Project: The significance of doliolid-microbial interactions: Do doliolids fundamentally alter the trophic structure and productivity of sub-tropical continental shelf food webs?

NSF Award Abstract:
Gelatinous zooplankton play crucial but poorly understood roles in food webs and element cycling in the world's oceans. This is especially true for smaller mucus-feeding gelatinous animals including the pelagic tunicates (salps, pyrosomes, larvaceans, and doliolids). Doliolids form massive blooms in particle and nutrient-rich waters of the world’s continental shelves, often exceeding 1,000 zooids m-3 and extending 100’s of km. These blooms are likely to alter the structure and function of marine food webs. When crustacean zooplankton (copepods) are the primary consumers of phytoplankton they nourish larger species such as fish, birds, and marine mammals. The investigators hypothesize that doliolid blooms, in contrast, enhance microbial loop processes leading to a lower efficiency of trophic transfer to larger consumers. In this project, the investigators examine the role that doliolids play in linking and modifying microbial loop and classical food web processes in subtropical continental shelf systems. In addition to the project’s focus on a central theme in biological oceanography, the results of this project are of broader interest. Specifically, gelatinous zooplankton remain a poorly resolved component of ecosystem models, and a better understanding of how these communities interact with microbial processes and are influenced by chemical and physical conditions will improve predictions of population- and ecosystem-level responses to the myriad of environmental stressors. The project supports a targeted effort to increase the representation of African Americans in the Ocean Sciences, provides experiential research opportunities to K-12 educators, supports 2 PhD students and several undergraduate students, and involves an investigator at the beginning of his academic career.

The long-term goal of this project is to understand the ecological function of doliolids on subtropical continental shelves and their influence on microbial processes. In association with monthly oceanographic field expeditions on the mid-continental shelf at 31°N and two longer longitudinal expeditions complemented with experimental studies, the project investigates the relationship between doliolid abundance and life stage composition, their spatial relationships to marine snow aggregates and other zooplankton, water column microbial activity, bacterial production, and net system productivity. Utilizing a constellation of modern and classical approaches in microbial and zooplankton ecology, including deployment of an in situ zooplankton imaging system in the South Atlantic Bight, microbial metagenomics and transcriptomics, and stable isotope-based tracer experiments, these studies will allow the testing of three fundamental hypotheses. First, independent of total shelf productivity, the presence and abundance of doliolids is correlated with heterotrophy compared to periods when doliolids are not abundant. Second, doliolids predictably shape continental shelf microbial communities, activity, and function, and third, doliolids are detrital feeders benefiting nutritionally from the consumption of microbial enriched aggregated particles and fecal material - the pool to which they also contribute.

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.