Biodiversity affects the proper functioning of ecosystems, their resistance to environmental changes, and their ability to recover after disturbance. One component of biodiversity, the diversity of genes within populations, is receiving more attention following recient technological advances enabling researchers to measure and map genetic diversity in nature. Evidence has shown that this genetic diversity can be as important in maintaining a healthy ecosystem as the number of different species interacting in an area. This work will study how genetic diversity of an important widespread seagrass species affects its competition with seasonally-abundant algae under current and future expected environmental temperature changes. Because seagrass beds are important to maintain coastal water quality, control erosion, and as nursery grounds for commercially important species, this research is relevant to the ecology, economics and food security of coastal zones. The funding will establish an active collaboration between the researcher and his graduate student from the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI, a HBCU) and researchers at the University of California at Davis; and will take advantage of the world-class Climate Change Research Facility at Bodega Marine Laboratory. Additionally, this fellowship will facilitate the development of techniques to assess genetic diversity of Caribbean seagrasses, which are facing multiple environmental threats including possible displacement by a fast-spreading introduced seagrass originally form the Red Sea an Indian Ocean. These techniques will be leveraged to develop future proposals and provide opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students at UVI.
Recent work has highlighted that intraspecific genetic diversity may be as important as species diversity in mediating ecosystem function, resistance to disturbance and resilience. Under the context of climate change, genetic diversity has also received attention for determining adaptive potential of species to global temperature increases. However, temperature also has a strong effect on species interactions. To date, the combined effects of genotype and temperature on interaction strength remain unknown. This work will evaluate the influence of plant genotype in determining the outcome of competition between the seagrass Zostera marina, an important ecosystem engineer, and the seasonally-abundant green alga Ulva lactuca. By conducting experiments at the Climate Change Research Facility of Bodega Marine Laboratory (BML) housed at the University of California at Davis, this research will assess the outcome of competitive interactions between Z. marina known genotypes and U. lactuca, under current and future temperatures predicted by global warming models. The fellowship will provide a transformative opportunity for the PI and a graduate student from the University of the Virgin Islands (a HBCU) by establishing a synergistic collaboration with experts at UC Davis and BML. In particular, the seagrass genotyping techniques developed by collaborators at UC Davis will be adapted to the study of Caribbean species, which are currently declining as a result of multiple environmental stressors including potential displacement by the introduced seagrass Halophila stipulacea.
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.
