Flexing your mussels: futureproofing shellfish aquaculture in the face of global climate change

野生捕捞渔业和鱼类和贝类养殖（水产养殖）对全球粮食安全、营养和全世界数亿人的生计至关重要。然而，海洋正在以三亿年来前所未有的速度变化。这些变化对海洋生物构成重大挑战，影响海洋生态系统以及这些重要栖息地提供的商品和服务。为了满足预计到2050年将超过90亿的人口不断增长的需求，可持续地增加海产品生产是关键，而在同一时期，其粮食需求可能会增加70%。然而，目前我们这样做的能力受到野生鱼类资源过度开发的限制，以及用于养殖许多水产养殖物种的鱼粉对环境的影响。目前的预测表明，除非水产养殖的增长能够在同一时期翻一番，否则我们将在未来十年内面临2800万吨的海产品供需缺口。气候变化对这种扩张构成了重大挑战，而工业创新和科学专业知识是解决社会最大挑战之一的关键。促进对环境影响较小的物种（即贻贝和牡蛎等滤食性物种）的生产可以说是全球该部门可持续扩张的主要途径。然而，贻贝和牡蛎传统上也被认为是最容易受到气候变化影响的物种之一。因此，迫切需要研究开发适应气候变化的贝类物种，以促进未来的生产。该项目将研究温度升高和盐度降低对全球不同种类贻贝的影响。贻贝水产养殖在全球价值15亿英镑，按重量计算是欧洲的主要水产养殖部门。海洋贻贝由三种密切相关的物种组成，它们很容易杂交（杂交），也为研究杂交对气候变化耐受性的影响提供了一个独特的机会。这是一个关键的现有知识差距，解决这一差距将有助于改善全世界养殖贻贝种群的管理，并更好地了解环境对种群结构和野生种群进化的影响。在我的研究期间，我将采用新的基因技术开发一种与行业相关的工具（SNP阵列），以协助生产适应气候变化的贻贝。随后，我将利用多学科实验方法将这些遗传技术与贻贝性能和生理的传统测量相结合，测量来自全球地理范围内多个种群的这些反应。这种开创性的方法将使我能够解决一个首要问题：“杂交是否会给商业上重要的双壳类物种带来多重压力源暴露的优势？”这个问题具有根本性的科学重要性。回答它将提供前所未有的机制理解适应和进化的生理耐受性，以应对贻贝的非生物胁迫。这对21世纪贻贝养殖的可持续发展也具有重要意义。通过提供一种独特的、与行业相关的资源，将大大促进对生态生理学和进化生物学的理解，并使鉴定赋予贻贝耐受性的基因（例如通过全基因组关联研究）和选择性育种成为可能，这项研究将彻底改变双壳类水产养殖的未来。

Wild capture fisheries and the farming of fish and shellfish species (aquaculture) are vital for global food security, nutrition, and the livelihood of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. However, the oceans are changing at a rate unprecedented for 300 million years. These changes pose a significant challenge to marine organisms, impacting marine ecosystems and the goods and services that these crucial habitats provide. Sustainably increasing seafood production is key in order to meet the increasing demand of a population projected to exceed 9 billion by 2050, and whose food demand is likely to increase by 70% during this same period. However, our capacity to do so is currently limited by the overexploitation of wild fish stocks, as well as the environmental impact of fishmeal being used to grow many aquaculture species. Current projections suggest we face a 28 million tonne deficit in demand-supply of seafood within the next decade unless aquaculture growth can be doubled over this same period. Climate change poses a major challenge to this expansion with industrial innovation and scientific expertise being key for addressing one of society's greatest challenges. Promoting the production of species with less environmental impact (i.e. filter-feeding species such as mussels and oysters) arguably offers the main route for sustainable expansion of this sector globally. However, mussels and oysters are also traditionally considered to be amongst the most vulnerable with respect to climate change. Urgent research is therefore required to develop climate change resilient shellfish species to enable future production. This project will study the impact of elevated temperature and reduced salinity on different species of marine mussels from across their global range. Mussel aquaculture is worth £1.5bn globally, and is the primary aquaculture sector in Europe by weight. Consisting of three closely related species, which readily cross-breed (hybridise), marine mussels also offer a unique opportunity to investigate the impact of hybridisation on climate change tolerance. This is a key existing knowledge gap that when addressed will enable the improved management of farmed mussel populations worldwide, as well as a better understanding of the impact of environment on population structure and evolution in wild stocks. During my fellowship, I will employ novel genetic technology to develop an industry relevant tool (SNP array) to assist in the production of climate resilient mussels. Subsequently, I will utilise a multidisciplinary experimental approach combining these genetic techniques with traditional measures of mussel performance and physiology, measuring these responses in multiple populations from across the global geographic range. This pioneering approach will enable me to address the overarching question "does hybridisation confer an advantage to multi-stressor exposures in a commercially important bivalve species?" This question is of fundamental scientific importance. Answering it will provide an unprecedented mechanistic understanding of the adaptation and evolution of physiological tolerance in response to abiotic stress in mussels. It also has significant implications for the sustainable development of mussel aquaculture in the 21st century. By providing a unique, industry-relevant, resource that will significantly advance understanding of ecological physiology and evolutionary biology, as well as enable the identification of genes that confer tolerance (e.g. through genome wide association studies) and selective breeding of mussels, this study will revolutionise the future of bivalve aquaculture.