Collaborative Research: Energetic Controls on Marine Benthic Community Structure in Space and Time

Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The modern oceans and the ecosystems they contain resulted from millions of years of change in physical and biological ocean systems. One aspect of the environment that has a large impact on marine animals is the amount of available food and nutrients. Understanding how individual organisms and biological communities adapt and respond to changes in nutrient availability advances scientific knowledge by 1) improving understanding of how the physical environment drives evolution, and 2) providing insight into how decreased nutrients might trigger regional extinction events. These results are important for understanding the geologic history of life as well as its future. In addition to these scientific objectives, this project supports the training and advancement of students through 1) an inclusive field course for advanced undergraduate students, 2) the development of a graduate student cohort trained to participate in international field research, and 3) the production of a bilingual graphic novel to increase scientific literacy in K-12 students in the US and the Caribbean. The Biological Oceanography Program co-reviewed and co-funded this project with the Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology Program. The goal of this project is to understand and characterize the relationship between surface productivity and ecological structure in marine benthos by (1) evaluating how productivity affects the energetic and trophic structure of marine benthic communities on both sides of the modern Isthmus of Panama, (2) using this knowledge to evaluate the fossil record of Caribbean benthic ecosystems before, during, and after the uplift of the isthmus, and (3) relating ecosystem changes driven by productivity shifts to the well-documented Caribbean extinction event ~2 Ma. The project leverages collections from the Panama Paleontology Project, which includes extensive collections of modern mollusks and rich fossil collections, to meet these objectives. The project applies new technologies, including high-throughput imaging and automated morphometric methods, to analyze the size-frequency distribution and calculate measures of energetics. The project also explores how trophic composition, larval dispersal mode, and predatory attack frequencies in mollusk shells in modern death assemblages and fossil assemblages vary across productivity gradients. The project will advance the community’s current understanding of how these ecological traits are influenced by productivity in modern systems and the role they have played in the evolution of modern Caribbean ecosystems. The Biological Oceanography Program co-reviewed and co-funded this project with the Sedimentary Geology and Paleobiology Program. 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.