的本科生研究实习生进行高投资培训，以及为博士后研究人员、研究生、本科生和高中生提供培训机会，生成数据以整合到公开可用的本科生水平的生物信息学案例研究中，并通过国际微生物扫盲倡议开发K-12教育材料。了解导致长期繁荣的生态过程是本研究解决的一个主要研究空白，其重点是促进新陈代谢和自上而下地控制BCMS。这项研究通过(1)垫内代谢移交的机制特征，(2)确定病毒驱动的垫内代谢合作的变化，以及(3)描述微(病毒)和大尺度(鱼)捕食之间的相互作用，对我们对海洋蓝藻垫功能生态学的了解做出了三个主要贡献。无论是否支持特定的假设，这项研究产生的数据通过使用机械假说检验生态学理论来理解密度依赖的裂解-溶源开关之间的功能马赛克的生物地球化学结果，从而极大地推动了病毒营养生态学领域的发展。该项目预计将为造垫细菌之间的合作互动以及包括珊瑚礁、鱼类和病毒在内的多种捕食者控制水华的作用提供证据。病毒生态学很难在自然微生物系统中研究，因此该项目有助于我们了解病毒在自然环境中的生态作用。该奖项由生物海洋学和海洋教育计划支持。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。

Nuisance algal blooms are a massive conservation challenge to global ecosystems. Benthic cyanobacterial mats (BCMs) can be persistent in time and spatially expansive on coral reefs, posing additional environmental threats through physical smothering of and chemical interactions with other reef organisms, including corals. This research seeks to understand processes that lead to bloom longevity, such as metabolic cooperation between microbial species, and to study natural mechanisms of bloom control, such as the combination of large-bodied predators, reef fish, and viruses. The research team leverages research results towards coral reef management to develop globally-applicable SCUBA diver interventions to control cyanobacterial blooms and develops training materials and lead workshops for the Caribbean dive and snorkel tourism industries to scale up the use of diver interventions over the 5-year project. The education plan focuses on high-investment training of undergraduate research interns from UNC’s transfer student population together with training opportunities for postdoctoral researchers, graduate, undergraduate, and high school students, generates data to be integrated into publicly available undergraduate-level bioinformatics case studies, and develops K-12 educational materials through the International Microbiology Literacy Initiative.Understanding ecological processes that lead to prolonged blooms are a major research gap addressed by this research, which focuses on metabolic facilitation and top-down controls on BCMs. The research makes three major contributions to our knowledge of the functional ecology of marine cyanobacterial mats via (1) mechanistic characterization of within-mat metabolic handoffs, (2) identification of viral-driven changes to within-mat metabolic cooperation, and (3) description of interactions between micro- (viral) and macro-scale (fish) predation. Regardless of whether specific hypotheses are supported, the data generated by this research greatly advance the field of viral trophic ecology by testing ecological theory using a mechanistic hypothesis to understand biogeochemical outcomes of functional mosaics between density-dependent lysis-lysogeny switches. This project is expected to produce evidence for the roles of cooperative interactions among mat-building bacteria and bloom control by multiple predators including reef fish and viruses. Viral ecology is difficult to study in natural microbial systems, and thus this project contributes to our knowledge about the ecological roles of viruses in natural contexts.This award is supported by the Biological Oceanography and Ocean Education Programs.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.