Project: Metacommunity Dynamics at Hydrothermal Vents

NSF Award Abstract:
In this project, the researchers will develop new mathematical models to study the population dynamics of organisms that live at deep-sea hydrothermal vents, areas of the seafloor where volcanic activity causes hot, chemical-rich fluids to exit. The discovery of these vents in 1977 revealed unexpectedly novel and diverse organisms, challenging the prevailing view of the deep sea as a sparsely populated desert. Recent international efforts to mine hydrothermal vent deposits rich in copper, gold, silver and zinc are intensely debated, as deep-sea mineral mining can destroy diverse vent communities and alter the surrounding seafloor habitat. The investigators will extend their models to analyze the potential effects of mining activities. Results from new models will be synthesized to meet the needs of potential stakeholders, including organizations that advise, manage, and conduct activities related to seafloor mining and Marine Protected Areas. Research products will be disseminated as reports and in stakeholder meetings such as those organized by the International Seabed Authority and the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative. The research team will work with graphic artists, video producers, and educators to develop new educational presentations for the NOAA Science on a Sphere® (SOS) system. This new content will be distributed via open access to the entire SOS Users Network and incorporated into SOS programs at over 100 science centers across the U.S. and in 20 other countries. Undergraduate students will participate in the project through the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Summer Student Fellowship Program and the Woods Hole Partnership Education Program. These two programs provide students with authentic research experiences; the PEP program attracts underrepresented minority students, and offers them a short course in marine science and a research internship along with a 6-wk research project.

Metacommunity theory offers important advantages over alternative approaches in modeling vent ecosystems, and the proposed work will advance both our understanding of these communities and strategies for developing models of metacommunities more generally. The proposed work substantially expands earlier metacommunity models for vent systems developed by the researchers in innovative ways. The analyses will remove many initial constraints and add important considerations including site-dependent transition probabilities and clustering of nearby sites with shared characteristics. The options for modeling dispersal properties with two alternative dispersal kernels will also advance understanding. The researchers will examine recognized successional patterns not considered in the previous work using patch occupancy models, and they will carry out sensitivity analyses to evaluate the role of parameters for which uncertainty is high, such as larval duration and dispersal distance, patch disturbance rates and recovery times. This element of the work plan will serve to prioritize future field research, emphasizing the role that models can play in guiding research programs.