Ecological Leads: Drugs from Reefs and Microbes in Fiji

描述（由申请人提供）：这是一项计划拨款，允许一个由佐治亚理工学院的海洋生态学家、化学家和政策/经济发展教员、斯克里普斯海洋学研究所的海洋化学家和微生物学家，以及南太平洋大学的天然产物化学、生物多样性保护和经济发展教员组成的联盟，合作研究如何将斐济珊瑚礁生物的海洋天然产物用于药物开发。加强地方的努力，重点放在自然保护和基于保护海洋生物多样性的经济发展上。第二项努力集中在当地淡水栖息地的类似目标上。这项“来自海洋的药物”的努力将运用斐济传统治疗师的生态学见解和线索，在斐济的海洋微生物、海藻、底栖无脊椎动物和淡水大型植物中发现新的生物化学多样性。与这些生物勘探工作同时进行的是注重保护和经济发展的补充工作。在发展中国家，成功的生物多样性保护取决于充分参与该生物多样性使用者的规划过程，从而促进这些使用者了解他们从这种保护中获益。在地方一级，这可以通过制定以社区为基础的资源管理计划和以所保护的生物多样性为基础的其他创收活动来实现。这种努力已经在斐济开始，但这一ICBG方案的努力将大大加强这些努力。在更大的范围内，保护遗传资源的关键步骤之一是开发其组织的空间明确模型。这将允许系统地探索治疗有用的化合物，并加强保护和管理的能力，以防止生物多样性的丧失和依赖于生物多样性的经济机会的丧失。地理信息系统将用于发展斐济维提岛珊瑚礁的生物多样性模型，并纳入一个环境参数数据库。这将有助于评估当地管理的海洋保护区的影响，并作为早期发现珊瑚礁退化的基线。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a planning grant to allow a consortium of marine ecologists, chemists, and policy/economic development faculty from Georgia Tech, marine chemists and microbiologists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and natural products chemistry, biodiversity conservation, and economic development faculty from the University of the South Pacific to cooperatively investigate how marine natural products from coral reef organisms in Fiji might be used for drug development, and to enhance local efforts focused on madne conservation and on economic development based on preservation of marine biodiversity. A secondary effort focuses on similar goals in local freshwater habitats. This "drugs from the sea" effort will apply ecological insights and leads from traditional Fijian healers to discover new biochemical diversity among the marine microbes, seaweeds, benthic invertebrates and freshwater macrophytes of Fiji. Coincident with these bioprospecting efforts will be complementary efforts focused on conservation and economic development. In developing countries, successful biodiversity conservation depends on full involvement in the planning process of the users of that biodiversity, thus, promoting the understanding among these users that they benefit from such conservation. At a local level this can be achieved through the development of community-based resource management plans and alternative income-generating activities based on the biodiversity being conserved. Such efforts are already beginning in Fiji, but these would be enhanced significantly by the efforts of this ICBG program. At a larger scale one of the key steps for conservation of genetic resources is developing spatially explicit models of their organization. This will allow systematic exploration for therapeutically useful compounds and enhance the ability to conserve and manage so as to prevent loss of biodiversity and loss of economic opportunities dependent upon biodiversity. Geographic information systems (GIS) will be used to develop a model of biodiversity on the coral reefs of Viti Levu, Fiji and to incorporate a database of environmental parameters. This will facilitate an assessment of the effects of locally managed marine protected areas, and serve as a baseline for early detection of reef degradation.