Postdoctoral Fellowship: OCE-PRF: Do Pelagic Subsidies Modulate Coral Survivorship in a Warming Ocean?

珊瑚礁只占海底不到1%，却拥有超过25%的海洋生物多样性。珊瑚礁生态系统为10多亿人提供海岸线保护、药品、渔业和旅游收入以及重要的蛋白质。目前，由于全球海洋温度上升导致珊瑚白化、栖息地退化和生态系统功能丧失，珊瑚礁正受到巨大威胁。最近的海洋学进展表明，尽管全球海洋温度上升，但随着海洋继续变暖，区域尺度的洋流、上升流和内波在珊瑚生存和生态系统保护方面发挥着至关重要的作用。这个项目的目的是在红海南部的一个珊瑚礁上升流模型系统中揭示这种观察到的现象的机制。这项研究将能够确定世界各地的珊瑚礁生态系统将由于区域海洋学的变化而保持对气候变化的适应能力。该项目将支持在美国举行的国际科学家会议，这些科学家领导着印度-太平洋和红海的保护工作。此外，罗德岛大学的学生将为该项目做出贡献，并将接受海洋数据科学和分析化学方面的指导。总体而言，该项目旨在揭示珊瑚礁对区域海洋学模式和全球海洋变暖的复杂反应，重点是国际合作和珊瑚礁保护。越来越多的证据表明，经历季节性上升流或内波的珊瑚礁可能在未来50年成为重要的珊瑚礁避难所。珊瑚礁上的深水浅滩以必要的营养物质、颗粒和浮游生物的形式提供远洋补贴，可以促进珊瑚的摄食和生长。但对于经历上升流的珊瑚礁将如何应对这些补贴，以及这如何影响珊瑚在全球海洋温度上升时的生存，存在着一个基本的知识缺口。这项拟议的工作旨在将“自下而上”的浮游食物网的海洋强迫联系起来，并将其与珊瑚营养动力学和随后实现的珊瑚营养生态位的耐热应激出口联系起来。利用一种多方面的分析化学方法，包括氨基酸的化合物特定同位素分析、脂肪酸分析和最近开发的“压力测试”检测器，该项目计划测试三个假设。这三个假设旨在回答关于公海珊瑚礁连通性、珊瑚摄食对上升流的变化以及混合营养转变引起的珊瑚压力反应等关键问题。这项工作将回答珊瑚礁上升流的关键机械未知数，并能够预测世界各地上升流珊瑚礁上的珊瑚生存能力。该项目由GEO/OCE博士后奖学金计划和既定的激励竞争研究计划(EPSCoR)联合资助。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 occupy less than 1% of the ocean floor yet host more than 25% of all marine biodiversity. Reef ecosystems provide shoreline protection, pharmaceuticals, fishing and tourism revenue, and significant protein to more than one billion people. Currently, coral reefs are under great threat due to rising global ocean temperatures leading to coral bleaching, habitat degradation and loss of ecosystem function. Recent oceanographic advances show that while global ocean temperature rises, regional scale ocean currents, upwelling and internal waves play essential roles in coral survivorship and ecosystem preservation as the ocean continues to warm. This project aims to uncover the mechanisms of this observed phenomenon in a model reef upwelling system in the southern Red Sea. This study will enable identification of reef ecosystems around the world that will remain resilient to climate change due to shifts in regional oceanography. This project will involve support for a U.S. based conference with international scientists who are leading conservation efforts in the Indo-Pacific and the Red Sea. Additionally, students at the University of Rhode Island will contribute to the project and will be mentored in oceanographic data science and analytical chemistry. Overall, this project aims to uncover the complex response of coral reefs to regional oceanographic patterns and global ocean warming with an emphasis on international collaboration and coral reef conservation.Growing evidence suggests that reefs that experience seasonal upwelling or internal waves could serve as vital coral refugia in the next ~50 years. Deep water shoaling onto reefs provides pelagic subsidies in the form of essential nutrients, particles, and plankton that can enhance coral feeding and growth. But there is an essential knowledge gap regarding how reefs that experience upwelling will respond to these subsidies and how this influences coral survivorship to rising global ocean temperatures. The proposed work aims to connect “bottom-up” oceanographic forcing of planktonic food webs and link this to coral trophic dynamics and the subsequent thermal stress tolerance outfalls of the realized trophic niche of corals. Using a multi-faceted analytical chemistry approach involving compound-specific isotope analysis of amino acids, fatty acid analysis and recently developed “stress-test” detectors, the project plans to test three hypotheses. The three hypotheses are aimed to answer vital questions regarding open-ocean reef connectivity, variations in coral feeding to upwelling and coral stress response due to shifts in mixotrophy. This work will answer key mechanistic unknowns of upwelling on coral reefs and enable predictive power for coral survivorship on upwelling reefs around the world.This project is jointly funded by GEO/OCE Postdoctoral Fellowships Program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).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.