CAREER: Parasites, Sea Level Rise, and Ecosystem Dynamics: Investigating the Pattern and Process of Increasing Trematode Prevalence During Transgression

GSTDTAP

项目编号	1650745
	CAREER: Parasites, Sea Level Rise, and Ecosystem Dynamics: Investigating the Pattern and Process of Increasing Trematode Prevalence During Transgression
	John Huntley
主持机构	University of Missouri-Columbia
项目开始年	2017
	2017-06-01
项目结束日期	2022-05-31
资助机构	US-NSF
项目类别	Continuing grant
项目经费	120614(USD)
国家	美国
语种	英语
英文摘要	The PI has shown that the occurrence of parasitic flatworms infesting clams and their relatives in coastal environments increased significantly during conditions of sea level rise. These clams are often economically important sources of food or play vital roles in food webs important to humans. This pattern has been noted in modern and fossil shells from estuaries and shore environments on two continents, but has not yet been demonstrated across these environments in a single region. More importantly, the environmental and/or biological factors driving the increasing severity of parasitism remain unknown. This project will test the general applicability of the pattern, use a variety of techniques to determine why parasites flourished during sea level rise, and will provide a long term perspective for efforts to determine how parasitic flatworms and their hosts will likely respond to environmental change. As such, this work will be of broad interest in paleobiology, geology, ecology, parasitology, epidemiology, and medicine. The education plan for this CAREER proposal is uniquely integrated with the research by taking advantage of the geological setting and cultural landmarks at the University of Missouri (MU) to expand the public understanding of Earth systems processes and history through the development of a novel curriculum called The Geology of the Columns. Attempts to predict how pathogens will respond to environmental change in the 21st Century often lack a perspective of how ecosystems have responded to similar change over geologic time. By applying a variety of geological, paleontological, ecological, and geochemical techniques to the recent fossil record, this transformative project will investigate the pattern and process of how parasites, as key and often overlooked components of seafloor ecosystems, and their communities have responded during Holocene and Pleistocene sea level cycles. A variety of factors will be examined, such as salinity, temperature, host availability and community structure. In parallel, the PI is developing a curriculum called Geology of the Columns to improve education about the basic principles of deep time and Earth systems processes, key themes in the research of this award. This curriculum will lead to a new course reaching ~600 general education undergraduate students and a standards-oriented professional development workshop and online course for middle and high school science teachers in Missouri and beyond. The PI and colleagues at the Universitá di Bologna (Italy) will provide mentored international research experiences for graduate and undergraduate students (REU).
来源学科分类	Geosciences - Earth Sciences
文献类型	项目
条目标识符	http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/71090
专题	环境与发展全球科技态势
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	John Huntley.CAREER: Parasites, Sea Level Rise, and Ecosystem Dynamics: Investigating the Pattern and Process of Increasing Trematode Prevalence During Transgression.2017.