Scaling-up restorative assisted evolution on Anthropocene coral reefs

由于人类的影响，全球范围内的珊瑚礁面临着前所未有的减少和生态变化。这尤其令人担忧，因为珊瑚礁支撑着渔业和旅游业的生计，它们是抵御风暴的海岸保护，也是独特的生物多样性的避难所。即使禁止捕鱼或营养物富集等局部干扰，大规模珊瑚白化事件仍在全球范围内发生。这是由严重的海洋热浪造成的。随着海洋因气候变化而升温，海洋热浪变得越来越频繁，持续时间也越来越长。如果不采取行动，珊瑚礁提供的社会生态服务可能会在3-5年内因气候变化而丧失。不幸的是，在《巴黎协定》等现有协议下，减缓温室效应和减轻这些生态影响所需的全球碳排放减少将很难实现。因此，现在至关重要的是考虑如何使用积极的管理干预措施来支持未来珊瑚礁的恢复力。我们在英国纽卡斯尔大学的实验室小组CORALASSIST正在研究这个课题。我们正在测试珊瑚恢复技术，并结合使用天然耐热珊瑚的选择性繁殖。我们对单个珊瑚耐热性的生理和基因组基础有了新的认识，但这对整个珊瑚礁生态系统有什么好处呢？与加拿大英属哥伦比亚大学气候与海岸生态系统实验室（CCEL）拟议的合作将旨在回答这个问题。CCEL是一群全球气候建模和珊瑚专家，这是我们英国研究小组所缺乏的领域。这一合作将把来自CORALASSIST的个人层面的科学知识整合到更大的空间人口建模框架中。我们将使用来自世界各地气候模拟中心（IPCC）的一套全球气候预测，结合历史温度数据和CORALASSIST数据，完成3项主要任务。1)我们将为太平洋的帕劳、密克罗尼西亚、帕劳建立一个缩小尺度的海温（SST）预估。2)我们将利用这个海温预估来了解不同气候情景下帕劳珊瑚礁的未来轨迹。3)我们会模拟珊瑚的恢复工作，以便为珊瑚礁的管理者提供有用的建议，例如“需要多久以及需要多少耐热珊瑚才能使珊瑚礁生态系统长期受益”。除此之外，我们将进行两次短期访问，向更广泛的科学界传播我们的研究，同时也从其他科学家那里获得宝贵的想法。维多利亚大学的鲍姆实验室将提供整个生态系统建模的观点，而加州大学戴维斯分校的海湾实验室将提供将遗传数据整合到珊瑚种群适应模型中的专业知识。

NERC : Liam Lachs : NE/S007512/1Coral reefs face unprecedented declines and ecological changes worldwide due to the impact of humans. This is particularly worrying as coral reefs support fisheries and tourism livelihoods, they act as a coastal protection from storms, and also harbour unique biodiversity. Even when local disturbances like fishing or nutrient enrichment are banned, mass coral bleaching events have still occurred on a global scale. This is caused by severe marine heatwaves. As the oceans heat up due to climate change, marine heatwaves become ever more frequent and last for longer periods. Without action, the socio-ecological services provided by coral reefs may be lost within 3-5 decades due to climate change. Unfortunately, the global reduction in carbon emissions needed to slow the greenhouse effect and mitigate these ecological impacts is going to be very difficult to achieve under current agreements like the Paris Agreement. Therefore, it is now critical to consider how active management interventions can be used to support the resilience of coral reefs in the future. CORALASSIST, our lab group in Newcastle University, United Kingdom, is working on this topic. We are testing coral restoration techniques combined with selective breeding using naturally heat tolerant corals. We are gaining new insights on the physiological and genomic basis for heat tolerance in individual corals, but how can this benefit an entire coral reef ecosystem?The proposed collaboration with the Climate and Coastal Ecosystem Laboratory (CCEL), University of British Columbia, Canada, will aim to answer this question. CCEL are a group of global climate modelling and coral experts, an area that is lacking from our UK research group. This collaboration will integrate the individual-level scientific knowledge from CORALASSIST into larger spatial population modelling frameworks. We will use a suite of global climate projections from climate modelling centres across the world (IPCC), combined with historical temperature data and CORALASSIST data, to do 3 main tasks.1) We will develop a downscaled sea surface temperature (SST) projection for Palau, Micronesia, Pacific Ocean.2) We will use this SST projection to understand the future trajectory of Palauan coral reefs under different climate scenarios.3) We will simulate coral restoration efforts in order to provide useful advice to coral reef managers, such as "how soon and how many heat-tolerant corals are needed to benefit coral reef ecosystems in the long-term".In addition to this, we will conduct 2 short visits to disseminate our research to the wider scientific community, but also to gain valuable ideas from other scientists. The Baum Lab in University of Victoria will give an entire ecosystem view of modelling, whilst the Bay Lab in University of California Davis will provide expert knowledge on integrating genetic data into coral population adaptation models.