Organic-rich habitat islands support specialized communities throughout natural ecosystems and often play fundamental roles in maintaining alpha and beta diversity, thus facilitating adaptive radiation and evolutionary novelty. Whale-bone and wood falls occur widely in the deep-sea and contribute fundamentally to biodiversity and evolutionary novelty; nonetheless, large-scale patterns of biodiversity, connectivity, and ecosystem function in these organic-rich metacommunity systems remain essentially unexplored.
The PIs propose a novel comparative experimental approach to evaluate bathymetric, regional, and inter-basin variations in biodiversity and connectivity, as well as interactions between biodiversity and ecosystem function, in whale-bone and wood-fall habitats at the deep-sea floor. Their experiments will use bottom landers to carry and hold samples of bone and wood and a control substrate (basalt) at two depths (1500 and 3000 m), 250-500 km apart, in the NE Pacific and SW Atlantic basins, with quantitative recovery of the colonizing assemblages 15 month later. Each depth will have three replicates. Their experiments will test fundamental hypotheses concerning biodiversity (genetic and taxonomic) and biogeography of macrofaunal and microbial organisms exploiting these resource-rich habitats in energy limited deep-sea environments, and will explore the utility of whale-bone and wood falls as model experimental systems to address patterns of connectivity and decomposer function in the deep sea.
The project will have broader impacts in five areas: (1) At least two graduate students will conduct Ph.D. research, and three undergraduate students will participate in research cruises and develop senior theses within the project. (2) Project results will be incorporated into undergraduate and graduate courses at two universities. (3) The PIs will develop and deliver a new a graduate-level summer course at Friday Harbor Laboratory entitled Deep-Sea Biodiversity, Connectivity and EcosystemFunction based on project results. A similar course will be offered at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil at no cost to NSF. (4) Public outreach will include project web sites and cruise blogs at both the University of Hawaii (UH) and Auburn University, and presentations at UH and Auburn open houses. (5) Results will be presented at conservation forums such as the annual meeting of Pew Fellows in Marine Conservation.
