How marine biology will react to ongoing global change-driven chemical and physical alterations in the marine environment is presently uncertain. It is clear, though, that biological evolution (adaptation) as well as other processes such as phenotypic plasticity and epigenetics are potential responses to global change. These processes are not well understood in marine systems, but could be crucial because they can prevent extirpation or local extinction of marine biota. The role of adaptation in rapidly changing marine ecosystems thus urgently needs consideration. However, most oceanographers are not experts in evolutionary biology and theory, and vice versa. To address this question and begin to bridge this disciplinary gap, the investigators convened an NSF-supported catalytic workshop in October 2009. At this workshop 15 invited experts in marine science and/or evolutionary biology identified a set of discussion priorities to be addressed at a subsequent larger, interdisciplinary community forum. These included: Can evolutionary theory help predict how marine organisms will react to global change? What are the critical rates of environmental change for different taxa and different environments? What are the limits to phenotypic plasticity and what is its relationship to long-term evolution? How do the many complex, co-occurring environmental factors that will typify climate change in the oceans interact to determine fitness? How can we interpret marine genomes in light of evolutionary theories with regard to climate change? Can we use evolutionary theory to predict consequences for complex, dynamic systems? Does evolution contribute to buffering ecosystem responses to environmental changes?

At the invitation of the Biological Oceanography Program the investigators will convene an NSF-supported workshop of about 50 invited participants, to be held at the USC Wrigley Institute conference facility on Catalina Island in May of 2010 that will address these open questions. The intention is to build upon and extend the productive discussions from the catalytic workshop in a larger and more diverse group. This workshop will examine the current concerns of the ocean science community about impacts of global change on marine biology, and try for the first time to craft recommendations about how we could begin to incorporate basic principles of evolutionary biology into our understanding of these processes. The coPIs on the core steering committee, the original larger catalytic committee, and many new invited workshop participants will consist of experts in ocean global change biogeochemistry and biology, organismal physiology, and also recognized authorities in evolutionary biology. Ways to address these almost untouched questions will also be explored, ranging from modern genomics and proteomics approaches to laboratory and field experimentation and observation and quantitative biological and biogeochemical modeling.

Broader Impacts The steering committee is committed to fostering diversity in science and will actively seek participation by early career scientists, female investigators, and members of underrepresented groups. Graduate and undergraduate education will be furthered by encouraging our students to attend the plenary sessions, which will also be open to the public. Dissemination of our discussion findings to the scientific community will be accomplished through the workshop report, through oral presentations to NSF program managers and at scientific meeting venues, and a planned summary article in a high impact peer-reviewed journal. Both scientific and public outreach will be targeted on the workshop website by posting plenary talk outlines and slides, our final report, and a general audience summary online.

Project Report

The impacts of global climate change on natural and human-managed ecosystems are now apparent on a worldwide basis, and a major focus of research is to predict where and when future effects are most likely to occur. Nowhere is the difficulty of predicting the future responses of the biosphere to climate change more evident than in marine ecosystems. Overwhelming evidence now documents the many concurrent challenges that organisms face in today’s changing ocean, including sea surface warming, ocean acidification, salinity changes, and sea level rise. Predicting the impacts of these anthropogenically-driven environmental changes is especially problematic, because they are occurring at rates that are completely unprecedented in the modern ocean. In contrast to natural climatic shifts, which occur on geological timescales, dramatic changes in key environmental variables like temperature are now occurring over mere decades. Within the global change biology research community, the response of organisms to climate change drivers has been categorized into three major response options: (1) movement (migration) to more suitable habitat resulting in changes in biogeographic distributions or range shifts, (2) acclimatization, or an organism’s physiological ability to tolerate new environmental conditions without a change in genetics, and (3) adaptation via microevolution. A critical unanswered question is whether rapidly changing environmental conditions will out-pace the ability of marine organisms to adapt or acclimatize to new conditions. In light of these many unknowns about the ability of marine organisms to adapt to global change, it has become increasingly evident that there is a pressing need for a much greater degree of communication and collaboration between ocean scientists and evolutionary biologists. What will be needed to grapple with the issues outlined above is a true cross-fertilization between the in-depth understanding of ocean ecosystems that is the province of marine scientists, and the equally profound insights into the nature of organismal adaptation and microevolution that only evolutionary biologists possess. In view of these needs, NSF OCE Biological Oceanography supported a small, focused catalytic workshop at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) in Durham, North Carolina (October 1-2, 2009). The goal of this initial meeting of 15 participants was to lay the groundwork for organizing a larger community workshop that would focus on identifying the most critical and productive interdisciplinary research directions to address these questions, using the combined and collaborative expertise of both marine scientists and evolutionary biologists. Based on the results of this initial meeting, a steering committee comprising the Principal investigators organized the Evolution and Climate Change in the Ocean (ECCO) workshop which took place May 7-9 at the USC Wrigley Institute on Catalina Island, CA. Participants included 36 invited scientists representing a broad range of marine and evolutionary disciplines, as well as 2 NSF OCE program managers. During the ECCO workshop key themes emerged that spanned several levels of biological organization. These themes were identified over the course of two separate day-long breakout sessions, as were a number of specific avenues for overcoming barriers to collaboration and implementing research goals in the ocean global change/evolution field. These recommendations were assembled into a verbal report that was delivered at NSF headquarters, as well as in a written report that outlined future directions to further cross-disciplinary research in this emerging field. Broader Impacts: Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing society today, and science can play a critical role by providing decision makers with information on where, when and with what magnitude effects are most likely to occur. Given the complexity of the natural environment, such predictions require a detailed understanding of how organisms interact with and are affected by their physical environment, including the capacity to acclimatize to and potentially adapt to some level of climate change. By assembling experts from ocean science and evolutionary biology, the workshops sponsored by this proposal made major advances in dissolving barriers that have so far hampered our ability to explore these concepts.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Ocean Sciences (OCE)
Type
Standard Grant (Standard)
Application #
1032161
Program Officer
David Garrison
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2010-04-01
Budget End
2011-03-31
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2010
Total Cost
$90,478
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Southern California
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Los Angeles
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
90089