[{"awards": "2038149 Warner, Jacob", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-180 -60,-144 -60,-108 -60,-72 -60,-36 -60,0 -60,36 -60,72 -60,108 -60,144 -60,180 -60,180 -63,180 -66,180 -69,180 -72,180 -75,180 -78,180 -81,180 -84,180 -87,180 -90,144 -90,108 -90,72 -90,36 -90,0 -90,-36 -90,-72 -90,-108 -90,-144 -90,-180 -90,-180 -87,-180 -84,-180 -81,-180 -78,-180 -75,-180 -72,-180 -69,-180 -66,-180 -63,-180 -60))", "dataset_titles": null, "datasets": null, "date_created": "Wed, 09 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Antarctic marine invertebrates exhibit extraordinarily slow rates of development. This phenomenon has arisen repeatedly in independent Antarctic lineages, including sea urchins, sea stars, brachiopods, and ribbon worms. Despite these observations, little is known about the molecular mechanisms responsible for slow developmental rates in Antarctic marine invertebrates. This proposal is developing the Antarctic sea urchin, Sterechinus neumayeri, as a model invertebrate organism to evaluate cold water organismal adaptation and development. Urchins collected from McMurdo Sound are being studied in carefully controlled laboratory experiments. This work is specifically identifying the gene regulatory network components responsible for regulating developmental timing in S. neumayeri and, more generally, which gene regulatory network elements evolved during adaption to the extreme environment of the Southern Ocean. The lab-based work is focusing in two specific areas: 1) Identify unique gene regulatory network components of S. neumayeri that evolved during its developmental adaptation to the Southern Ocean, and 2) Analyze spatial expression and functions of key genes in the early S. neumayeri gene regulatory networks controlling specification and patterning of territories along the early anterior-posterior axis. A comparative analysis of better studied urchins from warmer regions will be used to inform this work. This effort is relevant to several fields of biology ranging from polar biology, developmental biology, evolution, and genomics while explicitly tying genotype to phenotype. Broader impacts: The proposal included three early career investigators who are new to Antarctic research programs working alongside a well-established Antarctic investigator. The team has developed an ambitious program for science and technology training in computer coding and biology targeted for underrepresented students. They also have developed web-based bioinformatics training blog, \u201c2-bitbio\u201d, which aims to decrease the \u2018barrier to entry\u2019 into the field of bioinformatics. This award reflects NSF\u0027s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation\u0027s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "east": 180.0, "geometry": "POINT(0 -89.999)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Antarctica; ECHINODERMS", "locations": "Antarctica", "north": -60.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Warner, Jacob", "platforms": null, "repositories": null, "science_programs": null, "south": -90.0, "title": "Collaborative Research: LIA: Genomic Mechanisms Controlling the Slow Development of the Antarctic Urchin Sterechinus Neumayeri", "uid": "p0010480", "west": -180.0}, {"awards": "2317995 Herman, Rachael", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-65 -61,-64 -61,-63 -61,-62 -61,-61 -61,-60 -61,-59 -61,-58 -61,-57 -61,-56 -61,-55 -61,-55 -61.5,-55 -62,-55 -62.5,-55 -63,-55 -63.5,-55 -64,-55 -64.5,-55 -65,-55 -65.5,-55 -66,-56 -66,-57 -66,-58 -66,-59 -66,-60 -66,-61 -66,-62 -66,-63 -66,-64 -66,-65 -66,-65 -65.5,-65 -65,-65 -64.5,-65 -64,-65 -63.5,-65 -63,-65 -62.5,-65 -62,-65 -61.5,-65 -61))", "dataset_titles": null, "datasets": null, "date_created": "Fri, 04 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) inhabit one of the fastest warming regions on Earth, the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), where environmental shifts are measured in years, not decades. Despite this, the species is flourishing, growing in numbers and colonizing new habitats while sister species, such as Ad\u00e9lie penguins (P. adeliae), are declining in the region. This project will investigate to what extent epigenetics contributes to the success of gentoo penguins. Epigenetic variation is controlled by modifications to DNA or chromatin structure that affect the expression of genes, rather than changes to the underlying DNA sequence. This project will improve the understanding of gentoo penguin adaptation to climate change, and whether it is a result of increased flexibility in behavior and physiology driven by a greater capacity for epigenetic changes (i.e., epigenetic potential). The most studied form of epigenetic variation is the profiling of DNA methylation patterns. Environmental effects can trigger changes in DNA methylation that target specific tissues, allowing for localized gene expression shifts that result in modifications to the phenotype of an organism without any alteration to the underlying genotype. Given that epigenetic variation between populations often exceeds genetic variation, fine-scale genetic differentiation observed amongst gentoo penguin colonies suggests the possibility for local adaptation via even more divergent epigenetic changes and provides a framework for examining epigenetic variation across the gentoo penguin breeding range along multiple ecological axes. The researchers will test this by comprehensively characterizing the epigenomic profiles via patterns of DNA methylation in wild gentoo and Ad\u00e9lie penguins using cutting-edge high-resolution genomics techniques. Specifically, they will investigate whether gentoo penguins exhibit a greater degree of differences in DNA-methylation than underlying genetic differences, suggesting such epigenetic variation is driven by external environmental variables, potentially leading to improved capacity for local adaptation. This project will explore whether epigenetic potential may be selected for in individuals who disperse to new colony locations by comparing older, established colonies to new colonies at the range-edge. By implementing cutting-edge epigenetic methods in wild populations of gentoo penguins, this project will help address ecological questions on environmental plasticity that will impact conservation efforts and decisions on Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) on the Antarctic Peninsula. This award reflects NSF\u0027s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation\u0027s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "east": -55.0, "geometry": "POINT(-60 -63.5)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Gentoo Penguin; ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS; Adaptation; Methylation; Antarctic Peninsula; Climate Change; Epigenetic Variation; PENGUINS", "locations": "Antarctic Peninsula", "north": -61.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems; Post Doc/Travel", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Herman, Rachael", "platforms": null, "repositories": null, "science_programs": null, "south": -66.0, "title": "Postdoctoral Fellowship: OPP-PRF: Epigenetic Potential as a Driver of Local Adaptation in Gentoo Penguins (Pygoscelis Papua) along the Western Antarctic Peninsula", "uid": "p0010477", "west": -65.0}, {"awards": "2031121 Junge, Karen", "bounds_geometry": null, "dataset_titles": null, "datasets": null, "date_created": "Tue, 30 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "The ozone hole that develops over the Antarctic continent every spring is one of the features attributed to human activity, in particular production of the CFC (chlorofluorocarbons in refrigerants) released to the atmosphere. In spite of the CFC ban from the Montreal Protocol established in the year 1987, the recovery has been slower than predicted. Bromocarbons, known to produce the stratospheric ozone depletion, have recently been estimated to contribute to the pool of bromines in the lower atmosphere. What is the origin of the bromocarbons in Antarctic sea ice? Is this an additional source of chemicals creating the ozone hole? This project will test if bromocarbons in sea ice are produced and degraded by microalgae and bacteria found in sea ice, in snow and the interface between the two. The project will collect a suite of chemical and biological measurements of sea ice and snow to determine bromocarbon concentrations, microbial activity associated with them, and intra-cellular genes and proteins involved in bromocarbon metabolism. This project benefits NSF\u2019s goals of expanding fundamental knowledge of Antarctic systems, biota, and processes, and improving the understanding of interactions among the Antarctic systems, cryosphere and organisms. The work will be carried out at McMurdo Station in late austral spring, including sampling of snow and ice that will be concentrated in the laboratory, and 24-hour experiments to measure algal and bacterial activity. Genes controlling synthesis of enzymes involved in bromocarbon metabolism are of interest in biotechnology and bioremediation, including products that repair damaged skin from UltraViolet Radiation. The project will train undergraduate students on chemical and biological techniques. The Principal Investigators will be involved in the Pacific Science Center in Seattle with ~10,000 visitors per weekend where they will develop a project-specific exhibit. The microbial processes in snow and ice associated with bromocarbon synthesis and degradation have not been studied in Antarctica during winter and spring. This study will inform about microbial activity in relation to the release of bromocarbons compounds from the snow and ice surfaces, compounds known to degrade stratospheric ozone. The estimation of chemical bromocarbons will be combined with metagenomics and metaproteomics approaches for understanding the potential role of microbes in snow and sea ice. The environmental, chemical and biological data will be synthesized with multivariate analysis and significant differences between sites and experimental treatments with ANOVA. A collaborator from the University of Goteborg in Sweden will collaborate on bromocarbon analyses. The study will also address \u201csaline snow\u201d a new environment not previously studied for microbial life. In addition, this is the first study of meta-proteomics in snow and ice. The Principal Investigators expect their results will help inform ozone hole recovery in the 21st century. This award reflects NSF\u0027s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation\u0027s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "east": null, "geometry": null, "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "McMurdo Sound; COASTAL; BACTERIA/ARCHAEA; SEA ICE; SNOW/ICE", "locations": "McMurdo Sound", "north": null, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Junge, Karen; Nunn, Brook L", "platforms": null, "repositories": null, "science_programs": null, "south": null, "title": "Sea-ice Snow Microbial Communities\u2019 Impact on Antarctic Bromocarbon Budgets and Processes", "uid": "p0010472", "west": null}, {"awards": "2325922 Couradeau, Estelle", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-73.783 4.679,-73.7827 4.679,-73.7824 4.679,-73.7821 4.679,-73.7818 4.679,-73.7815 4.679,-73.7812 4.679,-73.7809 4.679,-73.7806 4.679,-73.7803 4.679,-73.78 4.679,-73.78 4.6789,-73.78 4.6788,-73.78 4.6787,-73.78 4.6786,-73.78 4.6785,-73.78 4.6784,-73.78 4.6783,-73.78 4.6782,-73.78 4.6781,-73.78 4.678,-73.7803 4.678,-73.7806 4.678,-73.7809 4.678,-73.7812 4.678,-73.7815 4.678,-73.7818 4.678,-73.7821 4.678,-73.7824 4.678,-73.7827 4.678,-73.783 4.678,-73.783 4.6781,-73.783 4.6782,-73.783 4.6783,-73.783 4.6784,-73.783 4.6785,-73.783 4.6786,-73.783 4.6787,-73.783 4.6788,-73.783 4.6789,-73.783 4.679))", "dataset_titles": null, "datasets": null, "date_created": "Tue, 06 Feb 2024 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "P\u00e1ramos are high-altitude tundra ecosystems nested at the heart of the Andes mountains. These cold and humid environments are home to a multitude of plants, animals, and insects. P\u00e1ramos are a critical water source for downstream urban centers, including Colombia\u0027s capital city, Bogota. Additionally, the P\u00e1ramos soils contain substantial organic carbon reserves due to slow rates of organic matter decomposition. Beyond being a pool of carbon sequestered away from the atmosphere, this large reservoir of organic matter controls the soils\u2019 hydraulic and fertility properties. The P\u00e1ramos\u2019 unique geographic location, at an elevation above 2,800 m above sea level, makes them highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. In fact, these ecosystems\u2019 surface areas are projected to shrink by half within the next 50 years possibly causing loss of the essential services they provide. This project aims to characterize the microbial diversity in the P\u00e1ramos soils in Colombia and investigate how climate change will affect microbes\u2019 functions. The research is of high importance, considering that immediate and long-term changes in microbial metabolism could impact the ability of P\u00e1ramos soils to store organic carbon and regulate downstream water flow. To study the cascading effect of climate change on P\u00e1ramos ecosystems, this project will jumpstart collaborations among transdisciplinary experts that will integrate the research of below-ground microbial communities with above-ground vegetation functions. The project will also engage high school and undergraduate students that will work together to develop and deploy low-cost long-term soil monitoring data loggers in Chingaza National Natural Park, near the city of Bogota. This project will address the critical need to disentangle the effect of moisture and temperature on the fate of organic carbon in P\u00e1ramos soils while building a transdisciplinary team capable of expanding the scope of the research to an ecosystem level. The project includes establishing controlled soil mesocosms that will allow to independently vary moisture and temperature levels. Additionally, functions of the soil microbiome will be investigated using metagenomics and amplicon sequencing, and probes will be deployed to initiate long-term monitoring of the soil response to climate change in situ. This project will culminate in the organization of an international P\u00e1ramos symposium that will set up priorities for future systems research. The symposium will bring together scientists from diverse fields to discuss the linkages between above-ground and below-ground ecosystem functions and plan future collaborations in predicting P\u00e1ramos-wide effects of climate change. This award reflects NSF\u0027s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation\u0027s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "east": -73.78, "geometry": "POINT(-73.7815 4.6785)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS; Chingaza Paramos Colombia; ORGANIC MATTER; SOIL MECHANICS", "locations": "Chingaza Paramos Colombia", "north": 4.679, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Couradeau, Estelle; Maximova, Siela; Machado, Jose Luis", "platforms": null, "repositories": null, "science_programs": null, "south": 4.678, "title": "Collaborative Research: BoCP-Design: Climate change alteration of soils functional biodiversity of the P\u00e1ramos, Colombia", "uid": "p0010445", "west": -73.783}, {"awards": "2232891 Postlethwait, John", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-180 -37,-144 -37,-108 -37,-72 -37,-36 -37,0 -37,36 -37,72 -37,108 -37,144 -37,180 -37,180 -42.3,180 -47.6,180 -52.9,180 -58.2,180 -63.5,180 -68.8,180 -74.1,180 -79.4,180 -84.69999999999999,180 -90,144 -90,108 -90,72 -90,36 -90,0 -90,-36 -90,-72 -90,-108 -90,-144 -90,-180 -90,-180 -84.7,-180 -79.4,-180 -74.1,-180 -68.8,-180 -63.5,-180 -58.2,-180 -52.9,-180 -47.6,-180 -42.300000000000004,-180 -37))", "dataset_titles": null, "datasets": null, "date_created": "Mon, 14 Aug 2023 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Antarctic animals face tremendous threats as Antarctic ice sheets melt and temperatures rise. About 34 million years ago, when Antarctica began to cool, most species of fish became locally extinct. A group called the notothenioids, however, survived due to the evolution of antifreeze. The group eventually split into over 120 species. Why did this group of Antarctic fishes evolve into so many species? One possible reason why a single population splits into two species relates to sex genes and sex chromosomes. Diverging species often have either different sex determining genes (genes that specify whether an individual\u2019s gonads become ovaries or testes) or have different sex chromosomes (chromosomes that differ between males and females within a species, like the human X and Y chromosomes). We know the sex chromosomes of only a few notothenioid species and know the genetic basis for sex determination in none of them. The aims of this research are to: 1) identify sex chromosomes in species representing every major group of Antarctic notothenioid fish; 2) discover possible sex determining genes in every major group of Antarctic notothenioid fish; and 3) find sex chromosomes and possible sex determining genes in two groups of temperate, warmer water, notothenioid fish. These warmer water fish include groups that never experienced the frigid Southern Ocean and groups that had ancestors inhabiting Antarctic oceans that later adjusted to warmer waters. This project will help explain the mechanisms that led to the division of a group of species threatened by climate change. This information is critical to conserve declining populations of Antarctic notothenioids, which are major food sources for other Antarctic species such as bird and seals. The project will offer a diverse group of undergraduates the opportunity to develop a permanent exhibit at the Eugene Science Center Museum. The exhibit will describe the Antarctic environment and explain its rapid climate change. It will also introduce the continent\u2019s bizarre fishes that live below the freezing point of water. The project will collaborate with the university\u2019s Science and Comics Initiative and students in the English Department\u2019s Comics Studies Minor to prepare short graphic novels explaining Antarctic biogeography, icefish specialties, and the science of this project as it develops. As Antarctica cooled, most species disappeared from the continent\u2019s waters, but cryonotothenioid fish radiated into a species flock. What facilitated this radiation? Coyne\u2019s \u201ctwo rules of speciation\u201d offer explanations for why species diverge: 1) the dysgenic sex in an interspecies hybrid is the one with two different sex chromosomes (i.e., in humans, it would be XY males and not XX females); and 2) \u201csex chromosomes play an outsized role in speciation\u201d. These ideas propel the project\u2019s main hypothesis: new sex chromosomes and new sex determination genes associate with cryonotothenioid speciation events. The main objective of the research is to identify notothenioid sex chromosomes and candidate sex-determination genes in many notothenioid species. The project\u2019s first aim is to identify Antarctic fish sex chromosomes, asking the question: Did new sex chromosomes accompany speciation events? Knowledge gaps include: which species have cryptic sex chromosomes; which have newly evolved sex chromosomes; and which are chromosomally XX/XY or ZZ/ZW. Methods involve population genomics (RAD-seq and Pool-seq) for more than 20 Antarctic cryonotothenioids. The prediction is frequent turnover of sex chromosomes. The project\u2019s second aim is to Identify candidate Antarctic cryonotothenioid sex-determination genes, asking the question: Did new sex-determination genes accompany Antarctic cryonotothenioid speciation events? A knowledge gap is the identity of sex determination genes in any notothenioid. Preliminary data show that three sex-linked loci are in or adjacent to three different candidate sex determination genes: 1) a duplicate of bmpr1ba in blackfin icefish; 2) a tandem duplicate of gsdf in South Georgia icefish; and 3) a transposed duplicate of gsdf in striped notothen. Methods involve annotating the genomic neighborhoods of cryonotothenioid sex linked loci for anomalies in candidate sex genes, sequencing sex chromosomes, and testing sex gene variants by CRISPR mutagenesis in zebrafish. The prediction is frequent turnover of sex determination genes. The project\u2019s third aim is to identify sex chromosomes and sex-determination genes in temperate notothenioids. Basally diverging temperate notothenioids (\u2018basals\u2019) lack identifiable sex chromosomes, consistent with temperature-cued sex determination, and one \u2018basal\u2019 species is a hermaphrodite. The constantly cold Southern Ocean rules out temperature, a common sex determination cue in many temperate fish, favoring genetic sex determination. Some cryonotothenioids re-invaded temperate waters (\u2018returnees\u2019). Knowledge gaps include whether basals and returnees have strong sex determination genes. Methods employ pool-seq. The prediction is that genetic sex determination is weak in basals and that returnees have the same, but weaker, sex-linked loci as their Antarctic sister clade. A permanent exhibit will be established at the Eugene Science Center Museum tentatively entitled: The Antarctic: its fishes and climate change. Thousands of visitors, especially school children will be exposed, to the science of Antarctic ecosystems and the impacts of climate change. The research team will collaborate with the university\u2019s Science and Comics Initiative to produce short graphic novels explaining Antarctic biogeography, icefish specialties, and this project. This award reflects NSF\u0027s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation\u0027s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "east": 180.0, "geometry": "POINT(0 -89.999)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Speciation; Southern Ocean; Dragonfish; Antarctica; Plunderfish; Fish; Notothenioid; FISH; Eleginopsioidea; Icefish; MARINE ECOSYSTEMS; Cryonotothenioid; Sub-Antarctic", "locations": "Antarctica; Southern Ocean; Sub-Antarctic", "north": -37.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Postlethwait, John; Desvignes, Thomas", "platforms": null, "repositories": null, "science_programs": null, "south": -90.0, "title": "ANT LIA: The Role of Sex Determination in the Radiation of Antarctic Notothenioid Fish", "uid": "p0010431", "west": -180.0}, {"awards": "1645087 Catchen, Julian", "bounds_geometry": null, "dataset_titles": "Chromosome-Level Genome Assembly and Circadian Gene Repertoire of the Patagonia Blennie Eleginops maclovinus\u2014The Closest Ancestral Proxy of Antarctic Cryonotothenioids; Evaluating Illumina-, Nanopore-, and PacBio-based genome assembly strategies with the bald notothen, Trematomus borchgrevinki; Genomics of Secondarily Temperate Adaptation in the Only Non-Antarctic Icefish", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "200331", "doi": "10.5061/dryad.ghx3ffbs3", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "Dryad", "science_program": null, "title": "Evaluating Illumina-, Nanopore-, and PacBio-based genome assembly strategies with the bald notothen, Trematomus borchgrevinki", "url": "https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.ghx3ffbs3"}, {"dataset_uid": "200330", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "NCBI ", "science_program": null, "title": "Evaluating Illumina-, Nanopore-, and PacBio-based genome assembly strategies with the bald notothen, Trematomus borchgrevinki", "url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA861284"}, {"dataset_uid": "200381", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "NCBI", "science_program": null, "title": "Chromosome-Level Genome Assembly and Circadian Gene Repertoire of the Patagonia Blennie Eleginops maclovinus\u2014The Closest Ancestral Proxy of Antarctic Cryonotothenioids", "url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA917608"}, {"dataset_uid": "200380", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "NCBI", "science_program": null, "title": "Genomics of Secondarily Temperate Adaptation in the Only Non-Antarctic Icefish", "url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA857989"}], "date_created": "Mon, 10 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "As plate tectonics pushed Antarctica into a polar position, by ~34 million years ago, the continent and its surrounding Southern Ocean (SO) became geographically and thermally isolated by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Terrestrial and marine glaciation followed, resulting in extinctions as well as the survival and radiation of unique flora and fauna. The notothenioid fish survived and arose from a common ancestral stock into tax with 120 species that dominates today?s SO fish fauna. The Notothenioids evolved adaptive traits including novel antifreeze proteins for survival in extreme cold, but also suffered seemingly adverse trait loss including red blood cells in the icefish family, and the ability to mount cellular responses to mitigate heat stress ? otherwise ubiquitous across all life. This project aims to understand how the notothenoid genomes have changed and contributed to their evolution in the cold. The project will sequence, analyze and compare the genomes of two strategic pairs of notothenioid fishes representing both red-blooded and white-blooded species. Each pair will consist of one Antarctic species and one that has readapted to the temperate waters of S. America or New Zealand. The project will also compare the Antarctic species genomes to a genome of the closet non-Antarctic relative representing the temperate notothenioid ancestor. The work aims to uncover the mechanisms that enabled the adaptive evolution of this ecologically vital group of fish in the freezing Southern Ocean, and shed light on their adaptability to a warming world. The finished genomes will be made available to promote and advance Antarctic research and the project will host a symposium of Polar researchers to discuss the cutting edge developments regarding of genomic adaptations in the polar region. Despite subzero, icy conditions that are perilous to teleost fish, the fish fauna of the isolated Southern Ocean (SO) surrounding Antarctica is remarkably bountiful. A single teleost group ? the notothenioid fishes ? dominate the fauna, comprising over 120 species that arose from a common ancestor. When Antarctica became isolated and SO temperatures began to plunge in early Oligocene, the prior temperate fishes became extinct. The ancestor of Antarctic notothenioids overcame forbidding polar conditions and, absent niche competition, it diversified and filled the SO. How did notothenioids adapt to freezing environmental selection pressures and achieve such extraordinary success? And having specialized to life in chronic cold for 30 myr, can they evolve in pace with today?s warming climate to stay viable? Past studies of Antarctic notothenioid evolutionary adaptation have discovered various remarkable traits including the key, life-saving antifreeze proteins. But life specialized to cold also led to paradoxical trait changes such as the loss of the otherwise universal heat shock response, and of the O2-transporting hemoglobin and red blood cells in the icefish family. A few species interestingly regained abilities to live in temperate waters following the escape of their ancestor out of the freezing SO. This proposed project is the first major effort to advance the field from single trait studies to understanding the full spectrum of genomic and genetic responses to climatic and environmental change during notothenioid evolution, and to evaluate their adaptability to continuing climate change. To this end, the project will sequence the genomes of four key species that embody genomic responses to different thermal selection regimes during notothenioids? evolutionary history, and by comparative analyses of genomic structure, architecture and content, deduce the responding changes. Specifically, the project will (i) obtain whole genome assemblies of the red-blooded T. borchgrevinki and the S. American icefish C. esox; (ii) using the finished genomes from (i) as template, obtain assemblies of the New Zealand notothenioid N. angustata, and the white-blooded icefish C. gunnari, representing a long (11 myr) and recent (1 myr) secondarily temperate evolutionary history respectively. Genes that are under selection in the temperate environment but not in the Antarctic environment can be inferred to be directly necessary for that environment ? and the reverse is also true for genes under selection in the Antarctic but not in the temperate environment. Further, genes important for survival in temperate waters will show parallel selection between N. angustata and C. esox despite the fact that the two fish left the Antarctic at far separated time points. Finally, gene families that expanded due to strong selection within the cold Antarctic should show a degradation of duplicates in the temperate environment. The project will test these hypotheses using a number of techniques to compare the content and form of genes, the structure of the chromosomes containing those genes, and through the identification of key characters, such as selfish genetic elements, introns, and structural variants.", "east": null, "geometry": null, "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Genome Assembly; FISH; McMurdo Sound; Icefish; SHIPS; Notothenioid; Puerto Natales, Chile", "locations": "McMurdo Sound; Puerto Natales, Chile", "north": null, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Catchen, Julian; Cheng, Chi-Hing", "platforms": "WATER-BASED PLATFORMS \u003e VESSELS \u003e SURFACE \u003e SHIPS", "repo": "Dryad", "repositories": "Dryad; NCBI; NCBI ", "science_programs": null, "south": null, "title": "Evolutionary Genomic Responses in Antarctic Notothenioid Fishes", "uid": "p0010384", "west": null}, {"awards": "2138994 Kocot, Kevin; 2138993 Gerken, Sarah", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-180 -60,-144 -60,-108 -60,-72 -60,-36 -60,0 -60,36 -60,72 -60,108 -60,144 -60,180 -60,180 -63,180 -66,180 -69,180 -72,180 -75,180 -78,180 -81,180 -84,180 -87,180 -90,144 -90,108 -90,72 -90,36 -90,0 -90,-36 -90,-72 -90,-108 -90,-144 -90,-180 -90,-180 -87,-180 -84,-180 -81,-180 -78,-180 -75,-180 -72,-180 -69,-180 -66,-180 -63,-180 -60))", "dataset_titles": "Invertebrate Zoology Collection", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "200519", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "Alabama Museum of Natural History", "science_program": null, "title": "Invertebrate Zoology Collection", "url": "https://arctos.database.museum/almnh_inv"}], "date_created": "Tue, 20 Sep 2022 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Part I: General description Cumaceans are small crustaceans, commonly known as comma shrimp, that live in muddy or sandy bottom environments in marine waters. Cumaceans are important for the diet of fish, birds, and even grey whales. This research program is assessing cumacean diversity and adaptation in different regions of Antarctica and evaluate this organisms adaptations using molecular methods to a changing Antarctic region. The research stands to significantly advance understanding of invertebrate adaptations to cold, stable habitats and responses to changes in those habitats. In addition, this project is advancing understanding of the biology of Cumacea, a globally diverse and biologically important group of animals. Targeted training of early career students and professionals in cumacean biology, molecular techniques, and bioinformatics is included as part of the program. A workshop at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum will also train 10 additional graduate students, with a focus on training for underrepresented groups. Project outreach also includes social media, outreach to schools in very diverse school districts in Anchorage, AK, and creation of museum events and an exhibit at the Alabama Museum of Natural History. Finally, engagement by the team in activities related to the National Ocean Science Bowl promotes broad engagement with high school students for Antarctic science learning. Part II: Technical Description The overarching goal of this research is to use cumaceans as a model system to explore invertebrate adaptations to the changing Antarctic. This project is leveraging integrative taxonomy, functional, comparative and evolutionary genomics, and phylogenetic comparative methods to understand the true diversity of Cumacea in the Antarctic. The team is identifying genes and gene families experiencing expansions, selection, or significant differential expression, generating a broadly sampled and robust phylogenetic framework for the Antarctic Cumacea based on transcriptomes and genomes, and exploring rates and timing of diversification. The project is providing important information related to gene gain/loss, positive selection, and differential gene expression as a function of adaptation of organisms to Antarctic habitats. Phylogenomic analyses is providing a robust phylogenetic framework for understudied Southern Ocean Cumacea. At the start of this project, only one Antarctic transcriptome was published for this organism. This project is generating sequenced genomes from 8 species, about 250 transcriptomes from about 70 species, and approximately 470 COI and 16S amplicon barcodes from about 100 species. Curated morphological reference collections will be deposited at the Smithsonian, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum and in the New Zealand National Water and Atmospheric Research collection at Greta Point to assist future researchers in identification of Antarctic cumaceans. Beyond the immediate scope of the current project, the genomic resources will be able to be leveraged by members of the polar biology and invertebrate zoology communities for diverse other uses ranging from PCR primer development to inference of ancestral population sizes. This award reflects NSF\u0027s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation\u0027s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "east": 180.0, "geometry": "POINT(0 -89.999)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Benthic; SHIPS; Antarctic Peninsula; Antarctica; Biodiversity; Peracarida; ARTHROPODS; East Antarctica; Chile; BENTHIC; Cumacea; Ross Sea; Crustacea", "locations": "Antarctica; East Antarctica; Chile; Ross Sea; Antarctic Peninsula", "north": -60.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems; Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems; Polar Special Initiatives", "paleo_time": "NOT APPLICABLE", "persons": "Gerken, Sarah; Kocot, Kevin", "platforms": "WATER-BASED PLATFORMS \u003e VESSELS \u003e SURFACE \u003e SHIPS", "repo": "Alabama Museum of Natural History", "repositories": "Alabama Museum of Natural History", "science_programs": null, "south": -90.0, "title": "Collaborative Research: ANT LIA: Cumacean -Omics to Measure Mode of Adaptation to Antarctica (COMMAA)", "uid": "p0010379", "west": -180.0}, {"awards": "2147045 Learman, Deric; 2147046 Steen, Andrew", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-180 -60,-168 -60,-156 -60,-144 -60,-132 -60,-120 -60,-108 -60,-96 -60,-84 -60,-72 -60,-60 -60,-60 -62,-60 -64,-60 -66,-60 -68,-60 -70,-60 -72,-60 -74,-60 -76,-60 -78,-60 -80,-72 -80,-84 -80,-96 -80,-108 -80,-120 -80,-132 -80,-144 -80,-156 -80,-168 -80,180 -80,171 -80,162 -80,153 -80,144 -80,135 -80,126 -80,117 -80,108 -80,99 -80,90 -80,90 -78,90 -76,90 -74,90 -72,90 -70,90 -68,90 -66,90 -64,90 -62,90 -60,99 -60,108 -60,117 -60,126 -60,135 -60,144 -60,153 -60,162 -60,171 -60,-180 -60))", "dataset_titles": "Physical and geochemical data from shelf sediments eastern Antarctica", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "601876", "doi": "10.15784/601876", "keywords": "Antarctica; Cryosphere", "people": "Learman, Deric", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Physical and geochemical data from shelf sediments eastern Antarctica", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601876"}], "date_created": "Tue, 30 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Microbes in Antarctic surface marine sediments have an important role in degrading organic matter and releasing nutrients to the ocean. Organic matter degradation is at the center of the carbon cycle in the ocean, providing valuable information on nutrient recycling, food availability to animals and carbon dioxide release to the atmosphere. The functionality of these microbes has been inferred by their genomics, however these methods only address the possible function, not their actual rates. In this project the PIs plan to combine genomics methods with cellular estimates of enzyme abundance and activity as a way to determine the rates of carbon degradation. This project aims to sample in several regions of Antarctica to provide a large-scale picture of the processes under study and understand the importance of microbial community composition and environmental factors, such as primary productivity, have on microbial activity. The proposed work will combine research tools such as metagenomics, meta-transcriptomics, and metabolomics coupled with chemical data and enzyme assays to establish degradation of organic matter in Antarctic sediments. This project benefits NSFs goals of understanding the adaptation of Antarctic organisms to the cold and isolated environment, critical to predict effects of climate change to polar organisms, as well as contribute to our knowledge of how Antarctic organisms have adapted to this environment. Society will benefit from this project by education of 2 graduate students, undergraduates and K-12 students as well as increase public literacy through short videos production shared in YouTube. The PIs propose to advance understanding of polar microbial community function, by measuring enzyme and gene function of complex organic matter degradation in several ocean regions, providing a circum-Antarctic description of sediment processes. Two hypotheses are proposed. The first hypothesis states that many genes for the degradation of complex organic matter will be shared in sediments throughout a sampling transect and that where variations in gene content occur, it will reflect differences in the quantity and quality of organic matter, not regional variability. The second hypothesis states that a fraction of gene transcripts for organic matter degradation will not result in measurable enzyme activity due to post-translational modification or rapid degradation of the enzymes. The PIs will analyze sediment cores already collected in a 2020 cruise to the western Antarctic Peninsula with the additional request of participating in a cruise in 2023 to East Antarctica. The PIs will analyze sediments for metagenomics, meta-transcriptomics, and metabolomics coupled with geochemical data and enzyme assays to establish microbial degradation of complex organic matter in Antarctic sediments. Organic carbon concentrations and content in sediments will be measured with \u03b413C, \u03b415N, TOC porewater fluorescence in bulk organic carbon. Combined with determination of geographical variability as well as dependence on carbon sources, results from this study could provide the basis for new hypotheses on how climate variability, with increased water temperature, affects geochemistry in the Southern Ocean. This award reflects NSF\u0027s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation\u0027s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "east": 90.0, "geometry": "POINT(-165 -70)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "BENTHIC; ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONS; Weddell Sea; Antarctic Peninsula; SEDIMENT CHEMISTRY; R/V NBP", "locations": "Antarctic Peninsula; Weddell Sea", "north": -60.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems; Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Learman, Deric; Steen, Andrew", "platforms": "WATER-BASED PLATFORMS \u003e VESSELS \u003e SURFACE \u003e R/V NBP", "repo": "USAP-DC", "repositories": "USAP-DC", "science_programs": null, "south": -80.0, "title": "Collaborative Research: ANT LIA: Connecting Metagenome Potential to Microbial Function: Investigating Microbial Degradation of Complex Organic Matter Antarctic Benthic Sediments", "uid": "p0010373", "west": -60.0}, {"awards": "2147553 Rotella, Jay; 1640481 Rotella, Jay; 2147554 Chen, Nancy", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((162 -74.95,162.8 -74.95,163.6 -74.95,164.4 -74.95,165.2 -74.95,166 -74.95,166.8 -74.95,167.6 -74.95,168.4 -74.95,169.2 -74.95,170 -74.95,170 -75.295,170 -75.64,170 -75.985,170 -76.33,170 -76.67500000000001,170 -77.02000000000001,170 -77.36500000000001,170 -77.71000000000001,170 -78.055,170 -78.4,169.2 -78.4,168.4 -78.4,167.6 -78.4,166.8 -78.4,166 -78.4,165.2 -78.4,164.4 -78.4,163.6 -78.4,162.8 -78.4,162 -78.4,162 -78.055,162 -77.71000000000001,162 -77.36500000000001,162 -77.02000000000001,162 -76.67500000000001,162 -76.33,162 -75.985,162 -75.64,162 -75.295,162 -74.95))", "dataset_titles": "Demographic data for Weddell Seal colonies in Erebus Bay through the 2023 Antarctic field season", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "601837", "doi": "10.15784/601837", "keywords": "AMD; Amd/Us; Antarctica; Cryosphere; McMurdo Sound; Population Dynamics; USA/NSF; USAP-DC; Weddell Seal", "people": "Rotella, Jay", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Demographic data for Weddell Seal colonies in Erebus Bay through the 2023 Antarctic field season", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601837"}], "date_created": "Sun, 07 Aug 2022 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Part 1: Non-technical description This is a continuation of a long-term population dynamics study (1978-present) using an intensive mark-recapture tagging of Weddell seals in Erebus Bay, Antarctica. Past work has become a global model for population studies of large animals. Results have documented strong annual variation in reproduction, abundance, and population composition. This program will add components to evaluate the demographic role of immigrant mothers, evaluate possible drivers of annual variation in overall population dynamics, assess genetic differences between immigrant and locally born mothers, and document patterns of gene flow among seal colonies in the Ross Sea region. These new aspects will focus on understanding of population structure, function, and genetics and provide key information for predicting how the seal population will respond to environmental change. The addition of genetic approaches will advance available data for multiple groups in multiple countries working on Weddell Seals. This work includes an early career scientists training program for faculty university graduate and undergraduate students and well as a defined program for data sharing. The research is paired with active education and outreach programs, social media, websites, educational resources, videos and high-profile public lecture activities. The informal science education program will expand on the project\u2019s successful efforts at producing and delivering short-form videos that have been viewed over 1.6 million times to date. In addition, the education program will add new topics such as learning about seals using genomics and how seals respond to a changing world to a multimedia-enhanced electronic book about the project\u2019s long-term research on Weddell seals, which will be freely available to the public early in the project. Part 2: Technical description Reliable predictions are needed for how populations of wild species, especially those at high latitudes, will respond to future environmental conditions. This study will use a strategic extension of the long-term demographic research program that has been conducted annually on the Erebus Bay population of Weddell seals since 1978 to help meet that need. Recent analyses of the study population indicate strong annual variation in reproduction, abundance, and population composition. The number of new immigrant mothers that join the population each year has recently grown such that most new mothers are now immigrants. Despite the growing number of immigrants, the demographic importance and geographic origins of immigrants are unknown. The research will (1) add new information on drivers of annual variation in immigrant numbers, (2) compare and combine information on the vital rates and demographic role of immigrant females and their offspring with that of locally born females, and (3) add genomic analyses that will quantify levels of genetic variation in and gene flow among the study population and other populations in the Ross Sea. The project will continue the long-term monitoring of the population at Erebus Bay and characterize population dynamics and the role of immigration using a combination of mark-recapture analyses, stochastic population modeling, and genomic analyses. The study will continue to provide detailed data on individual seals to other science teams, educate and mentor individuals in the next generation of ecologists, introduce two early-career, female scientists to Antarctic research, and add genomics approaches to the long-term population study of Erebus Bay Weddell seals. The research will be complemented with a robust program of training and an informal science education program. This award reflects NSF\u0027s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation\u0027s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "east": 170.0, "geometry": "POINT(166 -76.67500000000001)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "SPECIES/POPULATION INTERACTIONS; McMurdo Sound", "locations": "McMurdo Sound", "north": -74.95, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems; Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems; Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Rotella, Jay; Chen, Nancy", "platforms": null, "repo": "USAP-DC", "repositories": "USAP-DC", "science_programs": null, "south": -78.4, "title": "Collaborative Research: The Drivers and Role of Immigration in the Dynamics of the Largest Population of Weddell Seals in Antarctica under Changing Conditions", "uid": "p0010361", "west": 162.0}, {"awards": "1937546 Morgan-Kiss, Rachael; 1937595 Briggs, Brandon", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((162 -77.616667,162.1 -77.616667,162.2 -77.616667,162.3 -77.616667,162.4 -77.616667,162.5 -77.616667,162.6 -77.616667,162.7 -77.616667,162.8 -77.616667,162.9 -77.616667,163 -77.616667,163 -77.6283336,163 -77.6400002,163 -77.6516668,163 -77.6633334,163 -77.67500000000001,163 -77.68666660000001,163 -77.69833320000001,163 -77.7099998,163 -77.7216664,163 -77.733333,162.9 -77.733333,162.8 -77.733333,162.7 -77.733333,162.6 -77.733333,162.5 -77.733333,162.4 -77.733333,162.3 -77.733333,162.2 -77.733333,162.1 -77.733333,162 -77.733333,162 -77.7216664,162 -77.7099998,162 -77.69833320000001,162 -77.68666660000001,162 -77.67500000000001,162 -77.6633334,162 -77.6516668,162 -77.6400002,162 -77.6283336,162 -77.616667))", "dataset_titles": "18S rRNA from McMurdo Dry Valley lakes", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "200436", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "NCBI SRA", "science_program": null, "title": "18S rRNA from McMurdo Dry Valley lakes", "url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA1125919/"}], "date_created": "Wed, 27 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Part I: Non-technical description: Microbial communities are of more than just a scientific curiosity. Microbes represent the single largest source of evolutionary and biochemical diversity on the planet. They are the major agents for cycling carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and other elements through the ecosystem. Despite their importance in ecosystem function, microbes are still generally overlooked in food web models and nutrient cycles. Moreover, microbes do not live in isolation: their growth and metabolism are influenced by complex interactions with other microorganisms. This project will focus on the ecology, activity and roles of microbial communities in Antarctic Lake ecosystems. The team will characterize the genetic underpinnings of microbial interactions and the influence of environmental gradients (e.g. light, nutrients, oxygen, sulfur) and seasons (e.g. summer vs. winter) on microbial networks in Lake Fryxell and Lake Bonney in the Taylor Valley within the McMurdo Dry Valley region. Finally, the project furthers the NSF goals of training new generations of scientists by including undergraduate and graduate students, a postdoctoral researcher and a middle school teacher in both lab and field research activities. This partnership will involve a number of other outreach training activities, including visits to classrooms and community events, participation in social media platforms, and webinars. Part II: Technical description: Ecosystem function in the extreme Antarctic Dry Valleys ecosystem is dependent on complex biogeochemical interactions between physiochemical environmental factors (e.g. light, nutrients, oxygen, sulfur), time of year (e.g. summer vs. winter) and microbes. Microbial network complexity can vary in relation to specific abiotic factors, which has important implications on the fragility and resilience of ecosystems under threat of environmental change. This project will evaluate the influence of biogeochemical factors on microbial interactions and network complexity in two Antarctic ice-covered lakes. The study will be structured by three main objectives: 1) infer positive and negative interactions from rich spatial and temporal datasets and investigate the influence of biogeochemical gradients on microbial network complexity using a variety of molecular approaches; 2) directly observe interactions among microbial eukaryotes and their partners using flow cytometry, single-cell sorting and microscopy; and 3) develop metabolic models of specific interactions using metagenomics. Outcomes from amplicon sequencing, meta-omics, and single-cell genomic approaches will be integrated to map specific microbial network complexity and define the role of interactions and metabolic activity onto trends in limnological biogeochemistry in different seasons. These studies will be essential to determine the relationship between network complexity and future climate conditions. Undergraduate researchers will be recruited from both an REU program with a track record of attracting underrepresented minorities and two minority-serving institutions. To further increase polar literacy training and educational impacts, the field team will include a teacher as part of a collaboration with the successful NSF-funded PolarTREC program and participation in activities designed for public outreach. 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The role of marine viruses on ocean productivity is largely understudied, especially in this global region. This team proposes to use combination of genomics, flow cytometry, and network modeling to test the hypothesis that viral biogeography, infection networks, and viral impacts on microbial metabolism can explain variations in net community production (NCP) and carbon cycling in the Southern Ocean. The project includes the training of a postdoctoral scholar, graduate students and undergraduate students. It also includes the development of a new Polar Sci ReachOut program in partnership with the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History especially targeted to middle-school students and teachers and the general public. The team will also produce a Science for Tomorrow (SFT) program for use in middle schools in metro-Detroit communities and lead a summer Research Experience for Teachers (RET) fellows. Part 2: Technical description: The study will leverage hundreds of existing samples collected for microbes and viruses from the Antarctic Circumpolar Expedition (ACE). These samples provide the first contiguous survey of viral diversity and microbial communities around Antarctica. Viral networks are being studied in the context of biogeochemical data to model community networks and predict net community production (NCP), which will provide a way to evaluate the role of viruses in Southern Ocean carbon cycling. Using cutting edge molecular and flow cytometry approaches, this project addresses the following questions: 1) How/why are Southern Ocean viral populations distributed across environmental gradients? 2a) Do viruses interfere with \"keystone\" metabolic pathways and biogeochemical processes of microbial communities in the Southern Ocean? 2b) Does nutrient availability or other environmental variables drive changes in virus-microbe infection networks in the Southern Ocean? Results will be used to develop and evaluate generative models of NCP predictions that incorporate the importance of viral traits and virus-host interactions. 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One consequence of this rapid warming is the melting and subsequent retreat of glaciers, leading to an increase in newly-exposed land on the Peninsula that was previously covered with ice. Once new terrain is exposed, the process of ecological succession begins, with the arrival of early-colonizing plants, such as moss and lichens, and soil organisms - a process commonly referred to as the \u201cgreening\u201d of Antarctica. Early stages of succession will be an increasingly common feature on the Antarctic Peninsula, but the mechanisms by which they occur on the Antarctic continent is not well understood. Once the plants have established on the newly-exposed soil, they can change many important properties, such as water dynamics, nutrient recycling, soil development, and habitat for microscopic organisms, which will ultimately determine the structure and functioning of the future ecosystem as it develops. These relationships between vegetation, soil, and the associated microorganisms, referred to as \u201cplant-soil\u201d interactions, are something we know virtually nothing about. This project will be the first to make a comprehensive study of how the type of colonizing plant, and the expansion of those plants from climate change, will influence terrestrial ecosystems in Antarctica. Understanding these processes is critical to understanding how the greening Antarctica is occurring and how soil communities and processes are influenced by these expanding plant communities. Through this work the research team, will also be intensively training undergraduate and graduate students, including training of students from underrepresented groups and collaborative training of students from Chile and the US. Additionally, the research groups will continue their focus on scientific outreach with K-12 schools and the general public to expand awareness of the effects of climate change in Antarctica. Part II: Technical summary In this study, the researchers will use surveys across succession sites along the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Arc as well as a manipulative field experiment at glacier succession sites to test how species-specific plant functional traits impact soil properties and associated microbial and invertebrate communities in a greening Antarctica. In doing so, they will pursue three integrated aims to understand how Antarctic plant functional traits alter their soil environment and soil communities during succession after glacial retreat. AIM 1) Characterize six fundamental plant functional traits (thermal conductivity, water holding capacity, albedo, decomposability, tissue nutrient content, and secondary chemistry) among diverse Antarctica flora; AIM 2) Measure the relative effects of fundamental plant functional traits on soil physical properties and soil biogeochemistry across glacial succession gradients in Antarctica; and AIM 3) Measure the relative effects of fundamental plant functional traits on soil microbial and invertebrate communities across glacial succession gradients in Antarctica. They will explore how early-colonizing plants, especially mosses and lichens, alter soil physical, biogeochemical, and biological components, potentially impacting later patterns of succession. The researhcers will use intensive surveys of plant-soil interactions across succession sites and a manipulative transplant experiment in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica to address their aims. The investigators will collect data on plant functional traits and their effects on soil physical properties, biogeochemistry, biotic abundance, and microbial metagenomics. The data collected will be the first comprehensive measures of the relative importance of plant functional types during glacial retreat and vegetative expansion from climate change in Antarctica, aiding our understanding of how plant functional group diversity and abundance are changing in a greening Antarctica. This award reflects NSF\u0027s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation\u0027s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "east": -58.133333, "geometry": "POINT(-58.8997245 -62.265751)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "AMD; FIELD SURVEYS; ECOLOGICAL DYNAMICS; USA/NSF; SOIL CHEMISTRY; 25 De Mayo/King George Island; Antarctic Peninsula; PLANTS; Amd/Us; FUNGI; ANIMALS/INVERTEBRATES; USAP-DC; TERRESTRIAL ECOSYSTEMS; BACTERIA/ARCHAEA", "locations": "25 De Mayo/King George Island; Antarctic Peninsula", "north": -62.15, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Ball, Becky", "platforms": "LAND-BASED PLATFORMS \u003e FIELD SITES \u003e FIELD SURVEYS", "repositories": null, "science_programs": null, "south": -62.381502, "title": "Collaborative Research: Exploring the Functional Role of Antarctic Plants during Terrestrial Succession", "uid": "p0010315", "west": -59.666116}, {"awards": "2225144 Halanych, Kenneth; 1043670 Mahon, Andrew; 1916665 Mahon, Andrew; 1916661 Halanych, Kenneth", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-72 -61,-69.8 -61,-67.6 -61,-65.4 -61,-63.2 -61,-61 -61,-58.8 -61,-56.6 -61,-54.4 -61,-52.2 -61,-50 -61,-50 -61.8,-50 -62.6,-50 -63.4,-50 -64.2,-50 -65,-50 -65.8,-50 -66.6,-50 -67.4,-50 -68.2,-50 -69,-52.2 -69,-54.4 -69,-56.6 -69,-58.8 -69,-61 -69,-63.2 -69,-65.4 -69,-67.6 -69,-69.8 -69,-72 -69,-72 -68.2,-72 -67.4,-72 -66.6,-72 -65.8,-72 -65,-72 -64.2,-72 -63.4,-72 -62.6,-72 -61.8,-72 -61))", "dataset_titles": "Expedition Data of NBP2010; Expedition Data of NBP2303; Pycnogonid mitochondrial genomes data", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "200516", "doi": "10.5061/dryad.1g1jwstzg", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "Dryad", "science_program": null, "title": "Pycnogonid mitochondrial genomes data", "url": "https://datadryad.org/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.1g1jwstzg"}, {"dataset_uid": "200520", "doi": null, "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "R2R", "science_program": null, "title": "Expedition Data of NBP2010", "url": "https://www.rvdata.us/search/cruise/NBP2010"}, {"dataset_uid": "200386", "doi": null, "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "R2R", "science_program": null, "title": "Expedition Data of NBP2303", "url": "https://www.rvdata.us/search/cruise/NBP2303"}], "date_created": "Wed, 22 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Antarctica is among the most rapidly warming places on the planet, and some reports suggest the Antarctic environment is approaching, or possibly beyond, the tipping point for ice shelf collapse. The loss of ice around Antarctica is dramatically changing habitat availability for marine fauna, particularly benthic marine invertebrate species. Building on past studies, this research will provide insights into how changing climate impacts species distribution and community structure. Geological data suggests that during periods when ice extent was much reduced relative to modern levels, marine seaways connected the Ross and Weddell Seas on either side of Antarctica. However, most theories about the origins of current marine invertebrate distribution patterns fail to consider this transantarctic connection. This research will use molecular genomic tools to probe the DNA of Antarctic marine invertebrates and explore alternative hypotheses about factors that may have shaped current patterns of animal biodiversity in the Southern Ocean. Research will inform predictions about how species distributions may change as Antarctic ice sheets continue to deteriorate and provide critical information on how organisms adjust their ranges in response to environmental change. This work includes several specific outreach activities including presentations in K-8 classrooms, several short-format videos on Antarctic genomics and field work, and two 3-day workshops on bioinformatics approaches. A minimum of 4 graduate students, a postdoc and several undergraduates will also be trained during this project. The overarching goal of this research is to understand environmental factors that have shaped patterns of present-day diversity in Antarctic benthic marine invertebrates. Evidence from sediment cores and modeling suggests ice shelf collapses have occurred multiple times in the last few million years. During these periods, transantarctic seaways connected the Ross and Weddell Seas. This research will assess whether the presence of transantarctic waterways helps explain observed similarities between the Ross and Weddell Seas benthic marine invertebrate fauna better than other current hypotheses (e.g., dispersal by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, or expansion from common glacial refugia). Seven Antarctic benthic invertebrate taxa will be targeted to test alternative hypothesis about the origins of population genetic structure in the Southern Ocean using Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) markers that sample thousands of loci across the genome. Additionally, research will test the current paradigm that divergence between closely related, often cryptic, species is the result of population bottlenecks caused by glaciation. Specifically, SNP data will be mapped on to draft genomes of three of our target taxa to assess the degree of genetic divergence and look for signs of selection. Research findings may be applicable to other marine ecosystems around the planet. This award reflects NSF\u0027s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation\u0027s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "east": -50.0, "geometry": "POINT(-61 -65)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Genomics; Marguerite Bay; USA/NSF; AMD; Weddell Sea; Benthic Invertebrates; Macroinvertebrates; USAP-DC; FIELD SURVEYS; Amd/Us; MARINE ECOSYSTEMS; West Antarctica; ANIMALS/INVERTEBRATES; East Antarctica; Biodiversity", "locations": "Weddell Sea; Marguerite Bay; West Antarctica; East Antarctica", "north": -61.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Integrated System Science; Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems; Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems; Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems; Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Halanych, Kenneth; Mahon, Andrew", "platforms": "LAND-BASED PLATFORMS \u003e FIELD SITES \u003e FIELD SURVEYS", "repo": "Dryad", "repositories": "Dryad; R2R", "science_programs": null, "south": -69.0, "title": "Collaborative Research: Have transantarctic dispersal corridors impacted Antarctic marine biodiversity?", "uid": "p0010266", "west": -72.0}, {"awards": "2031442 Learman, Deric", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-180 -60,-167.5 -60,-155 -60,-142.5 -60,-130 -60,-117.5 -60,-105 -60,-92.5 -60,-80 -60,-67.5 -60,-55 -60,-55 -62,-55 -64,-55 -66,-55 -68,-55 -70,-55 -72,-55 -74,-55 -76,-55 -78,-55 -80,-67.5 -80,-80 -80,-92.5 -80,-105 -80,-117.5 -80,-130 -80,-142.5 -80,-155 -80,-167.5 -80,180 -80,178 -80,176 -80,174 -80,172 -80,170 -80,168 -80,166 -80,164 -80,162 -80,160 -80,160 -78,160 -76,160 -74,160 -72,160 -70,160 -68,160 -66,160 -64,160 -62,160 -60,162 -60,164 -60,166 -60,168 -60,170 -60,172 -60,174 -60,176 -60,178 -60,-180 -60))", "dataset_titles": "Physical and geochemical data from shelf sediments near the Antartic Pennisula", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "601607", "doi": "10.15784/601607", "keywords": "Antarctica; Antarctic Peninsula; Grain Size; Grain Size Analysis; Marine Geoscience; Marine Sediments; Organic Matter Geochemistry; Sediment Core Data; Shelf Sediments; Weddell Sea", "people": "Learman, Deric", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Physical and geochemical data from shelf sediments near the Antartic Pennisula", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601607"}], "date_created": "Wed, 28 Jul 2021 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Western Antarctica is one of the fastest warming locations on Earth. Its changing climate will lead to an increase in sea-level and will also alter regional water temperature and chemistry. These changes will directly alter the microbes that inhabit the ecosystem. Microbes are the smallest forms of life on Earth, but they are also the most abundant. They drive cycling of essential nutrients, such as carbon and nitrogen that are found in ocean sediments. In this way they form the foundation of the food chain that supports larger and more complex life. However, we do not know much about how different communities of microbes break down sediments in Antarctica and this will influence the chemistry of those waters. This research will determine how communities of microbes on the coastal shelf of Antarctica degrade complex organic sediments using genetic and chemical data. This data will identify the species in the community, what enzymes they are producing and what chemical reactions they are driving. This research will create broader impacts as the data will be used to create in-class activities that improve a student\u2019s data analysis and critical thinking skills. The data will be used in graduate, undergraduate and K-12 classrooms. This research will provide genetic and enzymatic insight into how microbial communities in benthic sediments on the coastal shelf of Antarctica degrade complex organic matter. The current understanding of how benthic microbial communities respond to and then degrade complex organic matter in Antarctica is fragmented. Recent work suggests benthic microbial communities are shaped by organic matter availability. However, those studies were observational and did not directly examine community function. A preliminary study of metagenomic data from western Antarctic marine sediments, indicates a genetic potential for organic matter degradation but functional data was not been collected. Other studies have examined either enzyme activity or metagenomic potential, but few have been able to directly connect the two. To address this gap in knowledge, this study will utilize metagenomics and metatranscriptomics, coupled with microcosm experiments, enzyme assays, and geochemical data. It will examine Antarctic microbial communities from the Ross Sea, the Bransfield Strait and Weddell Sea to document how the relationship between a communities\u2019 enzymatic activity and the genes used to degrade complex organic matter is related to sediment breakdown. The data will expand our current knowledge of microbial genetic potential and provide a solid understanding of enzyme function as it relates to degradation of complex organic matter in those marine sediments. It will thereby improve our understanding of temperature change on the chemistry of Antarctic seawater. This award reflects NSF\u0027s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation\u0027s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "east": 160.0, "geometry": "POINT(-127.5 -70)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONS; USAP-DC; Antarctic Peninsula; BENTHIC; SHIPS; SEDIMENT CHEMISTRY; Amd/Us; AMD; USA/NSF; Weddell Sea", "locations": "Antarctic Peninsula; Weddell Sea", "north": -60.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Learman, Deric", "platforms": "WATER-BASED PLATFORMS \u003e VESSELS \u003e SURFACE \u003e SHIPS", "repo": "USAP-DC", "repositories": "USAP-DC", "science_programs": null, "south": -80.0, "title": "RAPID: Meta-genomic and Transcriptomic Investigation of Complex Organic Matter Degradation in Antarctic Benthic Sediments", "uid": "p0010235", "west": -55.0}, {"awards": "1937748 Sumner, Dawn", "bounds_geometry": "POINT(163.183333 -77.616667)", "dataset_titles": "Lake Fryxell 2022-2023 benthic microbial mat thickness and number of laminae", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "601839", "doi": "10.15784/601839", "keywords": "Antarctica; Cryosphere; Dry Valleys; Lake Fryxell; Laminae; Microbial Mat; Thickness", "people": "Paul, Ann; Juarez Rivera, Marisol; Mackey, Tyler; Hawes, Ian; Sumner, Dawn", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Lake Fryxell 2022-2023 benthic microbial mat thickness and number of laminae", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601839"}], "date_created": "Wed, 30 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Part I: Non-technical summary: This project focuses on understanding annual changes in microbial life that grows on the bottom of Lake Fryxell, Antarctica. Because of its polar latitude, photosynthesis can only occur during the summer months. During summer, photosynthetic bacteria supply communities with energy and oxygen. However, it is unknown how the microbes behave in the dark winter, when observations are not possible. This project will install environmental monitors and light-blocking shades over parts of these communities. The shades will extend winter conditions into the spring to allow researchers to characterize the winter behavior of the microbial communities. Researchers will measure changes in the water chemistry due to microbial activities when the shades are removed and the mats first receive light. Results are expected to provide insights into how organisms interact with and change their environments. The project includes training of graduate students and early career scientists in fieldwork, including scientific ice diving techniques. In addition, the members of the project team will develop a web-based \u201cGuide to Thrive\u201d, which will compile field tips ranging from basic gear use to advanced environmental protection techniques. This will be a valuable resource for group leaders ranging from undergraduate teaching assistants to Antarctic expedition leaders to lead well-planned and tailored field expeditions. Part II: Technical summary: The research team will measure seasonal metabolic and biogeochemical changes in benthic mats using differential gene expression and geochemical gradients. They will identify seasonal phenotypic differences in microbial communities and ecosystem effects induced by spring oxygen production. To do so, researchers will install environmental sensors and opaque shades over mats at three depths in the lake. The following spring, shaded and unshaded mats will be sampled. The shades will then be removed, and changes in pore water O2, H2S, pH, and redox will be measured using microelectrodes. Mats will also be sampled for transcriptomic gene expression analyses at intervals guided by geochemical changes. Pore water will be sampled for nutrient analyses. Field research will be supplemented with laboratory experiments to refine field techniques, gene expression data analysis, and integration of results into a seasonal model of productivity and nitrogen cycling in Lake Fryxell. Results will provide insights into several key priorities for NSF, including how biotic, abiotic and environmental components of the benthic mats interact to affect Antarctic lakes. This award reflects NSF\u0027s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation\u0027s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "east": 163.183333, "geometry": "POINT(163.183333 -77.616667)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Antarctica; Microbial Activity; Microbial Diversity; Microbial Mat; Genomics; FIELD SURVEYS; ECOSYSTEM FUNCTIONS; Benthic Ecology; Lake Fryxell; LAKE/POND", "locations": "Antarctica; Lake Fryxell", "north": -77.616667, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems; Antarctic Integrated System Science", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Sumner, Dawn; Mackey, Tyler", "platforms": "LAND-BASED PLATFORMS \u003e FIELD SITES \u003e FIELD SURVEYS", "repo": "USAP-DC", "repositories": "USAP-DC", "science_programs": null, "south": -77.616667, "title": "Seasonal Primary Productivity and Nitrogen Cycling in Photosynthetic Mats, Lake Fryxell, McMurdo Dry Valleys", "uid": "p0010219", "west": 163.183333}, {"awards": "1850988 Teets, Nicholas", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-64.366767 -62.68104,-63.9917036 -62.68104,-63.6166402 -62.68104,-63.2415768 -62.68104,-62.8665134 -62.68104,-62.49145 -62.68104,-62.1163866 -62.68104,-61.7413232 -62.68104,-61.3662598 -62.68104,-60.9911964 -62.68104,-60.616133 -62.68104,-60.616133 -62.9537037,-60.616133 -63.2263674,-60.616133 -63.4990311,-60.616133 -63.7716948,-60.616133 -64.0443585,-60.616133 -64.3170222,-60.616133 -64.5896859,-60.616133 -64.8623496,-60.616133 -65.1350133,-60.616133 -65.407677,-60.9911964 -65.407677,-61.3662598 -65.407677,-61.7413232 -65.407677,-62.1163866 -65.407677,-62.49145 -65.407677,-62.8665134 -65.407677,-63.2415768 -65.407677,-63.6166402 -65.407677,-63.9917036 -65.407677,-64.366767 -65.407677,-64.366767 -65.1350133,-64.366767 -64.8623496,-64.366767 -64.5896859,-64.366767 -64.3170222,-64.366767 -64.0443585,-64.366767 -63.7716948,-64.366767 -63.4990311,-64.366767 -63.2263674,-64.366767 -62.9537037,-64.366767 -62.68104))", "dataset_titles": "Belgica antarctica collection sites - Summer 2023/2024 field season; Cold and dehydration tolerance of Belgica antarctica from three distinct geographic locations; Cross-tolerance in Belgica antarctica near Palmer Peninsula; Data from Edgington, H., Pavinato, V.A.C., Spacht, D., Gantz, J.D., Convey, P., Lee, R.E., Denlinger, D.L., Michel, A., 2023. Genetic history, structure and gene flow among populations of Belgica antarctica, the only free-living insect in the western Antarctic Peninsula. Polar Science 36, 100945.; Data from microplastics exposure in Belgica antarctica; Fine\u2011scale variation in microhabitat conditions influences physiology and metabolism in an Antarctic insect; Information on 2023 collection sites for Belgica antarctica; LMG2002 Expedtition Data; Long-term recovery from freezing in Belgica antarctica; Multiple stress tolerance in the Antarctic midge; Simulated winter warming negatively impacts survival of Antarcticas only endemic insect; Stress tolerance in Belgica antarctica and Eretmoptera murphyi; Temporal and spatial variation in stress tolerance in Belgica antarctica populations from distinct islands", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "200425", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Simulated winter warming negatively impacts survival of Antarcticas only endemic insect", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601694"}, {"dataset_uid": "601875", "doi": null, "keywords": "Antarctica; Cryosphere", "people": "Teets, Nicholas; Hayward, Scott; Michel, Andrew; Sousa Lima, Cleverson", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Belgica antarctica collection sites - Summer 2023/2024 field season", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601875"}, {"dataset_uid": "601873", "doi": null, "keywords": "Antarctica; Belgica Antarctica; Cryosphere; Population Genetics", "people": "Sousa Lima, Cleverson; Teets, Nicholas; Hayward, Scott; Michel, Andrew", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Temporal and spatial variation in stress tolerance in Belgica antarctica populations from distinct islands", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601873"}, {"dataset_uid": "601872", "doi": "10.15784/601872", "keywords": "Antarctica; Belgica Antarctica; Cryosphere", "people": "Michel, Andrew; Sousa Lima, Cleverson; Teets, Nicholas; Colinet, Herve; Hayward, Scott", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Cross-tolerance in Belgica antarctica near Palmer Peninsula", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601872"}, {"dataset_uid": "601871", "doi": null, "keywords": "Antarctica; Belgica Antarctica; Cryosphere", "people": "Michel, Andrew; Hayward, Scott; Sousa Lima, Cleverson; Teets, Nicholas; Gantz, Josiah D.; Kawarasaki, Yuta; Aquilino, Monica; Devlin, Jack; Pavinato, Vitor", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Stress tolerance in Belgica antarctica and Eretmoptera murphyi", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601871"}, {"dataset_uid": "601867", "doi": null, "keywords": "Antarctica; Antarctic Peninsula; Cryosphere", "people": "Teets, Nicholas", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Multiple stress tolerance in the Antarctic midge", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601867"}, {"dataset_uid": "601866", "doi": "10.15784/601866", "keywords": "Antarctica; Antarctic Peninsula; Cryosphere", "people": "Teets, Nicholas; Devlin, Jack", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Data from microplastics exposure in Belgica antarctica", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601866"}, {"dataset_uid": "601865", "doi": "10.15784/601865", "keywords": "Antarctica; Antarctic Peninsula; Cryosphere; Seasonality", "people": "Spacht, Drew; Denlinger, David; Lee, Richard; Teets, Nicholas; McCabe, Eleanor; Devlin, Jack; Gantz, Josiah D.", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Fine\u2011scale variation in microhabitat conditions influences physiology and metabolism in an Antarctic insect", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601865"}, {"dataset_uid": "601864", "doi": "10.15784/601864", "keywords": "Antarctica; Antarctic Peninsula; Cryosphere", "people": "Teets, Nicholas; Kawarasaki, Yuta", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Cold and dehydration tolerance of Belgica antarctica from three distinct geographic locations", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601864"}, {"dataset_uid": "601687", "doi": "10.15784/601687", "keywords": "Antarctica; Antarctic Peninsula; Belgica Antarctica; Biota; Sample Location", "people": "Sousa Lima, Cleverson; Peter, Convey; Michel, Andrew; Teets, Nicholas; Devlin, Jack; Kawarasaki, Yuta; Gantz, Joseph; Pavinato, Vitor", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Information on 2023 collection sites for Belgica antarctica", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601687"}, {"dataset_uid": "200222", "doi": "10.7284/908802", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "R2R", "science_program": null, "title": "LMG2002 Expedtition Data", "url": "https://www.rvdata.us/search/cruise/LMG2002"}, {"dataset_uid": "200438", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "NCBI", "science_program": null, "title": "Data from Edgington, H., Pavinato, V.A.C., Spacht, D., Gantz, J.D., Convey, P., Lee, R.E., Denlinger, D.L., Michel, A., 2023. Genetic history, structure and gene flow among populations of Belgica antarctica, the only free-living insect in the western Antarctic Peninsula. Polar Science 36, 100945.", "url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA565153/"}, {"dataset_uid": "200437", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Stress tolerance in Belgica antarctica and Eretmoptera murphyi", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601874"}, {"dataset_uid": "601698", "doi": "10.15784/601698", "keywords": "Antarctica; Belgica Antarctica; Palmer Station", "people": "Devlin, Jack; Sousa Lima, Cleverson; Lecheta, Melise; Teets, Nicholas", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Long-term recovery from freezing in Belgica antarctica", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601698"}], "date_created": "Fri, 25 Jun 2021 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "The cold, dry terrestrial environments of Antarctica are inhospitable for insects, and only three midge species make Antarctica home. Of these, Belgica antarctica is the only species found exclusively in Antarctica, and it has been a resident of Antarctica since the continent split from South America ~30 million years ago. Thus, this species is an excellent system to model the biological history of Antarctica throughout its repeated glaciation events and shifts in climate. This insect is also a classic example of extreme adaptation, and much previous work has focused on identifying the genetic and physiological mechanisms that allow this species to survive where no other insect is capable. However, it has been difficult to pinpoint the unique evolutionary adaptations that are required to survive in Antarctica due to a lack of information from closely related Antarctic and sub-Antarctic species. This project will compare adaptations, genome sequences, and population characteristics of four midge species that span an environmental gradient from sub-Antarctic to Antarctic habitats. In addition to B. antarctica, these species include two species that are strictly sub-Antarctic and a third that is native to the sub-Antarctic but has invaded parts of Antarctica. The researchers, comprised of scientists from the US, UK, Chile, and France, will sample insects from across their geographic range and measure their ability to tolerate environmental stressors (i.e., cold and desiccation), quantify molecular responses to stress, and compare the makeup of the genome and patterns of genetic diversity. This research will contribute to a greater understanding of adaptation to extremes, to an understanding of biodiversity on the planet and to understanding and predicting changes accompanying environmental change. The project will train two graduate students and two postdoctoral researchers, and a K-12 educator will be a member of the field team and will assist with fieldwork and facilitate outreach with schools in the US. The project includes partnership activities with several STEM education organizations to deliver educational content to K-12 and secondary students. This is a project that is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation\u0027s Directorate of Geosciences (NSF/GEO) and the National Environment Research Council (NERC) of the United Kingdom (UK) via the NSF/GEO-NERC Lead Agency Agreement. This Agreement allows a single joint US/UK proposal to be submitted and peer-reviewed by the Agency whose investigator has the largest proportion of the budget. Each Agency funds the proportion of the budget and the investigators associated with its own country. UK participation in this project includes deploying scientists as part of the field team, supporting field and sampling logistics at remote Antarctic sites, and genome sequencing, annotation, and analyses. This project focuses on the key physiological adaptations and molecular processes that allow a select few insect species to survive in Antarctica. The focal species are all wingless with limited dispersal capacity, suggesting there is also significant potential to locally adapt to variable environmental conditions across the range of these species. The central hypothesis is that similar molecular mechanisms drive both population-level adaptation to local environmental conditions and macroevolutionary changes across species living in different environments. The specific aims of the project are to 1) Characterize conserved and species-specific adaptations to extreme environments through comparative physiology and transcriptomics, 2) Compare the genome sequences of these species to identify genetic signatures of extreme adaption, and 3) Investigate patterns of diversification and local adaptation across each species? range using population genomics. The project establishes an international collaboration of researchers from the US, UK, Chile, and France with shared interests and complementary expertise in the biology, genomics, and conservation of Antarctic arthropods. The Broader Impacts of the project include training students and partnering with the Living Arts and Science Center to design and implement educational content for K-12 students. This award reflects NSF\u0027s statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation\u0027s intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.", "east": -60.616133, "geometry": "POINT(-62.49145 -64.0443585)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Antarctic Peninsula; Livingston Island; Antarctica; USAP-DC; AMD; R/V LMG; USA/NSF; ARTHROPODS; Amd/Us; Anvers Island", "locations": "Antarctica; Antarctic Peninsula; Anvers Island; Livingston Island", "north": -62.68104, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Teets, Nicholas; Michel, Andrew", "platforms": "WATER-BASED PLATFORMS \u003e VESSELS \u003e SURFACE \u003e R/V LMG", "repo": "USAP-DC", "repositories": "NCBI; R2R; USAP-DC", "science_programs": null, "south": -65.407677, "title": "NSFGEO-NERC: Mechanisms of Adaptation to Terrestrial Antarctica through Comparative Physiology and Genomics of Antarctic and sub-Antarctic Insects", "uid": "p0010203", "west": -64.366767}, {"awards": "0732450 Van Dover, Cindy; 0732983 Vernet, Maria; 0732711 Smith, Craig; 0732917 McCormick, Michael", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-60.5 -63.1,-59.99 -63.1,-59.48 -63.1,-58.97 -63.1,-58.46 -63.1,-57.95 -63.1,-57.44 -63.1,-56.93 -63.1,-56.42 -63.1,-55.91 -63.1,-55.4 -63.1,-55.4 -63.29,-55.4 -63.48,-55.4 -63.67,-55.4 -63.86,-55.4 -64.05,-55.4 -64.24,-55.4 -64.43,-55.4 -64.62,-55.4 -64.81,-55.4 -65,-55.91 -65,-56.42 -65,-56.93 -65,-57.44 -65,-57.95 -65,-58.46 -65,-58.97 -65,-59.48 -65,-59.99 -65,-60.5 -65,-60.5 -64.81,-60.5 -64.62,-60.5 -64.43,-60.5 -64.24,-60.5 -64.05,-60.5 -63.86,-60.5 -63.67,-60.5 -63.48,-60.5 -63.29,-60.5 -63.1))", "dataset_titles": "LARISSA: Impact of ice-shelf loss on geochemical profiles and microbial community composition in marine sediments of the Larsen A embayment, Antarctic Peninsula; NBP1001 cruise data; NBP1203 cruise data; Species Abundance Data from the Larsen Ice Shelf Ice acquired during R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer expedition NBP1203", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "000143", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "R2R", "science_program": null, "title": "NBP1203 cruise data", "url": "https://www.rvdata.us/search/cruise/NBP1203"}, {"dataset_uid": "000142", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "R2R", "science_program": null, "title": "NBP1001 cruise data", "url": "https://www.rvdata.us/search/cruise/NBP1001"}, {"dataset_uid": "601304", "doi": null, "keywords": "Antarctica; Antarctic Peninsula; Biota; Box Corer; LARISSA; Larsen Ice Shelf; Macrofauna; Megafauna; NBP1203; Oceans; R/v Nathaniel B. Palmer; Seafloor Sampling; Species Abundance", "people": "Smith, Craig", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": "LARISSA", "title": "Species Abundance Data from the Larsen Ice Shelf Ice acquired during R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer expedition NBP1203", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601304"}, {"dataset_uid": "601073", "doi": "10.15784/601073", "keywords": "Antarctica; Antarctic Peninsula; Chemistry:ice; Chemistry:Ice; Geochemistry; Glaciers/ice Sheet; Glaciers/Ice Sheet; Glaciology; Ice Core Records; LARISSA; Microbiology", "people": "McCormick, Michael", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "LARISSA: Impact of ice-shelf loss on geochemical profiles and microbial community composition in marine sediments of the Larsen A embayment, Antarctic Peninsula", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601073"}], "date_created": "Fri, 09 Oct 2020 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "A profound transformation in ecosystem structure and function is occurring in coastal waters of the western Weddell Sea, with the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf. This transformation appears to be yielding a redistribution of energy flow between chemoautotrophic and photosynthetic production, and to be causing the rapid demise of the extraordinary seep ecosystem discovered beneath the ice shelf. This event provides an ideal opportunity to examine fundamental aspects of ecosystem transition associated with climate change. We propose to test the following hypotheses to elucidate the transformations occurring in marine ecosystems as a consequence of the Larsen B collapse: (1) The biogeographic isolation and sub-ice shelf setting of the Larsen B seep has led to novel habitat characteristics, chemoautotrophically dependent taxa and functional adaptations. (2) Benthic communities beneath the former Larsen B ice shelf are fundamentally different from assemblages at similar depths in the Weddell sea-ice zone, and resemble oligotrophic deep-sea communities. Larsen B assemblages are undergoing rapid change. (3) The previously dark, oligotrophic waters of the Larsen B embayment now support a thriving phototrophic community, with production rates and phytoplankton composition similar to other productive areas of the Weddell Sea. To document rapid changes occurring in the Larsen B ecosystem, we will use a remotely operated vehicle, shipboard samplers, and moored sediment traps. We will characterize microbial, macrofaunal and megafaunal components of the seep community; evaluate patterns of surface productivity, export flux, and benthic faunal composition in areas previously covered by the ice shelf, and compare these areas to the open sea-ice zone. These changes will be placed within the geological, glaciological and climatological context that led to ice-shelf retreat, through companion research projects funded in concert with this effort. Together these projects will help predict the likely consequences of ice-shelf collapse to marine ecosystems in other regions of Antarctica vulnerable to climate change. The research features international collaborators from Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. The broader impacts include participation of a science writer; broadcast of science segments by members of the Jim Lehrer News Hour (Public Broadcasting System); material for summer courses in environmental change; mentoring of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows; and showcasing scientific activities and findings to students and public through podcasts.", "east": -55.4, "geometry": "POINT(-57.95 -64.05)", "instruments": "NOT APPLICABLE \u003e NOT APPLICABLE \u003e NOT APPLICABLE", "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "NBP1203; USAP-DC; Amd/Us; LARISSA; Larsen Ice Shelf; Species Abundance Data; R/V NBP; Antarctic Peninsula; NBP1001; USA/NSF; AMD; Antarctica; MARINE ECOSYSTEMS", "locations": "Antarctica; Antarctic Peninsula; Larsen Ice Shelf", "north": -63.1, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Integrated System Science; Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems; Antarctic Integrated System Science; Antarctic Integrated System Science; Antarctic Integrated System Science; Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "McCormick, Michael; Vernet, Maria; Van Dover, Cindy; Smith, Craig", "platforms": "WATER-BASED PLATFORMS \u003e VESSELS \u003e SURFACE \u003e R/V NBP", "repo": "R2R", "repositories": "R2R; USAP-DC", "science_programs": "LARISSA", "south": -65.0, "title": "Collaborative Research in IPY: Abrupt Environmental Change in the Larsen Ice Shelf System, a Multidisciplinary Approach - Marine Ecosystems.", "uid": "p0010135", "west": -60.5}, {"awards": "1341661 Near, Thomas", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-180 -60,-144 -60,-108 -60,-72 -60,-36 -60,0 -60,36 -60,72 -60,108 -60,144 -60,180 -60,180 -63,180 -66,180 -69,180 -72,180 -75,180 -78,180 -81,180 -84,180 -87,180 -90,144 -90,108 -90,72 -90,36 -90,0 -90,-36 -90,-72 -90,-108 -90,-144 -90,-180 -90,-180 -87,-180 -84,-180 -81,-180 -78,-180 -75,-180 -72,-180 -69,-180 -66,-180 -63,-180 -60))", "dataset_titles": "Phylogenomics of Antarctic notothenioid fishes", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "601264", "doi": null, "keywords": "Adaptive Radiation; Antarctica; Fish; Notothenioidei; Phylogeny; Southern Ocean; Speciation", "people": "Dornburg, Alex; Near, Thomas", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Phylogenomics of Antarctic notothenioid fishes", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601264"}, {"dataset_uid": "601262", "doi": "10.15784/601262", "keywords": "Adaptive Radiation; Antarctica; Fish; Notothenioidei; Phylogeny; Southern Ocean; Speciation", "people": "Near, Thomas; Dornburg, Alex", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Phylogenomics of Antarctic notothenioid fishes", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601262"}], "date_created": "Sat, 29 Feb 2020 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Understanding how groups of organisms respond to climate change is fundamentally important to assessing the impacts of human activities as well as understanding how past climatic shifts have shaped biological diversity over deep stretches of time. The fishes occupying the near-shore marine habitats around Antarctica are dominated by one group of closely related species called notothenioids. It appears dramatic changes in Antarctic climate were important in the origin and evolutionary diversification of this economically important lineage of fishes. Deposits of fossil fishes in Antarctica that were formed when the continent was experiencing milder temperatures show that the area was home to a much more diverse array of fish lineages. Today the waters of the Southern Ocean are very cold, and often below freezing, but notothenioids fishes exhibit a number of adaptions to live in this harsh set of marine habitats, including the presence of anti-freeze proteins. This research project will collect DNA sequences from hundreds of genes to infer the genealogical relationships of nearly all 124 notothenioid species, and use mathematical techniques to estimate the ages of species and lineages. Knowledge on the timing of evolutionary divergence in notothenioids will allow investigators to assess if timing of previous major climatic shifts in Antarctica are correlated with key events in the formation of the modern Southern Ocean fish fauna. The project will also further the NSF goals of making scientific discoveries available to the general public and of training new generations of scientists. The project will support educational outreach activities to teenager groups and to the general public through a natural history museum exhibit and other public lectures. It will provide professional training opportunities for graduate students and a postdoctoral research scholar. Adaptive radiation, where lineages experience high rates of evolutionary diversification coincident with ecological divergence, is mostly studied in island ecosystems. Notothenioids dominate the fish fauna of the Southern Ocean and exhibit antifreeze glycoproteins that allow occupation of the subzero waters. Notothenioids are noted as one of the only examples of adaptive radiation among marine fishes, but the evolutionary history of diversification and radiation into different ecological habitats is poorly understood. This research will generate a species phylogeny (evolutionary history) for nearly all of the 124 recognized notothenioid species to investigate the mechanisms of adaptive radiation in this lineage. The phylogeny is inferred from approximately 350 genes sampled using next generation DNA sequencing and related techniques. Morphometric data are taken for museum specimens to investigate the tempo of morphological diversification and to determine if there are correlations between rates of lineage diversification and the origin of morphological disparity. The patterns of lineage, morphological, and ecological diversification in the notothenioid radiation will be compared to the paleoclimatic record to determine if past instances of global climate change have shaped the evolutionary diversification of this lineage of polar-adapted fishes.", "east": 180.0, "geometry": "POINT(0 -89.999)", "instruments": "NOT APPLICABLE \u003e NOT APPLICABLE \u003e NOT APPLICABLE", "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "FISH; Fish; AMD; USA/NSF; Southern Ocean; Amd/Us; NOT APPLICABLE; USAP-DC; MARINE ECOSYSTEMS; Notothenioidei; Phylogeny", "locations": "Southern Ocean", "north": -60.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Near, Thomas", "platforms": "OTHER \u003e NOT APPLICABLE \u003e NOT APPLICABLE", "repo": "USAP-DC", "repositories": "USAP-DC", "science_programs": null, "south": -90.0, "title": "Phylogenomic Study of Adaptive Radiation in Antarctic Fishes", "uid": "p0010087", "west": -180.0}, {"awards": "1443578 Schmidt, Steven", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((161.5 -77.5,161.7 -77.5,161.9 -77.5,162.1 -77.5,162.3 -77.5,162.5 -77.5,162.7 -77.5,162.9 -77.5,163.1 -77.5,163.3 -77.5,163.5 -77.5,163.5 -77.53,163.5 -77.56,163.5 -77.59,163.5 -77.62,163.5 -77.65,163.5 -77.68,163.5 -77.71,163.5 -77.74,163.5 -77.77,163.5 -77.8,163.3 -77.8,163.1 -77.8,162.9 -77.8,162.7 -77.8,162.5 -77.8,162.3 -77.8,162.1 -77.8,161.9 -77.8,161.7 -77.8,161.5 -77.8,161.5 -77.77,161.5 -77.74,161.5 -77.71,161.5 -77.68,161.5 -77.65,161.5 -77.62,161.5 -77.59,161.5 -77.56,161.5 -77.53,161.5 -77.5))", "dataset_titles": "16S and 18S amplicon sequencing of Antarctic cryoconite holes; Genomes of Antarctic ssDNA viruses (GenBank accession numbers MN311489-MN311492 and MN328267-MN328291); Metadata from samples (in the process of submitting to EDI; will update with DOI once completed); Microbial species-area relationships in Antarctic cryoconite holes; Soil microbial communities of a mountain landscape, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "200280", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "NCBI GenBank", "science_program": null, "title": "Soil microbial communities of a mountain landscape, McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica", "url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA721735/"}, {"dataset_uid": "200279", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "GitHub", "science_program": null, "title": "Metadata from samples (in the process of submitting to EDI; will update with DOI once completed)", "url": "https://github.com/pacificasommers/Cryoconite-metadata"}, {"dataset_uid": "200281", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "NCBI GenBank", "science_program": null, "title": "Microbial species-area relationships in Antarctic cryoconite holes", "url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA668398/"}, {"dataset_uid": "200081", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "NCBI GenBank", "science_program": null, "title": "16S and 18S amplicon sequencing of Antarctic cryoconite holes", "url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bioproject/PRJNA480849/"}, {"dataset_uid": "200084", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "NCBI GenBank", "science_program": null, "title": "Genomes of Antarctic ssDNA viruses (GenBank accession numbers MN311489-MN311492 and MN328267-MN328291)", "url": ""}], "date_created": "Fri, 01 Nov 2019 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Cryoconite holes are pockets of life completely encased in otherwise barren glacial ice. These pockets of life form when dust blown onto the ice melts a small, largely isolated hole that can function as its own tiny ecosystem. This dust can contain microorganisms such as bacteria, algae, or microscopic animals. The microorganisms within the hole interact and carry out functions typical of a larger ecosystem, such as a forest. Cryoconite holes are especially important in extreme cold environments such as the Antarctic Dry Valleys, where they function as repositories of life. Because cryoconite holes are mostly enclosed and persist for years, they can be tracked over time to test fundamental scientific questions about how communities of interacting organisms develop to become fully functioning ecosystems. This project will sample existing and experimentally created cryoconite holes to understand how these ecosystems develop and to what degree random processes (such as which organisms get there first) affect the final community composition and functioning. The results will not only improve our understanding of how microbial communities assemble and affect the functioning of microecosystems such as cryoconite holes, but also how the processes of community assembly affect functioning of larger ecosystems, such as forests. A better understanding of community establishment, development, and response to abiotic factors are essential to forecasting ecological responses to environmental change. It is essential to unravel the links between community assembly, biodiversity, and nutrient cycling across numerous ecosystems because these are critical factors determining ecological responses to environmental change. The unique, largely isolated nature of cryoconite holes provides an experimental system that will advance fundamental understanding of the processes (e.g., stochastic dynamics such as dispersal limitation, assembly order, and ecological drift) driving community assembly. This project will use a field sampling campaign and a number of manipulative experiments to test a hypothesis that unites theory in community and ecosystem ecology: the degree to which stochastic processes guide microbial community assembly and affects regional patterns in biodiversity and ecosystem processes. Cryoconite holes will be sampled to compare community composition, environmental factors, and ecosystem functioning between hydrologically connected and isolated holes. New cryoconite holes will also be constructed and monitored over the course of two growing seasons to specifically alter assembly order and community size, thereby pairing a unique manipulative experiment with field surveys to address questions with relevance to the Antarctic and beyond. Amplicon sequencing, metagenomics, microscopy, sensitive environmental chemistry methods, and photosynthesis and respiration measurements will be used to test a series of sub-hypotheses that relate stochasticity to patterns in regional biodiversity, heterogeneity in environmental factors, and ecosystem processes.", "east": 163.5, "geometry": "POINT(162.5 -77.65)", "instruments": "NOT APPLICABLE \u003e NOT APPLICABLE \u003e NOT APPLICABLE", "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "GLACIERS; Antarctica; USAP-DC; FIELD INVESTIGATION", "locations": "Antarctica", "north": -77.5, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Schmidt, Steven; Cawley, Kaelin; Fountain, Andrew", "platforms": "LAND-BASED PLATFORMS \u003e FIELD SITES \u003e FIELD INVESTIGATION", "repo": "NCBI GenBank", "repositories": "GitHub; NCBI GenBank", "science_programs": null, "south": -77.8, "title": "Collaborative Research: Stochasticity and Cryoconite Community Assembly and Function", "uid": "p0010063", "west": 161.5}, {"awards": "1115245 McKnight, Diane", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((160.5 -77.35,160.83 -77.35,161.16 -77.35,161.49 -77.35,161.82 -77.35,162.15 -77.35,162.48 -77.35,162.81 -77.35,163.14 -77.35,163.47 -77.35,163.8 -77.35,163.8 -77.4,163.8 -77.45,163.8 -77.5,163.8 -77.55,163.8 -77.6,163.8 -77.65,163.8 -77.7,163.8 -77.75,163.8 -77.8,163.8 -77.85,163.47 -77.85,163.14 -77.85,162.81 -77.85,162.48 -77.85,162.15 -77.85,161.82 -77.85,161.49 -77.85,161.16 -77.85,160.83 -77.85,160.5 -77.85,160.5 -77.8,160.5 -77.75,160.5 -77.7,160.5 -77.65,160.5 -77.6,160.5 -77.55,160.5 -77.5,160.5 -77.45,160.5 -77.4,160.5 -77.35))", "dataset_titles": "McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER data at EDI Data Portal", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "000204", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "LTER", "science_program": null, "title": "McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER data at EDI Data Portal", "url": "https://portal.edirepository.org/nis/browseServlet?searchValue=MCM "}], "date_created": "Mon, 08 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "The McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDV) is a polar desert on the coast of East Antarctica, a region that has not yet experienced climate warming. The McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research (MCMLTER) project has documented the ecological responses of the glacier, soil, stream and lake ecosystems in the MDV during a cooling trend (from 1986 to 2000) which was associated with the depletion of atmospheric ozone. In the past decade, warming events with strong katabatic winds occurred during two summers and the resulting high streamflows and sediment deposition changed the dry valley landscape, possibly presaging conditions that will occur when the ozone hole recovers. In anticipation of future warming in Antarctica, the overarching hypothesis of the proposed project is: Climate warming in the McMurdo Dry Valley ecosystem will amplify connectivity among landscape units leading to enhanced coupling of nutrient cycles across landscapes, and increased biodiversity and productivity within the ecosystem. Warming in the MDV is hypothesized to act as a slowly developing, long-term press of warmer summers, upon which transient pulse events of high summer flows and strong katabatic winds will be overprinted. Four specific hypotheses address the ways in which pulses of water and wind will influence contemporary and future ecosystem structure, function and connectivity. Because windborne transport of biota is a key aspect of enhanced connectivity from katabatic winds, new monitoring will include high-resolution measurements of aeolian particle flux. Importantly, integrative genomics will be employed to understand the responses of specific organisms to the increased connectivity. The project will also include a novel social science component that will use environmental history to examine interactions between human activity, scientific research, and environmental change in the MDV over the past 100 years. To disseminate this research broadly, MCM scientists will participate in a wide array of outreach efforts ranging from presentations in K-12 classrooms to bringing undergraduates and teachers to the MDV to gain research experience. Planned outreach programs will build upon activities conducted during the International Polar Year (2007-2008), which include development of an interactive DVD for high school students and teachers and publication of a children\u0027s book in the LTER Schoolyard Book Series. A teacher\u0027s edition of the book with a CD containing lesson plans will be distributed. The project will develop programs for groups traditionally underrepresented in science arenas by publishing some outreach materials in Spanish.", "east": 163.8, "geometry": "POINT(162.15 -77.6)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Not provided", "locations": null, "north": -77.35, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Instrumentation and Support; Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems; Antarctic Integrated System Science", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "McKnight, Diane; Gooseff, Michael N.", "platforms": "Not provided", "repo": "LTER", "repositories": "LTER", "science_programs": "LTER", "south": -77.85, "title": "Increased Connectivity in a Polar Desert Resulting from Climate Warming: McMurdo Dry Valley LTER Program", "uid": "p0000301", "west": 160.5}, {"awards": "1141978 Foreman, Christine", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((160 -76,160.1 -76,160.2 -76,160.3 -76,160.4 -76,160.5 -76,160.6 -76,160.7 -76,160.8 -76,160.9 -76,161 -76,161 -76.1,161 -76.2,161 -76.3,161 -76.4,161 -76.5,161 -76.6,161 -76.7,161 -76.8,161 -76.9,161 -77,160.9 -77,160.8 -77,160.7 -77,160.6 -77,160.5 -77,160.4 -77,160.3 -77,160.2 -77,160.1 -77,160 -77,160 -76.9,160 -76.8,160 -76.7,160 -76.6,160 -76.5,160 -76.4,160 -76.3,160 -76.2,160 -76.1,160 -76))", "dataset_titles": "FT-ICR MS Metadata; Respiration Metadata; UPLC-Q-TOF data of Cotton Glacier exometabolites", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "601089", "doi": "10.15784/601089", "keywords": "Antarctica; Biota; Exometabolites; Mass Spectrometry; Microbes; Microbiology", "people": "Tigges, Michelle; Foreman, Christine; Bothner, Brian", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "UPLC-Q-TOF data of Cotton Glacier exometabolites", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601089"}, {"dataset_uid": "601077", "doi": "10.15784/601077", "keywords": "Antarctica; Biota; Chemistry:fluid; Chemistry:Fluid; Fluorescence Spectroscopy; Mass Spectrometry", "people": "Foreman, Christine; D\u0027Andrilli, Juliana", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "FT-ICR MS Metadata", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601077"}, {"dataset_uid": "601076", "doi": "10.15784/601076", "keywords": "Antarctica; Biota; Chemistry:fluid; Chemistry:Fluid; Fluorescence Spectroscopy; Mass Spectrometry", "people": "Smith, Heidi; Foreman, Christine", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Respiration Metadata", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601076"}], "date_created": "Tue, 25 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Uncovering the dynamics of dissolved organic matter (DOM) is central to an understanding of the global carbon cycle, as organic material from lakes, streams, oceans and soils passes through this pool. DOM acts as a key energy source for microbes in many ecosystems and therefore can affect regional nutrient cycling patterns. For example, preliminary results suggest that organisms isolated from a supraglacial stream on Cotton Glacier, Antarctica, may be important in DOM cycling in this relatively simple, low temperature system. However, little is known about the functional attributes of the microbes that interact with DOM in the environment. This project will use state-of-the-art genomics, proteomics and metabolomics approaches to understand the mechanisms by which two microbial isolates, CG3 and CG9_1, affect DOM cycling. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry will also be used to better characterize the microbially-derived DOM from this ecosystem. This project will support the research and training of one undergraduate and two graduate students. Results will be widely disseminated through publications as well as through presentations at national and international meetings. In addition, raw data will be made available through open-access databases. Understanding the relationship between cold-adapted microbial metabolisms and DOM pools is important as more than 90% of the Earth?s oceans are below 5 degrees Celsius.", "east": 161.0, "geometry": "POINT(160.5 -76.5)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Not provided", "locations": null, "north": -76.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Foreman, Christine; Bothner, Brian", "platforms": "Not provided", "repo": "USAP-DC", "repositories": "USAP-DC", "science_programs": null, "south": -77.0, "title": "Multidimensional \"omics\" characterization of microbial metabolism and dissolved organic matter in Antarctica", "uid": "p0000408", "west": 160.0}, {"awards": "0944557 Marsh, Adam", "bounds_geometry": "POINT(166 78)", "dataset_titles": "Environmental Genomics of an Antarctic Polychaete #SRP040946", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "000223", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "NCBI GenBank", "science_program": null, "title": "Environmental Genomics of an Antarctic Polychaete #SRP040946", "url": "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra/?term=SRP040946"}], "date_created": "Tue, 13 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Genome-enabled biology provides a foundation for understanding the genetic basis of organism-environment interactions. . The research project links gene expression, genome methylation, and metabolic rates to assess the mechanisms of environmental adaptation (temperature) across multiple generations in a polar, and closely related temperate, polychaete. By comparing these two species, the research will assess how a polar environment shapes responses to environmental stress. This work will produce: 1) a database of full transcriptome (gene specific) profiling data for the polar polychaete cultured at two temperatures; 2) the contribution of genome methylation to the suppression of gene transcription activities; 3) the linkage between shifts in mRNA pools and total cellular activities (as ATP consumption via respiration); 4) an assessment of the inheritance of patterns of gene expression and metabolic activities across three generations; and 5) a simple demographic model of the polar polychaete population dynamics under normal and \u0027global-warming\u0027 temperature scenarios. Broader impacts include two outreach activities. The first is a mentoring program, where African-American undergraduate students spend 1.5 years working on a research project with a UD faculty member (2 summers plus their senior academic year). The second is a children\u0027s display activity at UD?s School of Marine Science \"Coast Day\".", "east": 166.0, "geometry": "POINT(166 -78)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Not provided", "locations": null, "north": -78.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Marsh, Adam G.", "platforms": "Not provided", "repo": "NCBI GenBank", "repositories": "NCBI GenBank", "science_programs": null, "south": -78.0, "title": "Environmental Genomics in an Antarctic polychaete", "uid": "p0000355", "west": 166.0}, {"awards": "1043532 Grzymski, Joseph", "bounds_geometry": "POINT(-64 -64.7)", "dataset_titles": "NCBI GenBank Sequences# PRJNA244317, PRJNA242746", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "000168", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "NCBI GenBank", "science_program": null, "title": "NCBI GenBank Sequences# PRJNA244317, PRJNA242746", "url": "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/"}], "date_created": "Mon, 08 Sep 2014 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "The proposed research will investigate the genomic basis of the physiological and ecological transition of Antarctic marine phytoplankton from a cold dark winter to a warmer, brighter spring. During a field season at Palmer Station, functional genomics (using next generation sequencing technology to identify expressed genes) and in situ fluorometry (FRRF) will be integrated with classical ecological methods to investigate photosynthetic adaptation during phytoplankton species succession from late winter into spring. Using large data sets, this project will test whether amino acid usages differ based on expression. The specific objectives are (1) To characterize phytoplankton succession from the winter to spring transition, and (2) To correlate community gene expression profiles to adaptational differences among taxa. Broader impacts include training of a post doctoral researcher and two undergraduate science majors, with efforts to attract students from underrepresented groups. The P.I.s also will prepare presentations for the public, regarding research experiences, research results, and the importance of climate change.", "east": -64.0, "geometry": "POINT(-64 -64.7)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Not provided", "locations": null, "north": -64.7, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Grzymski, Joseph", "platforms": "Not provided", "repo": "NCBI GenBank", "repositories": "NCBI GenBank", "science_programs": null, "south": -64.7, "title": "Collaborative Research: Functional Genomics and Physiological Ecology of Seasonal Succession in Antarctic Phytoplankton: Adaptations to Light and Temperature", "uid": "p0000462", "west": -64.0}, {"awards": "0739783 Junge, Karen", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-180 -60,-144 -60,-108 -60,-72 -60,-36 -60,0 -60,36 -60,72 -60,108 -60,144 -60,180 -60,180 -63,180 -66,180 -69,180 -72,180 -75,180 -78,180 -81,180 -84,180 -87,180 -90,144 -90,108 -90,72 -90,36 -90,0 -90,-36 -90,-72 -90,-108 -90,-144 -90,-180 -90,-180 -87,-180 -84,-180 -81,-180 -78,-180 -75,-180 -72,-180 -69,-180 -66,-180 -63,-180 -60))", "dataset_titles": "Metabolic Activities and Gene Expression of Marine Psychrophiles in Cold Ice", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "600083", "doi": "10.15784/600083", "keywords": "Antarctica; Biota; Microbiology; Oceans; Sea Ice; Southern Ocean", "people": "Junge, Karen", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Metabolic Activities and Gene Expression of Marine Psychrophiles in Cold Ice", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/600083"}], "date_created": "Wed, 25 Sep 2013 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "The mechanisms enabling bacteria to be metabolically active at very low temperatures are of considerable importance to polar microbial ecology, astrobiology, climate and cryopreservation. This research program has two main objectives. The first is to investigate metabolic activities and gene expression of polar marine psychrophilic bacteria when confronted with freezing conditions at temperatures above the eutectic of seawater (\u003c54C) to unveil cold adaptation mechanisms with relevance to wintertime sea-ice ecology. The second objective is to discern if psychrophilic processes of leucine incorporation into proteins, shown to occur to -196C, amount to metabolic activity providing for the survival of cells or are merely biochemical reactions still possible in flash-frozen samples without any effect on survival. We will examine extracellular and intracellular processes of psychrophilic activity above and below the eutectic by (i) determining the temperature range of metabolic activities such as DNA synthesis, carbon utilization, respiration and ATP generation using radioactive tracer technology, including a control at liquid helium temperature (-268.9C), (ii) analyzing gene expression in ice using whole genome and microarray analyses and iii) examining the role of exopolymeric substances (EPS) and ice micro-physics for the observed activity using an in-situ microscopy technique. Results of the proposed research can be expected to aid in the determination of cellular and genetic strategies that allow cells to maintain activity at extremely low temperatures within an icy matrix and/or to resume activity again when more growth-permissive conditions are encountered. The research is an interdisciplinary collaboration involving three different institutions with participants in Oceanography, Genomics, and Geophysical Sciences. The proposed activity will support the beginning professional career of a female researcher and will serve as the basis for several undergraduate student laboratory projects.", "east": 180.0, "geometry": "POINT(0 -89.999)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Not provided", "locations": null, "north": -60.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Junge, Karen", "platforms": "Not provided", "repo": "USAP-DC", "repositories": "USAP-DC", "science_programs": null, "south": -90.0, "title": "Metabolic Activities and Gene Expression of Marine Psychrophiles in Cold Ice", "uid": "p0000673", "west": -180.0}, {"awards": "1043564 Karentz, Deneb", "bounds_geometry": null, "dataset_titles": "Expedition data of LMG1106A", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "002686", "doi": null, "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "R2R", "science_program": null, "title": "Expedition data of LMG1106A", "url": "https://www.rvdata.us/search/cruise/LMG1106A"}], "date_created": "Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "The proposed research will investigate the genomic basis of the physiological and ecological transition of Antarctic marine phytoplankton from a cold dark winter to a warmer, brighter spring. During a field season at Palmer Station, functional genomics (using next generation sequencing technology to identify expressed genes) and in situ fluorometry (FRRF) will be integrated with classical ecological methods to investigate photosynthetic adaptation during phytoplankton species succession from late winter into spring. Using large data sets, this project will test whether amino acid usages differ based on expression. The specific objectives are (1) To characterize phytoplankton succession from the winter to spring transition, and (2) To correlate community gene expression profiles to adaptational differences among taxa. Broader impacts include training of a post doctoral researcher and two undergraduate science majors, with efforts to attract students from underrepresented groups. The P.I.s also will prepare presentations for the public, regarding research experiences, research results, and the importance of climate change.", "east": null, "geometry": null, "instruments": "EARTH REMOTE SENSING INSTRUMENTS \u003e PASSIVE REMOTE SENSING \u003e POSITIONING/NAVIGATION \u003e GPS \u003e GPS", "is_usap_dc": false, "keywords": "R/V LMG", "locations": null, "north": null, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Karentz, Deneb", "platforms": "WATER-BASED PLATFORMS \u003e VESSELS \u003e SURFACE \u003e R/V LMG", "repo": "R2R", "repositories": "R2R", "science_programs": null, "south": null, "title": "Collaborative Research: Functional Genomics and Physiological Ecology of Seasonal Succession in Antarctic Phytoplankton: Adaptations to Light and Temperature", "uid": "p0000861", "west": null}, {"awards": "0632278 Ducklow, Hugh; 0632389 Murray, Alison", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-77 -62,-75.5 -62,-74 -62,-72.5 -62,-71 -62,-69.5 -62,-68 -62,-66.5 -62,-65 -62,-63.5 -62,-62 -62,-62 -62.7,-62 -63.4,-62 -64.1,-62 -64.8,-62 -65.5,-62 -66.2,-62 -66.9,-62 -67.6,-62 -68.3,-62 -69,-63.5 -69,-65 -69,-66.5 -69,-68 -69,-69.5 -69,-71 -69,-72.5 -69,-74 -69,-75.5 -69,-77 -69,-77 -68.3,-77 -67.6,-77 -66.9,-77 -66.2,-77 -65.5,-77 -64.8,-77 -64.1,-77 -63.4,-77 -62.7,-77 -62))", "dataset_titles": "IPY: Bacterioplankton Genomic Adaptations to Antarctic Winter", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "600061", "doi": "10.15784/600061", "keywords": "Antarctica; Antarctic Peninsula; Biota; Chemistry:fluid; Chemistry:Fluid; Oceans; Southern Ocean", "people": "Grzymski, Joseph; Murray, Alison", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "IPY: Bacterioplankton Genomic Adaptations to Antarctic Winter", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/600061"}], "date_created": "Thu, 08 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "The Western Antarctic Peninsula is experiencing one of the most rapid rates of climate warming on Earth, with an increase of 5degrees C in the mean winter temperature in 50 years. Impacts on upper trophic levels are evident, though there have been few, if any studies that have considered the impacts on bacterioplankton in the Southern Ocean. This proposal will characterize the winter bacterioplankton genome, transcriptome, and proteome and discover those features (community composition, genes up-regulated, and proteins expressed) that are essential to winter bacterioplankton survival and livelihood. We have assembled a polar ocean ecology and genomics network including strategic partnerships with Palmer LTER, the British Antarctic Survey\u0027s ocean metagenome program, US and Canadian scientists studying the Arctic Ocean genome, an Australian colleague who specialized in archaeal proteomics, and French colleagues studying Sub-Antarctic and Coastal Adelie Land marine bacterioplankton. The primary objectives of this program are: 1 Describe the differences in diversity and genomic content between austral winter and summer bacterioplankton communities. 2. Investigate the winter-time bacterioplankton growth and cellular signals (mRNA and proteins expressed) in order to understand the specific adaptations key to survival. \u003cbr/\u003e\u003cbr/\u003eOur results will extend from the Antarctic to the Arctic - as the cold, dark, carbon-limited deep seas linking these two systems have many common features. Education and outreach activities target (i) undergraduate and graduate students, hopefully including minority students recruited through the Diversity in Research in Environmental and Marine Sciences (DREAMS) Program at VIMS; (ii) a broad audience with our education and outreach partnerships with The Cousteau Society and with the Census for Antarctic Marine Life program. Data and links to external databases will be listed on the http://genex2.dri.edu website. Sequence data will be publicly accessible in GenBank and IMG-M databases.", "east": -62.0, "geometry": "POINT(-69.5 -65.5)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Not provided", "locations": null, "north": -62.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems; Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Murray, Alison; Grzymski, Joseph; Ducklow, Hugh", "platforms": "Not provided", "repo": "USAP-DC", "repositories": "USAP-DC", "science_programs": null, "south": -69.0, "title": "IPY: Bacterioplankton Genomic Adaptations to Antarctic Winter", "uid": "p0000091", "west": -77.0}, {"awards": "0537143 Blanchette, Robert", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-69 -60,-68.3 -60,-67.6 -60,-66.9 -60,-66.2 -60,-65.5 -60,-64.8 -60,-64.1 -60,-63.4 -60,-62.7 -60,-62 -60,-62 -61,-62 -62,-62 -63,-62 -64,-62 -65,-62 -66,-62 -67,-62 -68,-62 -69,-62 -70,-62.7 -70,-63.4 -70,-64.1 -70,-64.8 -70,-65.5 -70,-66.2 -70,-66.9 -70,-67.6 -70,-68.3 -70,-69 -70,-69 -69,-69 -68,-69 -67,-69 -66,-69 -65,-69 -64,-69 -63,-69 -62,-69 -61,-69 -60))", "dataset_titles": "(Arenz et al. 2006) DQ317323, DQ317324, DQ317325, DQ317326, DQ317327, DQ317328, DQ317329, DQ317330, DQ317331, DQ317332, DQ317333, DQ317334, DQ317335, DQ317336, DQ317337, DQ317338, DQ317339, DQ317340, DQ317341, DQ317342, DQ317343, DQ317344, DQ317345, DQ317346, DQ317347, DQ317348, DQ317349, DQ317350, DQ317351, DQ317352, DQ317353, DQ317354, DQ317355, DQ317356, DQ317357, DQ317358, DQ317359, DQ317360, DQ317361, DQ317362, DQ317363, DQ317364, DQ317365, DQ317366, DQ317367, DQ317368, DQ317369, DQ317370, DQ317371, DQ317372, DQ317373, DQ317374, DQ317375, DQ317376, DQ317377, DQ317378, DQ317379, DQ317380, DQ317381, DQ317382, DQ317383, DQ317384, DQ317385, DQ317386, DQ317387, DQ317388, DQ317389 (Arenz and Blanchette 2009) FJ235934, FJ235935, FJ235936, FJ235937, FJ235938, FJ235939, FJ235940, FJ235941, FJ235942, FJ235943, FJ235944, FJ235945, FJ235946, FJ235947, FJ235948, FJ235949, FJ235950, FJ235951, FJ235952, FJ235953, FJ235954, FJ235955, FJ235956, FJ235957, FJ235958, FJ235959, FJ235960, FJ235961, FJ235962, FJ235963, FJ235964, FJ235965, FJ235966, FJ235967, FJ235968, FJ235969, FJ235970, FJ235971, FJ235972, FJ235973, FJ235974, FJ235975, FJ235976, FJ235977, FJ235978, FJ235979, FJ235980, FJ235981, FJ235982, FJ235983, FJ235984, FJ235985, FJ235986, FJ235987, FJ235988, FJ235989, FJ235990, FJ235991, FJ235992, FJ235993, FJ235994, FJ235995, FJ235996, FJ235997, FJ235998, FJ235999, FJ236000, FJ236001, FJ236002, FJ236003, FJ236004, FJ236005, FJ236006, FJ236007, FJ236008, FJ236009, FJ236010, FJ236011, FJ236012, FJ236013, FJ236014 (Blanchette et al. 2010) GU212367, GU212368, GU212369, GU212370, GU212371, GU212372, GU212373, GU212374, GU212375, GU212376, GU212377, GU212378, GU212379, GU212380, GU212381, GU212382, GU212383, GU212384, GU212385, GU212386, GU212387, GU212388, GU212389, GU212390, GU212391, GU212392, GU212393, GU212394, GU212395, GU212396, GU212397, GU212398, GU212399, GU212400, GU212401, GU212402, GU212403, GU212404, GU212405, GU212406, GU212407, GU212408, GU212409, GU212410, GU212411, GU212412, GU212413, GU212414, GU212415, GU212416, GU212417, GU212418, GU212419, GU212420, GU212421, GU212422, GU212423, GU212424, GU212425, GU212426, GU212427, GU212428, GU212429, GU212430, GU212431, GU212432, GU212433, GU212434", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "000121", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "NCBI GenBank", "science_program": null, "title": "(Arenz et al. 2006) DQ317323, DQ317324, DQ317325, DQ317326, DQ317327, DQ317328, DQ317329, DQ317330, DQ317331, DQ317332, DQ317333, DQ317334, DQ317335, DQ317336, DQ317337, DQ317338, DQ317339, DQ317340, DQ317341, DQ317342, DQ317343, DQ317344, DQ317345, DQ317346, DQ317347, DQ317348, DQ317349, DQ317350, DQ317351, DQ317352, DQ317353, DQ317354, DQ317355, DQ317356, DQ317357, DQ317358, DQ317359, DQ317360, DQ317361, DQ317362, DQ317363, DQ317364, DQ317365, DQ317366, DQ317367, DQ317368, DQ317369, DQ317370, DQ317371, DQ317372, DQ317373, DQ317374, DQ317375, DQ317376, DQ317377, DQ317378, DQ317379, DQ317380, DQ317381, DQ317382, DQ317383, DQ317384, DQ317385, DQ317386, DQ317387, DQ317388, DQ317389 (Arenz and Blanchette 2009) FJ235934, FJ235935, FJ235936, FJ235937, FJ235938, FJ235939, FJ235940, FJ235941, FJ235942, FJ235943, FJ235944, FJ235945, FJ235946, FJ235947, FJ235948, FJ235949, FJ235950, FJ235951, FJ235952, FJ235953, FJ235954, FJ235955, FJ235956, FJ235957, FJ235958, FJ235959, FJ235960, FJ235961, FJ235962, FJ235963, FJ235964, FJ235965, FJ235966, FJ235967, FJ235968, FJ235969, FJ235970, FJ235971, FJ235972, FJ235973, FJ235974, FJ235975, FJ235976, FJ235977, FJ235978, FJ235979, FJ235980, FJ235981, FJ235982, FJ235983, FJ235984, FJ235985, FJ235986, FJ235987, FJ235988, FJ235989, FJ235990, FJ235991, FJ235992, FJ235993, FJ235994, FJ235995, FJ235996, FJ235997, FJ235998, FJ235999, FJ236000, FJ236001, FJ236002, FJ236003, FJ236004, FJ236005, FJ236006, FJ236007, FJ236008, FJ236009, FJ236010, FJ236011, FJ236012, FJ236013, FJ236014 (Blanchette et al. 2010) GU212367, GU212368, GU212369, GU212370, GU212371, GU212372, GU212373, GU212374, GU212375, GU212376, GU212377, GU212378, GU212379, GU212380, GU212381, GU212382, GU212383, GU212384, GU212385, GU212386, GU212387, GU212388, GU212389, GU212390, GU212391, GU212392, GU212393, GU212394, GU212395, GU212396, GU212397, GU212398, GU212399, GU212400, GU212401, GU212402, GU212403, GU212404, GU212405, GU212406, GU212407, GU212408, GU212409, GU212410, GU212411, GU212412, GU212413, GU212414, GU212415, GU212416, GU212417, GU212418, GU212419, GU212420, GU212421, GU212422, GU212423, GU212424, GU212425, GU212426, GU212427, GU212428, GU212429, GU212430, GU212431, GU212432, GU212433, GU212434", "url": "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/"}], "date_created": "Mon, 24 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Fungi in Antarctic ecosystems are major contributors to biodiversity and have great influence on many processes such as biodegradation and nutrient cycling. It is essential for biological surveys as well as genomic and proteomic studies to be completed so a better understanding of these organisms is obtained. Previous research has identified unique fungi associated with historic wooden structures brought to Antarctica by Robert F. Scott and Ernest Shackleton during the Heroic Era of exploration. Many of the fungi found are previously undescribed species that belong to the little known genus Cadophora. The research team will obtain important new information on the fungi present in the Ross Sea and Peninsula Regions of Antarctica, particularly their role in decomposition and nutrient recycling and their mechanisms and strategies for survival in the polar environment. New tools and methods include denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE), real-time PCR, and proteomic profiling. These analyses will reveal key details of the physiological adaptations these fungi have evolved to carry out processes such as biodegradation and nutrient cycling under conditions that would inhibit other fungi. This work, coupled with the training and learning opportunities it provides, will be of value to many fields of study including microbial ecology, polar biology, wood microbiology, environmental science, soil science, geobiochemistry, and mycology as well as fungal phylogenetics, proteomics and genomics. Results obtained will have immediate applied use to help preserve and protect Antarctica\u0027s historic monuments. The investigations proposed are a continuation of research to identify the microbes attacking these historic structures and artifacts and to elucidate their biology and ecology in the polar environment. New research will also be done at the historic Cape Adare huts, the first wooden structures to be built in Antarctica and also at East Base, an American historic site on Stonington Island from the Admiral Byrd and Ronne Expeditions of 1939-1948. The research team will conduct vital studies needed to successfully conserve the wooden structures and artifacts at these sites and protect them for future generations", "east": -62.0, "geometry": "POINT(-65.5 -65)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Not provided", "locations": null, "north": -60.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Blanchette, Robert", "platforms": "Not provided", "repo": "NCBI GenBank", "repositories": "NCBI GenBank", "science_programs": null, "south": -70.0, "title": "Studies of Antarctic Fungi: Adaptive Stratigies for Survival and Protecting Antarctica\u0027s Historic Structures", "uid": "p0000187", "west": -69.0}, {"awards": "0636696 DeVries, Arthur", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-68.0025 -52.7599,-67.07254 -52.7599,-66.14258 -52.7599,-65.21262 -52.7599,-64.28266 -52.7599,-63.3527 -52.7599,-62.42274 -52.7599,-61.49278 -52.7599,-60.56282 -52.7599,-59.63286 -52.7599,-58.7029 -52.7599,-58.7029 -53.98242,-58.7029 -55.20494,-58.7029 -56.42746,-58.7029 -57.64998,-58.7029 -58.8725,-58.7029 -60.09502,-58.7029 -61.31754,-58.7029 -62.54006,-58.7029 -63.76258,-58.7029 -64.9851,-59.63286 -64.9851,-60.56282 -64.9851,-61.49278 -64.9851,-62.42274 -64.9851,-63.3527 -64.9851,-64.28266 -64.9851,-65.21262 -64.9851,-66.14258 -64.9851,-67.07254 -64.9851,-68.0025 -64.9851,-68.0025 -63.76258,-68.0025 -62.54006,-68.0025 -61.31754,-68.0025 -60.09502,-68.0025 -58.8725,-68.0025 -57.64998,-68.0025 -56.42746,-68.0025 -55.20494,-68.0025 -53.98242,-68.0025 -52.7599))", "dataset_titles": "Expedition Data; Expedition data of LMG0809; Metadata associated with the description of Akarotaxis gouldae n. sp. (Bathydraconidae)", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "001493", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "R2R", "science_program": null, "title": "Expedition Data", "url": "https://www.rvdata.us/search/cruise/LMG0810"}, {"dataset_uid": "001504", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "R2R", "science_program": null, "title": "Expedition Data", "url": "https://www.rvdata.us/search/cruise/LMG0809"}, {"dataset_uid": "002728", "doi": null, "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "R2R", "science_program": null, "title": "Expedition data of LMG0809", "url": "https://www.rvdata.us/search/cruise/LMG0809"}, {"dataset_uid": "601811", "doi": null, "keywords": "Antarctica; Bellingshausen Sea; Cryosphere; Southern Ocean", "people": "Desvignes, Thomas; McDowell, Jan; Cheng, Chi-Hing; Biesack, Ellen; Steinberg, Deborah; Hilton, Eric; Corso, Andrew", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": "LTER", "title": "Metadata associated with the description of Akarotaxis gouldae n. sp. (Bathydraconidae)", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/601811"}], "date_created": "Tue, 04 May 2010 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Antarctic notothenioid fish evolved antifreeze (AF) proteins that prevent ice crystals that enter their body fluids from growing, and thereby avoid freezing in their icy habitats. However, even in the extreme cold Antarctic marine environment, regional gradations of severity are found. The biological correlate for environmental severity in fish is the endogenous ice load, which likely determines the tolerable limit of environmental severity for notothenioid habitation. The endogenous ice load develops from environmental ice crystals entering through body surfaces and somehow localizing to the spleen. How prone the surface tissues are to ice entry, how ice reaches the spleen, and what the fate of splenic ice is, requires elucidation. Spleen sequestration of ice raises the hypothesis that macrophages may play a role in the translocation and perhaps elimination of AF-bound ice crystals. Antifreeze glycoproteins (AFGP) act in concert with a second, recently discovered antifreeze called antifreeze potentiating protein (AFPP), necessitating an assessment of the contribution of AFPP to freezing avoidance. Recent research suggests that the exocrine pancreas and the anterior stomach, not the liver, synthesize AFGPs and secrete them into the intestine, from where they may be returned to the blood. A GI-to-blood transport is a highly unconventional path for a major plasma protein and also begs the questions, What is the source of blood AFPP?. Why are two distinct AF proteins needed and what is the chronology of their evolution? What genomic changes in the DNA are associated with the development or loss of the antifreeze trait? Experiments described in this proposal address these interrelated questions of environmental, organismal, and evolutionary physiology, and will further our understanding of novel vertebrate physiologies, the limits of environmental adaptation, and climatically driven changes in the genome. The proposed research will (1) determine the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of environmental temperature and iciness in progressively more severe fish habitats in the greater McMurdo Sound area, and in the milder Arthur Harbor at Palmer Station. The splenic ice load in fishes inhabiting these sites will be determined to correlate to environmental severity and habitability. (2) Assess the surface tissue site of ice entry and their relative barrier properties in intact fish and isolated tissues preparations (3) Assess the role of immune cells in the fate of endogenous ice, (4) determine whether the blood AFGPs are from intestinal/rectal uptake, (5) examine the contribution of AFPP to the total blood AF activity (6) evaluate the progression of genomic changes in the AFGP locus across Notothenioidei as modulated by disparate thermal environments, in four selected species through the analyses of large insert DNA BAC clones. The origin and evolution of AFPP will be examined also by analyzing BAC clones encompassing the AFPP genomic locus. The broader impacts of the proposed research include training of graduate and undergraduate students in research approaches ranging from physical field measurements to cutting edge genomics. Undergraduate research projects have lead to co-authored publications and will continue to do so. Outreach includes establishing Wiki websites on topics of Antarctic fish biology and freeze avoidance, providing advisory services to the San Francisco Science Exploratorium, and making BAC libraries available to interested polar biologists. This research theme has repeatedly received national and international science news coverage and will continue to be disseminated to the public in that manner.", "east": -58.7029, "geometry": "POINT(-63.3527 -58.8725)", "instruments": "IN SITU/LABORATORY INSTRUMENTS \u003e PROFILERS/SOUNDERS \u003e CTD; EARTH REMOTE SENSING INSTRUMENTS \u003e PASSIVE REMOTE SENSING \u003e POSITIONING/NAVIGATION \u003e GPS \u003e GPS; IN SITU/LABORATORY INSTRUMENTS \u003e PROFILERS/SOUNDERS \u003e ACOUSTIC SOUNDERS \u003e ADCP", "is_usap_dc": false, "keywords": "R/V LMG", "locations": null, "north": -52.7599, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Devries, Arthur", "platforms": "WATER-BASED PLATFORMS \u003e VESSELS \u003e SURFACE \u003e R/V LMG", "repo": "R2R", "repositories": "R2R; USAP-DC", "science_programs": null, "south": -64.9851, "title": "Environmental, Organismal and Evolutionary Physiology of Freeze Avoidance in Antarctic Notothenioid Fishes", "uid": "p0000560", "west": -68.0025}, {"awards": "0632250 Cary, Stephen", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-38.5 -72.6,-23.963 -72.6,-9.426 -72.6,5.111 -72.6,19.648 -72.6,34.185 -72.6,48.722 -72.6,63.259 -72.6,77.796 -72.6,92.333 -72.6,106.87 -72.6,106.87 -73.185,106.87 -73.77,106.87 -74.355,106.87 -74.94,106.87 -75.525,106.87 -76.11,106.87 -76.695,106.87 -77.28,106.87 -77.865,106.87 -78.45,92.333 -78.45,77.796 -78.45,63.259 -78.45,48.722 -78.45,34.185 -78.45,19.648 -78.45,5.111 -78.45,-9.426 -78.45,-23.963 -78.45,-38.5 -78.45,-38.5 -77.865,-38.5 -77.28,-38.5 -76.695,-38.5 -76.11,-38.5 -75.525,-38.5 -74.94,-38.5 -74.355,-38.5 -73.77,-38.5 -73.185,-38.5 -72.6))", "dataset_titles": "Metagenomic Data Lake Vostok Microbial Community", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "000136", "doi": "", "keywords": null, "people": null, "repository": "NCBI GenBank", "science_program": null, "title": "Metagenomic Data Lake Vostok Microbial Community", "url": "http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/"}], "date_created": "Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "This project brings together researchers with expertise in molecular microbial ecology, Antarctic and deep sea environments, and metagenomics to address the overarching question: how do ecosystems dominated by microorganisms adapt to conditions of continuous cold and dark over evolutionarily and geologically relevant time scales? Lake Vostok, buried for at least 15 million years beneath approximately 4 km of ice that has prevented any communication with the external environment for as much as 1.5 million years, is an ideal system to study this question. Water from the lake that has frozen on to the bottom of the ice sheet (accretion ice) is available for study. Several studies have indicated the presence of low abundance, but detectable microbial communities in the accretion ice. Our central hypothesis maintains that Lake Vostok microbes are specifically adapted to life in conditions of extreme cold, dark, and oligotrophy and that signatures of those adaptations can be observed in their genome sequences at the gene, organism, and community levels. To address this hypothesis, we propose to characterize the metagenome (i.e. the genomes of all members of the community) of the accretion ice. using whole genome amplification (WGA), which can provide micrograms of unbiased metagenomic DNA from only a few cells. The results of this project have relevance to evolutionary biology and ecology, subglacial Antarctic lake exploration, biotechnology, and astrobiology. The project directly addresses priorities and themes in the International Polar Year at the national and international levels. A legacy of DNA sequence data and the metagenomic library will be created and maintained. Press releases and a publicly available web page will facilitate communication with the public. K-12 outreach will be the focus of a new, two-tiered program targeting the 7th grade classroom and on site visits to the Joint Genome Institute Production Sequencing Facility by high school juniors and seniors and community college level students. Minority undergraduate researchers will be recruited for research on this project, and support and training are provided to two graduate students, a postdoctoral scholar, and a technician.", "east": 106.87, "geometry": "POINT(34.185 -75.525)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Not provided", "locations": null, "north": -72.6, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Cary, Stephen", "platforms": "Not provided", "repo": "NCBI GenBank", "repositories": "NCBI GenBank", "science_programs": null, "south": -78.45, "title": "IPY: Collaborative Research: A Metagenomic Investigation of Adaptation to Prolonged Cold and Dark Conditions of the Lake Vostok Microbial Community", "uid": "p0000201", "west": -38.5}, {"awards": "0808947 Hofmann, Gretchen", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((-180 -70,-177 -70,-174 -70,-171 -70,-168 -70,-165 -70,-162 -70,-159 -70,-156 -70,-153 -70,-150 -70,-150 -70.7,-150 -71.4,-150 -72.1,-150 -72.8,-150 -73.5,-150 -74.2,-150 -74.9,-150 -75.6,-150 -76.3,-150 -77,-153 -77,-156 -77,-159 -77,-162 -77,-165 -77,-168 -77,-171 -77,-174 -77,-177 -77,180 -77,178 -77,176 -77,174 -77,172 -77,170 -77,168 -77,166 -77,164 -77,162 -77,160 -77,160 -76.3,160 -75.6,160 -74.9,160 -74.2,160 -73.5,160 -72.8,160 -72.1,160 -71.4,160 -70.7,160 -70,162 -70,164 -70,166 -70,168 -70,170 -70,172 -70,174 -70,176 -70,178 -70,-180 -70))", "dataset_titles": "Science of Opportunity: A SGER proposal to support the development of genomic resources for Antarctic pteropods", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "600088", "doi": "10.15784/600088", "keywords": "Biota; Genomics; Oceans; Southern Ocean", "people": "Fabry, Victoria; Hofmann, Gretchen", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Science of Opportunity: A SGER proposal to support the development of genomic resources for Antarctic pteropods", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/600088"}], "date_created": "Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "This Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) will support the rapid acquisition of DNA sequence for the Antarctic pteropod Limacina helicina, a resource that would allow the development of a cDNA microarray to profile gene expression in this critical marine invertebrate in response to ocean acidification. This request would facilitate the collaboration of the PI (Hofmann), a marine molecular ecologist, with co-PI, Prof. Victoria Fabry, an expert in pteropod calcification biology, and a leader in the ocean acidification research community. Finally, the resources developed here would be shared with the polar research community and all DNA sequence data and protocols would be available via web databases. Notably, the genomic tool developed here would most likely be useful for pteropods from Antarctic and Arctic waters. The broader impacts of this project would be the development of genomic tools for a critical Antarctic marine invertebrate that is threatened by ocean acidification. In addition, these resources would be shared with the polar biology research community.", "east": -150.0, "geometry": "POINT(-175 -73.5)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "Not provided", "locations": null, "north": -70.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Hofmann, Gretchen; Fabry, Victoria", "platforms": "Not provided", "repo": "USAP-DC", "repositories": "USAP-DC", "science_programs": null, "south": -77.0, "title": "Science of Opportunity: A SGER proposal to support the development of genomic resources for Antarctic pteropods", "uid": "p0000213", "west": 160.0}, {"awards": "0238281 Marsh, Adam", "bounds_geometry": "POLYGON((163 -77,163.4 -77,163.8 -77,164.2 -77,164.6 -77,165 -77,165.4 -77,165.8 -77,166.2 -77,166.6 -77,167 -77,167 -77.1,167 -77.2,167 -77.3,167 -77.4,167 -77.5,167 -77.6,167 -77.7,167 -77.8,167 -77.9,167 -78,166.6 -78,166.2 -78,165.8 -78,165.4 -78,165 -78,164.6 -78,164.2 -78,163.8 -78,163.4 -78,163 -78,163 -77.9,163 -77.8,163 -77.7,163 -77.6,163 -77.5,163 -77.4,163 -77.3,163 -77.2,163 -77.1,163 -77))", "dataset_titles": "Marine Invertebrates of McMurdo Sound", "datasets": [{"dataset_uid": "600034", "doi": "10.15784/600034", "keywords": "Antarctica; Biota; McMurdo Sound; Oceans; Photo/video; Photo/Video; Southern Ocean", "people": "Marsh, Adam G.", "repository": "USAP-DC", "science_program": null, "title": "Marine Invertebrates of McMurdo Sound", "url": "https://www.usap-dc.org/view/dataset/600034"}], "date_created": "Mon, 09 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT", "description": "Although the cold ocean ecosystems comprise seventy-two percent of the biosphere on Earth by volume, they remain sparsely inhabited and relatively unexploited, particularly in terms of metazoan phyla. Consequently, the few animals that can exist at this border of intracellular freezing represent ideal systems for exploring genomic-level processes of environmental adaptations. Understanding life at a margin of the biosphere is likely to convey significant insights into the essential genomic processes necessary for survival under intense selection pressures. This study of adaptive mechanisms in genomic networks focuses on an experimental system that faces a formidable challenge for viability at low water temperatures: embryonic development at sea water temperatures of -1.8 o C in two Antarctic echinoderms, the sea star Odontaster validus and the sea urchin Sterechinus neumayeri. The project strategy will quantify temperature effects on gene expression and protein turnover networks during early development using a Bayesian network analysis to identify clusters of genes and proteins whose expression levels are associated in fixed, synergistic interactions. Ultimately, there is a simple question to be addressed: Is it more or less difficult (complex) for an embryo to develop in an extreme environment? To answer this question, the research plan will decipher network topologies and subnet structuring to uncover gene connectivity patterns associated with embryo development in this polar environment. This is the new area of Environmental Genomics that the PI will explore by expanding his research experience into computational network analyses. Overall, there is a significant need for integrative biologists in the future development of environmental sciences, particularly for the application of genomic-scale technologies to answer ecological-scale questions. The educational goals of this CAREER proposal are focused at two levels in terms of interesting young students in the developing field of environmental genomics: 1) increasing the racial diversity of the scientists attracted to environmental research, and 2) increasing the awareness of career opportunities within environmental research.\u003cbr/\u003eThese educational objectives are incorporated into the research plan to engage students with the excitement of working in an extreme environment such as Antarctica and to interest them in the insights that genome-level research can reveal about how organisms are adapted to specific habitats. Working in a remote, extreme environment such as Antarctica is always a challenge. However, the adventurous nature of the work can be utilized to establish educational and outreach components of high interest to both undergraduate students and the public in general. The proposed plan will bring the experience of working in Antarctica to a larger audience through several means. These include the following: the project theme of environmental genomics will be incorporated into a new Bioinformatics curriculum currently being developed at the University of Delaware; an intern program will be implemented to involved minority undergraduate students in summer research in the United States and then to bring the students to Antarctica to participate in the research; and a K-12 education program will bring the excitement of working in Antarctica to the classrooms of thousands of children (U.S. and international) through a program produced with the Marine Science Public Education Office at the University of Delaware.", "east": 167.0, "geometry": "POINT(165 -77.5)", "instruments": null, "is_usap_dc": true, "keywords": "FIELD SURVEYS", "locations": null, "north": -77.0, "nsf_funding_programs": "Antarctic Organisms and Ecosystems", "paleo_time": null, "persons": "Marsh, Adam G.", "platforms": "LAND-BASED PLATFORMS \u003e FIELD SITES \u003e FIELD SURVEYS", "repo": "USAP-DC", "repositories": "USAP-DC", "science_programs": null, "south": -78.0, "title": "CAREER: Genomic Networks for Cold-Adaptation in Embryos of Polar Marine Invertebrates", "uid": "p0000240", "west": 163.0}]
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Antarctic marine invertebrates exhibit extraordinarily slow rates of development. This phenomenon has arisen repeatedly in independent Antarctic lineages, including sea urchins, sea stars, brachiopods, and ribbon worms. Despite these observations, little is known about the molecular mechanisms responsible for slow developmental rates in Antarctic marine invertebrates. This proposal is developing the Antarctic sea urchin, Sterechinus neumayeri, as a model invertebrate organism to evaluate cold water organismal adaptation and development. Urchins collected from McMurdo Sound are being studied in carefully controlled laboratory experiments. This work is specifically identifying the gene regulatory network components responsible for regulating developmental timing in S. neumayeri and, more generally, which gene regulatory network elements evolved during adaption to the extreme environment of the Southern Ocean. The lab-based work is focusing in two specific areas: 1) Identify unique gene regulatory network components of S. neumayeri that evolved during its developmental adaptation to the Southern Ocean, and 2) Analyze spatial expression and functions of key genes in the early S. neumayeri gene regulatory networks controlling specification and patterning of territories along the early anterior-posterior axis. A comparative analysis of better studied urchins from warmer regions will be used to inform this work. This effort is relevant to several fields of biology ranging from polar biology, developmental biology, evolution, and genomics while explicitly tying genotype to phenotype. Broader impacts: The proposal included three early career investigators who are new to Antarctic research programs working alongside a well-established Antarctic investigator. The team has developed an ambitious program for science and technology training in computer coding and biology targeted for underrepresented students. They also have developed web-based bioinformatics training blog, “2-bitbio”, which aims to decrease the ‘barrier to entry’ into the field of bioinformatics. 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.
Gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua) inhabit one of the fastest warming regions on Earth, the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), where environmental shifts are measured in years, not decades. Despite this, the species is flourishing, growing in numbers and colonizing new habitats while sister species, such as Adélie penguins (P. adeliae), are declining in the region. This project will investigate to what extent epigenetics contributes to the success of gentoo penguins. Epigenetic variation is controlled by modifications to DNA or chromatin structure that affect the expression of genes, rather than changes to the underlying DNA sequence. This project will improve the understanding of gentoo penguin adaptation to climate change, and whether it is a result of increased flexibility in behavior and physiology driven by a greater capacity for epigenetic changes (i.e., epigenetic potential). The most studied form of epigenetic variation is the profiling of DNA methylation patterns. Environmental effects can trigger changes in DNA methylation that target specific tissues, allowing for localized gene expression shifts that result in modifications to the phenotype of an organism without any alteration to the underlying genotype. Given that epigenetic variation between populations often exceeds genetic variation, fine-scale genetic differentiation observed amongst gentoo penguin colonies suggests the possibility for local adaptation via even more divergent epigenetic changes and provides a framework for examining epigenetic variation across the gentoo penguin breeding range along multiple ecological axes. The researchers will test this by comprehensively characterizing the epigenomic profiles via patterns of DNA methylation in wild gentoo and Adélie penguins using cutting-edge high-resolution genomics techniques. Specifically, they will investigate whether gentoo penguins exhibit a greater degree of differences in DNA-methylation than underlying genetic differences, suggesting such epigenetic variation is driven by external environmental variables, potentially leading to improved capacity for local adaptation. This project will explore whether epigenetic potential may be selected for in individuals who disperse to new colony locations by comparing older, established colonies to new colonies at the range-edge. By implementing cutting-edge epigenetic methods in wild populations of gentoo penguins, this project will help address ecological questions on environmental plasticity that will impact conservation efforts and decisions on Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) on the Antarctic Peninsula. 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.
The ozone hole that develops over the Antarctic continent every spring is one of the features attributed to human activity, in particular production of the CFC (chlorofluorocarbons in refrigerants) released to the atmosphere. In spite of the CFC ban from the Montreal Protocol established in the year 1987, the recovery has been slower than predicted. Bromocarbons, known to produce the stratospheric ozone depletion, have recently been estimated to contribute to the pool of bromines in the lower atmosphere. What is the origin of the bromocarbons in Antarctic sea ice? Is this an additional source of chemicals creating the ozone hole? This project will test if bromocarbons in sea ice are produced and degraded by microalgae and bacteria found in sea ice, in snow and the interface between the two. The project will collect a suite of chemical and biological measurements of sea ice and snow to determine bromocarbon concentrations, microbial activity associated with them, and intra-cellular genes and proteins involved in bromocarbon metabolism. This project benefits NSF’s goals of expanding fundamental knowledge of Antarctic systems, biota, and processes, and improving the understanding of interactions among the Antarctic systems, cryosphere and organisms. The work will be carried out at McMurdo Station in late austral spring, including sampling of snow and ice that will be concentrated in the laboratory, and 24-hour experiments to measure algal and bacterial activity. Genes controlling synthesis of enzymes involved in bromocarbon metabolism are of interest in biotechnology and bioremediation, including products that repair damaged skin from UltraViolet Radiation. The project will train undergraduate students on chemical and biological techniques. The Principal Investigators will be involved in the Pacific Science Center in Seattle with ~10,000 visitors per weekend where they will develop a project-specific exhibit. The microbial processes in snow and ice associated with bromocarbon synthesis and degradation have not been studied in Antarctica during winter and spring. This study will inform about microbial activity in relation to the release of bromocarbons compounds from the snow and ice surfaces, compounds known to degrade stratospheric ozone. The estimation of chemical bromocarbons will be combined with metagenomics and metaproteomics approaches for understanding the potential role of microbes in snow and sea ice. The environmental, chemical and biological data will be synthesized with multivariate analysis and significant differences between sites and experimental treatments with ANOVA. A collaborator from the University of Goteborg in Sweden will collaborate on bromocarbon analyses. The study will also address “saline snow” a new environment not previously studied for microbial life. In addition, this is the first study of meta-proteomics in snow and ice. The Principal Investigators expect their results will help inform ozone hole recovery in the 21st century. 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.
Couradeau, Estelle; Maximova, Siela; Machado, Jose Luis
No dataset link provided
Páramos are high-altitude tundra ecosystems nested at the heart of the Andes mountains. These cold and humid environments are home to a multitude of plants, animals, and insects. Páramos are a critical water source for downstream urban centers, including Colombia's capital city, Bogota. Additionally, the Páramos soils contain substantial organic carbon reserves due to slow rates of organic matter decomposition. Beyond being a pool of carbon sequestered away from the atmosphere, this large reservoir of organic matter controls the soils’ hydraulic and fertility properties. The Páramos’ unique geographic location, at an elevation above 2,800 m above sea level, makes them highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. In fact, these ecosystems’ surface areas are projected to shrink by half within the next 50 years possibly causing loss of the essential services they provide. This project aims to characterize the microbial diversity in the Páramos soils in Colombia and investigate how climate change will affect microbes’ functions. The research is of high importance, considering that immediate and long-term changes in microbial metabolism could impact the ability of Páramos soils to store organic carbon and regulate downstream water flow. To study the cascading effect of climate change on Páramos ecosystems, this project will jumpstart collaborations among transdisciplinary experts that will integrate the research of below-ground microbial communities with above-ground vegetation functions. The project will also engage high school and undergraduate students that will work together to develop and deploy low-cost long-term soil monitoring data loggers in Chingaza National Natural Park, near the city of Bogota. This project will address the critical need to disentangle the effect of moisture and temperature on the fate of organic carbon in Páramos soils while building a transdisciplinary team capable of expanding the scope of the research to an ecosystem level. The project includes establishing controlled soil mesocosms that will allow to independently vary moisture and temperature levels. Additionally, functions of the soil microbiome will be investigated using metagenomics and amplicon sequencing, and probes will be deployed to initiate long-term monitoring of the soil response to climate change in situ. This project will culminate in the organization of an international Páramos symposium that will set up priorities for future systems research. The symposium will bring together scientists from diverse fields to discuss the linkages between above-ground and below-ground ecosystem functions and plan future collaborations in predicting Páramos-wide effects of climate change. 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.
Antarctic animals face tremendous threats as Antarctic ice sheets melt and temperatures rise. About 34 million years ago, when Antarctica began to cool, most species of fish became locally extinct. A group called the notothenioids, however, survived due to the evolution of antifreeze. The group eventually split into over 120 species. Why did this group of Antarctic fishes evolve into so many species? One possible reason why a single population splits into two species relates to sex genes and sex chromosomes. Diverging species often have either different sex determining genes (genes that specify whether an individual’s gonads become ovaries or testes) or have different sex chromosomes (chromosomes that differ between males and females within a species, like the human X and Y chromosomes). We know the sex chromosomes of only a few notothenioid species and know the genetic basis for sex determination in none of them. The aims of this research are to: 1) identify sex chromosomes in species representing every major group of Antarctic notothenioid fish; 2) discover possible sex determining genes in every major group of Antarctic notothenioid fish; and 3) find sex chromosomes and possible sex determining genes in two groups of temperate, warmer water, notothenioid fish. These warmer water fish include groups that never experienced the frigid Southern Ocean and groups that had ancestors inhabiting Antarctic oceans that later adjusted to warmer waters. This project will help explain the mechanisms that led to the division of a group of species threatened by climate change. This information is critical to conserve declining populations of Antarctic notothenioids, which are major food sources for other Antarctic species such as bird and seals. The project will offer a diverse group of undergraduates the opportunity to develop a permanent exhibit at the Eugene Science Center Museum. The exhibit will describe the Antarctic environment and explain its rapid climate change. It will also introduce the continent’s bizarre fishes that live below the freezing point of water. The project will collaborate with the university’s Science and Comics Initiative and students in the English Department’s Comics Studies Minor to prepare short graphic novels explaining Antarctic biogeography, icefish specialties, and the science of this project as it develops. As Antarctica cooled, most species disappeared from the continent’s waters, but cryonotothenioid fish radiated into a species flock. What facilitated this radiation? Coyne’s “two rules of speciation” offer explanations for why species diverge: 1) the dysgenic sex in an interspecies hybrid is the one with two different sex chromosomes (i.e., in humans, it would be XY males and not XX females); and 2) “sex chromosomes play an outsized role in speciation”. These ideas propel the project’s main hypothesis: new sex chromosomes and new sex determination genes associate with cryonotothenioid speciation events. The main objective of the research is to identify notothenioid sex chromosomes and candidate sex-determination genes in many notothenioid species. The project’s first aim is to identify Antarctic fish sex chromosomes, asking the question: Did new sex chromosomes accompany speciation events? Knowledge gaps include: which species have cryptic sex chromosomes; which have newly evolved sex chromosomes; and which are chromosomally XX/XY or ZZ/ZW. Methods involve population genomics (RAD-seq and Pool-seq) for more than 20 Antarctic cryonotothenioids. The prediction is frequent turnover of sex chromosomes. The project’s second aim is to Identify candidate Antarctic cryonotothenioid sex-determination genes, asking the question: Did new sex-determination genes accompany Antarctic cryonotothenioid speciation events? A knowledge gap is the identity of sex determination genes in any notothenioid. Preliminary data show that three sex-linked loci are in or adjacent to three different candidate sex determination genes: 1) a duplicate of bmpr1ba in blackfin icefish; 2) a tandem duplicate of gsdf in South Georgia icefish; and 3) a transposed duplicate of gsdf in striped notothen. Methods involve annotating the genomic neighborhoods of cryonotothenioid sex linked loci for anomalies in candidate sex genes, sequencing sex chromosomes, and testing sex gene variants by CRISPR mutagenesis in zebrafish. The prediction is frequent turnover of sex determination genes. The project’s third aim is to identify sex chromosomes and sex-determination genes in temperate notothenioids. Basally diverging temperate notothenioids (‘basals’) lack identifiable sex chromosomes, consistent with temperature-cued sex determination, and one ‘basal’ species is a hermaphrodite. The constantly cold Southern Ocean rules out temperature, a common sex determination cue in many temperate fish, favoring genetic sex determination. Some cryonotothenioids re-invaded temperate waters (‘returnees’). Knowledge gaps include whether basals and returnees have strong sex determination genes. Methods employ pool-seq. The prediction is that genetic sex determination is weak in basals and that returnees have the same, but weaker, sex-linked loci as their Antarctic sister clade. A permanent exhibit will be established at the Eugene Science Center Museum tentatively entitled: The Antarctic: its fishes and climate change. Thousands of visitors, especially school children will be exposed, to the science of Antarctic ecosystems and the impacts of climate change. The research team will collaborate with the university’s Science and Comics Initiative to produce short graphic novels explaining Antarctic biogeography, icefish specialties, and this project. 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.
As plate tectonics pushed Antarctica into a polar position, by ~34 million years ago, the continent and its surrounding Southern Ocean (SO) became geographically and thermally isolated by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Terrestrial and marine glaciation followed, resulting in extinctions as well as the survival and radiation of unique flora and fauna. The notothenioid fish survived and arose from a common ancestral stock into tax with 120 species that dominates today?s SO fish fauna. The Notothenioids evolved adaptive traits including novel antifreeze proteins for survival in extreme cold, but also suffered seemingly adverse trait loss including red blood cells in the icefish family, and the ability to mount cellular responses to mitigate heat stress ? otherwise ubiquitous across all life. This project aims to understand how the notothenoid genomes have changed and contributed to their evolution in the cold. The project will sequence, analyze and compare the genomes of two strategic pairs of notothenioid fishes representing both red-blooded and white-blooded species. Each pair will consist of one Antarctic species and one that has readapted to the temperate waters of S. America or New Zealand. The project will also compare the Antarctic species genomes to a genome of the closet non-Antarctic relative representing the temperate notothenioid ancestor. The work aims to uncover the mechanisms that enabled the adaptive evolution of this ecologically vital group of fish in the freezing Southern Ocean, and shed light on their adaptability to a warming world. The finished genomes will be made available to promote and advance Antarctic research and the project will host a symposium of Polar researchers to discuss the cutting edge developments regarding of genomic adaptations in the polar region. Despite subzero, icy conditions that are perilous to teleost fish, the fish fauna of the isolated Southern Ocean (SO) surrounding Antarctica is remarkably bountiful. A single teleost group ? the notothenioid fishes ? dominate the fauna, comprising over 120 species that arose from a common ancestor. When Antarctica became isolated and SO temperatures began to plunge in early Oligocene, the prior temperate fishes became extinct. The ancestor of Antarctic notothenioids overcame forbidding polar conditions and, absent niche competition, it diversified and filled the SO. How did notothenioids adapt to freezing environmental selection pressures and achieve such extraordinary success? And having specialized to life in chronic cold for 30 myr, can they evolve in pace with today?s warming climate to stay viable? Past studies of Antarctic notothenioid evolutionary adaptation have discovered various remarkable traits including the key, life-saving antifreeze proteins. But life specialized to cold also led to paradoxical trait changes such as the loss of the otherwise universal heat shock response, and of the O2-transporting hemoglobin and red blood cells in the icefish family. A few species interestingly regained abilities to live in temperate waters following the escape of their ancestor out of the freezing SO. This proposed project is the first major effort to advance the field from single trait studies to understanding the full spectrum of genomic and genetic responses to climatic and environmental change during notothenioid evolution, and to evaluate their adaptability to continuing climate change. To this end, the project will sequence the genomes of four key species that embody genomic responses to different thermal selection regimes during notothenioids? evolutionary history, and by comparative analyses of genomic structure, architecture and content, deduce the responding changes. Specifically, the project will (i) obtain whole genome assemblies of the red-blooded T. borchgrevinki and the S. American icefish C. esox; (ii) using the finished genomes from (i) as template, obtain assemblies of the New Zealand notothenioid N. angustata, and the white-blooded icefish C. gunnari, representing a long (11 myr) and recent (1 myr) secondarily temperate evolutionary history respectively. Genes that are under selection in the temperate environment but not in the Antarctic environment can be inferred to be directly necessary for that environment ? and the reverse is also true for genes under selection in the Antarctic but not in the temperate environment. Further, genes important for survival in temperate waters will show parallel selection between N. angustata and C. esox despite the fact that the two fish left the Antarctic at far separated time points. Finally, gene families that expanded due to strong selection within the cold Antarctic should show a degradation of duplicates in the temperate environment. The project will test these hypotheses using a number of techniques to compare the content and form of genes, the structure of the chromosomes containing those genes, and through the identification of key characters, such as selfish genetic elements, introns, and structural variants.
Part I: General description Cumaceans are small crustaceans, commonly known as comma shrimp, that live in muddy or sandy bottom environments in marine waters. Cumaceans are important for the diet of fish, birds, and even grey whales. This research program is assessing cumacean diversity and adaptation in different regions of Antarctica and evaluate this organisms adaptations using molecular methods to a changing Antarctic region. The research stands to significantly advance understanding of invertebrate adaptations to cold, stable habitats and responses to changes in those habitats. In addition, this project is advancing understanding of the biology of Cumacea, a globally diverse and biologically important group of animals. Targeted training of early career students and professionals in cumacean biology, molecular techniques, and bioinformatics is included as part of the program. A workshop at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum will also train 10 additional graduate students, with a focus on training for underrepresented groups. Project outreach also includes social media, outreach to schools in very diverse school districts in Anchorage, AK, and creation of museum events and an exhibit at the Alabama Museum of Natural History. Finally, engagement by the team in activities related to the National Ocean Science Bowl promotes broad engagement with high school students for Antarctic science learning. Part II: Technical Description The overarching goal of this research is to use cumaceans as a model system to explore invertebrate adaptations to the changing Antarctic. This project is leveraging integrative taxonomy, functional, comparative and evolutionary genomics, and phylogenetic comparative methods to understand the true diversity of Cumacea in the Antarctic. The team is identifying genes and gene families experiencing expansions, selection, or significant differential expression, generating a broadly sampled and robust phylogenetic framework for the Antarctic Cumacea based on transcriptomes and genomes, and exploring rates and timing of diversification. The project is providing important information related to gene gain/loss, positive selection, and differential gene expression as a function of adaptation of organisms to Antarctic habitats. Phylogenomic analyses is providing a robust phylogenetic framework for understudied Southern Ocean Cumacea. At the start of this project, only one Antarctic transcriptome was published for this organism. This project is generating sequenced genomes from 8 species, about 250 transcriptomes from about 70 species, and approximately 470 COI and 16S amplicon barcodes from about 100 species. Curated morphological reference collections will be deposited at the Smithsonian, Los Angeles County Natural History Museum and in the New Zealand National Water and Atmospheric Research collection at Greta Point to assist future researchers in identification of Antarctic cumaceans. Beyond the immediate scope of the current project, the genomic resources will be able to be leveraged by members of the polar biology and invertebrate zoology communities for diverse other uses ranging from PCR primer development to inference of ancestral population sizes. 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.
Microbes in Antarctic surface marine sediments have an important role in degrading organic matter and releasing nutrients to the ocean. Organic matter degradation is at the center of the carbon cycle in the ocean, providing valuable information on nutrient recycling, food availability to animals and carbon dioxide release to the atmosphere. The functionality of these microbes has been inferred by their genomics, however these methods only address the possible function, not their actual rates. In this project the PIs plan to combine genomics methods with cellular estimates of enzyme abundance and activity as a way to determine the rates of carbon degradation. This project aims to sample in several regions of Antarctica to provide a large-scale picture of the processes under study and understand the importance of microbial community composition and environmental factors, such as primary productivity, have on microbial activity. The proposed work will combine research tools such as metagenomics, meta-transcriptomics, and metabolomics coupled with chemical data and enzyme assays to establish degradation of organic matter in Antarctic sediments. This project benefits NSFs goals of understanding the adaptation of Antarctic organisms to the cold and isolated environment, critical to predict effects of climate change to polar organisms, as well as contribute to our knowledge of how Antarctic organisms have adapted to this environment. Society will benefit from this project by education of 2 graduate students, undergraduates and K-12 students as well as increase public literacy through short videos production shared in YouTube. The PIs propose to advance understanding of polar microbial community function, by measuring enzyme and gene function of complex organic matter degradation in several ocean regions, providing a circum-Antarctic description of sediment processes. Two hypotheses are proposed. The first hypothesis states that many genes for the degradation of complex organic matter will be shared in sediments throughout a sampling transect and that where variations in gene content occur, it will reflect differences in the quantity and quality of organic matter, not regional variability. The second hypothesis states that a fraction of gene transcripts for organic matter degradation will not result in measurable enzyme activity due to post-translational modification or rapid degradation of the enzymes. The PIs will analyze sediment cores already collected in a 2020 cruise to the western Antarctic Peninsula with the additional request of participating in a cruise in 2023 to East Antarctica. The PIs will analyze sediments for metagenomics, meta-transcriptomics, and metabolomics coupled with geochemical data and enzyme assays to establish microbial degradation of complex organic matter in Antarctic sediments. Organic carbon concentrations and content in sediments will be measured with δ13C, δ15N, TOC porewater fluorescence in bulk organic carbon. Combined with determination of geographical variability as well as dependence on carbon sources, results from this study could provide the basis for new hypotheses on how climate variability, with increased water temperature, affects geochemistry in the Southern Ocean. 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.
Part 1: Non-technical description This is a continuation of a long-term population dynamics study (1978-present) using an intensive mark-recapture tagging of Weddell seals in Erebus Bay, Antarctica. Past work has become a global model for population studies of large animals. Results have documented strong annual variation in reproduction, abundance, and population composition. This program will add components to evaluate the demographic role of immigrant mothers, evaluate possible drivers of annual variation in overall population dynamics, assess genetic differences between immigrant and locally born mothers, and document patterns of gene flow among seal colonies in the Ross Sea region. These new aspects will focus on understanding of population structure, function, and genetics and provide key information for predicting how the seal population will respond to environmental change. The addition of genetic approaches will advance available data for multiple groups in multiple countries working on Weddell Seals. This work includes an early career scientists training program for faculty university graduate and undergraduate students and well as a defined program for data sharing. The research is paired with active education and outreach programs, social media, websites, educational resources, videos and high-profile public lecture activities. The informal science education program will expand on the project’s successful efforts at producing and delivering short-form videos that have been viewed over 1.6 million times to date. In addition, the education program will add new topics such as learning about seals using genomics and how seals respond to a changing world to a multimedia-enhanced electronic book about the project’s long-term research on Weddell seals, which will be freely available to the public early in the project. Part 2: Technical description Reliable predictions are needed for how populations of wild species, especially those at high latitudes, will respond to future environmental conditions. This study will use a strategic extension of the long-term demographic research program that has been conducted annually on the Erebus Bay population of Weddell seals since 1978 to help meet that need. Recent analyses of the study population indicate strong annual variation in reproduction, abundance, and population composition. The number of new immigrant mothers that join the population each year has recently grown such that most new mothers are now immigrants. Despite the growing number of immigrants, the demographic importance and geographic origins of immigrants are unknown. The research will (1) add new information on drivers of annual variation in immigrant numbers, (2) compare and combine information on the vital rates and demographic role of immigrant females and their offspring with that of locally born females, and (3) add genomic analyses that will quantify levels of genetic variation in and gene flow among the study population and other populations in the Ross Sea. The project will continue the long-term monitoring of the population at Erebus Bay and characterize population dynamics and the role of immigration using a combination of mark-recapture analyses, stochastic population modeling, and genomic analyses. The study will continue to provide detailed data on individual seals to other science teams, educate and mentor individuals in the next generation of ecologists, introduce two early-career, female scientists to Antarctic research, and add genomics approaches to the long-term population study of Erebus Bay Weddell seals. The research will be complemented with a robust program of training and an informal science education 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.
Part I: Non-technical description: Microbial communities are of more than just a scientific curiosity. Microbes represent the single largest source of evolutionary and biochemical diversity on the planet. They are the major agents for cycling carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and other elements through the ecosystem. Despite their importance in ecosystem function, microbes are still generally overlooked in food web models and nutrient cycles. Moreover, microbes do not live in isolation: their growth and metabolism are influenced by complex interactions with other microorganisms. This project will focus on the ecology, activity and roles of microbial communities in Antarctic Lake ecosystems. The team will characterize the genetic underpinnings of microbial interactions and the influence of environmental gradients (e.g. light, nutrients, oxygen, sulfur) and seasons (e.g. summer vs. winter) on microbial networks in Lake Fryxell and Lake Bonney in the Taylor Valley within the McMurdo Dry Valley region. Finally, the project furthers the NSF goals of training new generations of scientists by including undergraduate and graduate students, a postdoctoral researcher and a middle school teacher in both lab and field research activities. This partnership will involve a number of other outreach training activities, including visits to classrooms and community events, participation in social media platforms, and webinars. Part II: Technical description: Ecosystem function in the extreme Antarctic Dry Valleys ecosystem is dependent on complex biogeochemical interactions between physiochemical environmental factors (e.g. light, nutrients, oxygen, sulfur), time of year (e.g. summer vs. winter) and microbes. Microbial network complexity can vary in relation to specific abiotic factors, which has important implications on the fragility and resilience of ecosystems under threat of environmental change. This project will evaluate the influence of biogeochemical factors on microbial interactions and network complexity in two Antarctic ice-covered lakes. The study will be structured by three main objectives: 1) infer positive and negative interactions from rich spatial and temporal datasets and investigate the influence of biogeochemical gradients on microbial network complexity using a variety of molecular approaches; 2) directly observe interactions among microbial eukaryotes and their partners using flow cytometry, single-cell sorting and microscopy; and 3) develop metabolic models of specific interactions using metagenomics. Outcomes from amplicon sequencing, meta-omics, and single-cell genomic approaches will be integrated to map specific microbial network complexity and define the role of interactions and metabolic activity onto trends in limnological biogeochemistry in different seasons. These studies will be essential to determine the relationship between network complexity and future climate conditions. Undergraduate researchers will be recruited from both an REU program with a track record of attracting underrepresented minorities and two minority-serving institutions. To further increase polar literacy training and educational impacts, the field team will include a teacher as part of a collaboration with the successful NSF-funded PolarTREC program and participation in activities designed for public outreach. 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.
Part 1: Non-technical description: It is well known that the Southern Ocean plays an important role in global carbon cycling and also receives a disproportionately large influence of climate change. The role of marine viruses on ocean productivity is largely understudied, especially in this global region. This team proposes to use combination of genomics, flow cytometry, and network modeling to test the hypothesis that viral biogeography, infection networks, and viral impacts on microbial metabolism can explain variations in net community production (NCP) and carbon cycling in the Southern Ocean. The project includes the training of a postdoctoral scholar, graduate students and undergraduate students. It also includes the development of a new Polar Sci ReachOut program in partnership with the University of Michigan Museum of Natural History especially targeted to middle-school students and teachers and the general public. The team will also produce a Science for Tomorrow (SFT) program for use in middle schools in metro-Detroit communities and lead a summer Research Experience for Teachers (RET) fellows. Part 2: Technical description: The study will leverage hundreds of existing samples collected for microbes and viruses from the Antarctic Circumpolar Expedition (ACE). These samples provide the first contiguous survey of viral diversity and microbial communities around Antarctica. Viral networks are being studied in the context of biogeochemical data to model community networks and predict net community production (NCP), which will provide a way to evaluate the role of viruses in Southern Ocean carbon cycling. Using cutting edge molecular and flow cytometry approaches, this project addresses the following questions: 1) How/why are Southern Ocean viral populations distributed across environmental gradients? 2a) Do viruses interfere with "keystone" metabolic pathways and biogeochemical processes of microbial communities in the Southern Ocean? 2b) Does nutrient availability or other environmental variables drive changes in virus-microbe infection networks in the Southern Ocean? Results will be used to develop and evaluate generative models of NCP predictions that incorporate the importance of viral traits and virus-host interactions. 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.
Part I: Non-technical summary The Antarctic Peninsula warmed very rapidly in the late part of the 20th century, much faster than the global average, and this warming is predicted to resume and continue over the rest of the 21st century. One consequence of this rapid warming is the melting and subsequent retreat of glaciers, leading to an increase in newly-exposed land on the Peninsula that was previously covered with ice. Once new terrain is exposed, the process of ecological succession begins, with the arrival of early-colonizing plants, such as moss and lichens, and soil organisms - a process commonly referred to as the “greening” of Antarctica. Early stages of succession will be an increasingly common feature on the Antarctic Peninsula, but the mechanisms by which they occur on the Antarctic continent is not well understood. Once the plants have established on the newly-exposed soil, they can change many important properties, such as water dynamics, nutrient recycling, soil development, and habitat for microscopic organisms, which will ultimately determine the structure and functioning of the future ecosystem as it develops. These relationships between vegetation, soil, and the associated microorganisms, referred to as “plant-soil” interactions, are something we know virtually nothing about. This project will be the first to make a comprehensive study of how the type of colonizing plant, and the expansion of those plants from climate change, will influence terrestrial ecosystems in Antarctica. Understanding these processes is critical to understanding how the greening Antarctica is occurring and how soil communities and processes are influenced by these expanding plant communities. Through this work the research team, will also be intensively training undergraduate and graduate students, including training of students from underrepresented groups and collaborative training of students from Chile and the US. Additionally, the research groups will continue their focus on scientific outreach with K-12 schools and the general public to expand awareness of the effects of climate change in Antarctica. Part II: Technical summary In this study, the researchers will use surveys across succession sites along the Antarctic Peninsula and Scotia Arc as well as a manipulative field experiment at glacier succession sites to test how species-specific plant functional traits impact soil properties and associated microbial and invertebrate communities in a greening Antarctica. In doing so, they will pursue three integrated aims to understand how Antarctic plant functional traits alter their soil environment and soil communities during succession after glacial retreat. AIM 1) Characterize six fundamental plant functional traits (thermal conductivity, water holding capacity, albedo, decomposability, tissue nutrient content, and secondary chemistry) among diverse Antarctica flora; AIM 2) Measure the relative effects of fundamental plant functional traits on soil physical properties and soil biogeochemistry across glacial succession gradients in Antarctica; and AIM 3) Measure the relative effects of fundamental plant functional traits on soil microbial and invertebrate communities across glacial succession gradients in Antarctica. They will explore how early-colonizing plants, especially mosses and lichens, alter soil physical, biogeochemical, and biological components, potentially impacting later patterns of succession. The researhcers will use intensive surveys of plant-soil interactions across succession sites and a manipulative transplant experiment in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica to address their aims. The investigators will collect data on plant functional traits and their effects on soil physical properties, biogeochemistry, biotic abundance, and microbial metagenomics. The data collected will be the first comprehensive measures of the relative importance of plant functional types during glacial retreat and vegetative expansion from climate change in Antarctica, aiding our understanding of how plant functional group diversity and abundance are changing in a greening Antarctica. 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.
Antarctica is among the most rapidly warming places on the planet, and some reports suggest the Antarctic environment is approaching, or possibly beyond, the tipping point for ice shelf collapse. The loss of ice around Antarctica is dramatically changing habitat availability for marine fauna, particularly benthic marine invertebrate species. Building on past studies, this research will provide insights into how changing climate impacts species distribution and community structure. Geological data suggests that during periods when ice extent was much reduced relative to modern levels, marine seaways connected the Ross and Weddell Seas on either side of Antarctica. However, most theories about the origins of current marine invertebrate distribution patterns fail to consider this transantarctic connection. This research will use molecular genomic tools to probe the DNA of Antarctic marine invertebrates and explore alternative hypotheses about factors that may have shaped current patterns of animal biodiversity in the Southern Ocean. Research will inform predictions about how species distributions may change as Antarctic ice sheets continue to deteriorate and provide critical information on how organisms adjust their ranges in response to environmental change. This work includes several specific outreach activities including presentations in K-8 classrooms, several short-format videos on Antarctic genomics and field work, and two 3-day workshops on bioinformatics approaches. A minimum of 4 graduate students, a postdoc and several undergraduates will also be trained during this project. The overarching goal of this research is to understand environmental factors that have shaped patterns of present-day diversity in Antarctic benthic marine invertebrates. Evidence from sediment cores and modeling suggests ice shelf collapses have occurred multiple times in the last few million years. During these periods, transantarctic seaways connected the Ross and Weddell Seas. This research will assess whether the presence of transantarctic waterways helps explain observed similarities between the Ross and Weddell Seas benthic marine invertebrate fauna better than other current hypotheses (e.g., dispersal by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, or expansion from common glacial refugia). Seven Antarctic benthic invertebrate taxa will be targeted to test alternative hypothesis about the origins of population genetic structure in the Southern Ocean using Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) markers that sample thousands of loci across the genome. Additionally, research will test the current paradigm that divergence between closely related, often cryptic, species is the result of population bottlenecks caused by glaciation. Specifically, SNP data will be mapped on to draft genomes of three of our target taxa to assess the degree of genetic divergence and look for signs of selection. Research findings may be applicable to other marine ecosystems around the planet. 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.
Western Antarctica is one of the fastest warming locations on Earth. Its changing climate will lead to an increase in sea-level and will also alter regional water temperature and chemistry. These changes will directly alter the microbes that inhabit the ecosystem. Microbes are the smallest forms of life on Earth, but they are also the most abundant. They drive cycling of essential nutrients, such as carbon and nitrogen that are found in ocean sediments. In this way they form the foundation of the food chain that supports larger and more complex life. However, we do not know much about how different communities of microbes break down sediments in Antarctica and this will influence the chemistry of those waters. This research will determine how communities of microbes on the coastal shelf of Antarctica degrade complex organic sediments using genetic and chemical data. This data will identify the species in the community, what enzymes they are producing and what chemical reactions they are driving. This research will create broader impacts as the data will be used to create in-class activities that improve a student’s data analysis and critical thinking skills. The data will be used in graduate, undergraduate and K-12 classrooms. This research will provide genetic and enzymatic insight into how microbial communities in benthic sediments on the coastal shelf of Antarctica degrade complex organic matter. The current understanding of how benthic microbial communities respond to and then degrade complex organic matter in Antarctica is fragmented. Recent work suggests benthic microbial communities are shaped by organic matter availability. However, those studies were observational and did not directly examine community function. A preliminary study of metagenomic data from western Antarctic marine sediments, indicates a genetic potential for organic matter degradation but functional data was not been collected. Other studies have examined either enzyme activity or metagenomic potential, but few have been able to directly connect the two. To address this gap in knowledge, this study will utilize metagenomics and metatranscriptomics, coupled with microcosm experiments, enzyme assays, and geochemical data. It will examine Antarctic microbial communities from the Ross Sea, the Bransfield Strait and Weddell Sea to document how the relationship between a communities’ enzymatic activity and the genes used to degrade complex organic matter is related to sediment breakdown. The data will expand our current knowledge of microbial genetic potential and provide a solid understanding of enzyme function as it relates to degradation of complex organic matter in those marine sediments. It will thereby improve our understanding of temperature change on the chemistry of Antarctic seawater. 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.
Part I: Non-technical summary: This project focuses on understanding annual changes in microbial life that grows on the bottom of Lake Fryxell, Antarctica. Because of its polar latitude, photosynthesis can only occur during the summer months. During summer, photosynthetic bacteria supply communities with energy and oxygen. However, it is unknown how the microbes behave in the dark winter, when observations are not possible. This project will install environmental monitors and light-blocking shades over parts of these communities. The shades will extend winter conditions into the spring to allow researchers to characterize the winter behavior of the microbial communities. Researchers will measure changes in the water chemistry due to microbial activities when the shades are removed and the mats first receive light. Results are expected to provide insights into how organisms interact with and change their environments. The project includes training of graduate students and early career scientists in fieldwork, including scientific ice diving techniques. In addition, the members of the project team will develop a web-based “Guide to Thrive”, which will compile field tips ranging from basic gear use to advanced environmental protection techniques. This will be a valuable resource for group leaders ranging from undergraduate teaching assistants to Antarctic expedition leaders to lead well-planned and tailored field expeditions. Part II: Technical summary: The research team will measure seasonal metabolic and biogeochemical changes in benthic mats using differential gene expression and geochemical gradients. They will identify seasonal phenotypic differences in microbial communities and ecosystem effects induced by spring oxygen production. To do so, researchers will install environmental sensors and opaque shades over mats at three depths in the lake. The following spring, shaded and unshaded mats will be sampled. The shades will then be removed, and changes in pore water O2, H2S, pH, and redox will be measured using microelectrodes. Mats will also be sampled for transcriptomic gene expression analyses at intervals guided by geochemical changes. Pore water will be sampled for nutrient analyses. Field research will be supplemented with laboratory experiments to refine field techniques, gene expression data analysis, and integration of results into a seasonal model of productivity and nitrogen cycling in Lake Fryxell. Results will provide insights into several key priorities for NSF, including how biotic, abiotic and environmental components of the benthic mats interact to affect Antarctic lakes. 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.
The cold, dry terrestrial environments of Antarctica are inhospitable for insects, and only three midge species make Antarctica home. Of these, Belgica antarctica is the only species found exclusively in Antarctica, and it has been a resident of Antarctica since the continent split from South America ~30 million years ago. Thus, this species is an excellent system to model the biological history of Antarctica throughout its repeated glaciation events and shifts in climate. This insect is also a classic example of extreme adaptation, and much previous work has focused on identifying the genetic and physiological mechanisms that allow this species to survive where no other insect is capable. However, it has been difficult to pinpoint the unique evolutionary adaptations that are required to survive in Antarctica due to a lack of information from closely related Antarctic and sub-Antarctic species. This project will compare adaptations, genome sequences, and population characteristics of four midge species that span an environmental gradient from sub-Antarctic to Antarctic habitats. In addition to B. antarctica, these species include two species that are strictly sub-Antarctic and a third that is native to the sub-Antarctic but has invaded parts of Antarctica. The researchers, comprised of scientists from the US, UK, Chile, and France, will sample insects from across their geographic range and measure their ability to tolerate environmental stressors (i.e., cold and desiccation), quantify molecular responses to stress, and compare the makeup of the genome and patterns of genetic diversity. This research will contribute to a greater understanding of adaptation to extremes, to an understanding of biodiversity on the planet and to understanding and predicting changes accompanying environmental change. The project will train two graduate students and two postdoctoral researchers, and a K-12 educator will be a member of the field team and will assist with fieldwork and facilitate outreach with schools in the US. The project includes partnership activities with several STEM education organizations to deliver educational content to K-12 and secondary students. This is a project that is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation's Directorate of Geosciences (NSF/GEO) and the National Environment Research Council (NERC) of the United Kingdom (UK) via the NSF/GEO-NERC Lead Agency Agreement. This Agreement allows a single joint US/UK proposal to be submitted and peer-reviewed by the Agency whose investigator has the largest proportion of the budget. Each Agency funds the proportion of the budget and the investigators associated with its own country. UK participation in this project includes deploying scientists as part of the field team, supporting field and sampling logistics at remote Antarctic sites, and genome sequencing, annotation, and analyses. This project focuses on the key physiological adaptations and molecular processes that allow a select few insect species to survive in Antarctica. The focal species are all wingless with limited dispersal capacity, suggesting there is also significant potential to locally adapt to variable environmental conditions across the range of these species. The central hypothesis is that similar molecular mechanisms drive both population-level adaptation to local environmental conditions and macroevolutionary changes across species living in different environments. The specific aims of the project are to 1) Characterize conserved and species-specific adaptations to extreme environments through comparative physiology and transcriptomics, 2) Compare the genome sequences of these species to identify genetic signatures of extreme adaption, and 3) Investigate patterns of diversification and local adaptation across each species? range using population genomics. The project establishes an international collaboration of researchers from the US, UK, Chile, and France with shared interests and complementary expertise in the biology, genomics, and conservation of Antarctic arthropods. The Broader Impacts of the project include training students and partnering with the Living Arts and Science Center to design and implement educational content for K-12 students. 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.
A profound transformation in ecosystem structure and function is occurring in coastal waters of the western Weddell Sea, with the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf. This transformation appears to be yielding a redistribution of energy flow between chemoautotrophic and photosynthetic production, and to be causing the rapid demise of the extraordinary seep ecosystem discovered beneath the ice shelf. This event provides an ideal opportunity to examine fundamental aspects of ecosystem transition associated with climate change. We propose to test the following hypotheses to elucidate the transformations occurring in marine ecosystems as a consequence of the Larsen B collapse: (1) The biogeographic isolation and sub-ice shelf setting of the Larsen B seep has led to novel habitat characteristics, chemoautotrophically dependent taxa and functional adaptations. (2) Benthic communities beneath the former Larsen B ice shelf are fundamentally different from assemblages at similar depths in the Weddell sea-ice zone, and resemble oligotrophic deep-sea communities. Larsen B assemblages are undergoing rapid change. (3) The previously dark, oligotrophic waters of the Larsen B embayment now support a thriving phototrophic community, with production rates and phytoplankton composition similar to other productive areas of the Weddell Sea. To document rapid changes occurring in the Larsen B ecosystem, we will use a remotely operated vehicle, shipboard samplers, and moored sediment traps. We will characterize microbial, macrofaunal and megafaunal components of the seep community; evaluate patterns of surface productivity, export flux, and benthic faunal composition in areas previously covered by the ice shelf, and compare these areas to the open sea-ice zone. These changes will be placed within the geological, glaciological and climatological context that led to ice-shelf retreat, through companion research projects funded in concert with this effort. Together these projects will help predict the likely consequences of ice-shelf collapse to marine ecosystems in other regions of Antarctica vulnerable to climate change. The research features international collaborators from Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. The broader impacts include participation of a science writer; broadcast of science segments by members of the Jim Lehrer News Hour (Public Broadcasting System); material for summer courses in environmental change; mentoring of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows; and showcasing scientific activities and findings to students and public through podcasts.
Understanding how groups of organisms respond to climate change is fundamentally important to assessing the impacts of human activities as well as understanding how past climatic shifts have shaped biological diversity over deep stretches of time. The fishes occupying the near-shore marine habitats around Antarctica are dominated by one group of closely related species called notothenioids. It appears dramatic changes in Antarctic climate were important in the origin and evolutionary diversification of this economically important lineage of fishes. Deposits of fossil fishes in Antarctica that were formed when the continent was experiencing milder temperatures show that the area was home to a much more diverse array of fish lineages. Today the waters of the Southern Ocean are very cold, and often below freezing, but notothenioids fishes exhibit a number of adaptions to live in this harsh set of marine habitats, including the presence of anti-freeze proteins. This research project will collect DNA sequences from hundreds of genes to infer the genealogical relationships of nearly all 124 notothenioid species, and use mathematical techniques to estimate the ages of species and lineages. Knowledge on the timing of evolutionary divergence in notothenioids will allow investigators to assess if timing of previous major climatic shifts in Antarctica are correlated with key events in the formation of the modern Southern Ocean fish fauna. The project will also further the NSF goals of making scientific discoveries available to the general public and of training new generations of scientists. The project will support educational outreach activities to teenager groups and to the general public through a natural history museum exhibit and other public lectures. It will provide professional training opportunities for graduate students and a postdoctoral research scholar. Adaptive radiation, where lineages experience high rates of evolutionary diversification coincident with ecological divergence, is mostly studied in island ecosystems. Notothenioids dominate the fish fauna of the Southern Ocean and exhibit antifreeze glycoproteins that allow occupation of the subzero waters. Notothenioids are noted as one of the only examples of adaptive radiation among marine fishes, but the evolutionary history of diversification and radiation into different ecological habitats is poorly understood. This research will generate a species phylogeny (evolutionary history) for nearly all of the 124 recognized notothenioid species to investigate the mechanisms of adaptive radiation in this lineage. The phylogeny is inferred from approximately 350 genes sampled using next generation DNA sequencing and related techniques. Morphometric data are taken for museum specimens to investigate the tempo of morphological diversification and to determine if there are correlations between rates of lineage diversification and the origin of morphological disparity. The patterns of lineage, morphological, and ecological diversification in the notothenioid radiation will be compared to the paleoclimatic record to determine if past instances of global climate change have shaped the evolutionary diversification of this lineage of polar-adapted fishes.
Cryoconite holes are pockets of life completely encased in otherwise barren glacial ice. These pockets of life form when dust blown onto the ice melts a small, largely isolated hole that can function as its own tiny ecosystem. This dust can contain microorganisms such as bacteria, algae, or microscopic animals. The microorganisms within the hole interact and carry out functions typical of a larger ecosystem, such as a forest. Cryoconite holes are especially important in extreme cold environments such as the Antarctic Dry Valleys, where they function as repositories of life. Because cryoconite holes are mostly enclosed and persist for years, they can be tracked over time to test fundamental scientific questions about how communities of interacting organisms develop to become fully functioning ecosystems. This project will sample existing and experimentally created cryoconite holes to understand how these ecosystems develop and to what degree random processes (such as which organisms get there first) affect the final community composition and functioning. The results will not only improve our understanding of how microbial communities assemble and affect the functioning of microecosystems such as cryoconite holes, but also how the processes of community assembly affect functioning of larger ecosystems, such as forests. A better understanding of community establishment, development, and response to abiotic factors are essential to forecasting ecological responses to environmental change. It is essential to unravel the links between community assembly, biodiversity, and nutrient cycling across numerous ecosystems because these are critical factors determining ecological responses to environmental change. The unique, largely isolated nature of cryoconite holes provides an experimental system that will advance fundamental understanding of the processes (e.g., stochastic dynamics such as dispersal limitation, assembly order, and ecological drift) driving community assembly. This project will use a field sampling campaign and a number of manipulative experiments to test a hypothesis that unites theory in community and ecosystem ecology: the degree to which stochastic processes guide microbial community assembly and affects regional patterns in biodiversity and ecosystem processes. Cryoconite holes will be sampled to compare community composition, environmental factors, and ecosystem functioning between hydrologically connected and isolated holes. New cryoconite holes will also be constructed and monitored over the course of two growing seasons to specifically alter assembly order and community size, thereby pairing a unique manipulative experiment with field surveys to address questions with relevance to the Antarctic and beyond. Amplicon sequencing, metagenomics, microscopy, sensitive environmental chemistry methods, and photosynthesis and respiration measurements will be used to test a series of sub-hypotheses that relate stochasticity to patterns in regional biodiversity, heterogeneity in environmental factors, and ecosystem processes.
The McMurdo Dry Valleys (MDV) is a polar desert on the coast of East Antarctica, a region that has not yet experienced climate warming. The McMurdo Dry Valleys Long Term Ecological Research (MCMLTER) project has documented the ecological responses of the glacier, soil, stream and lake ecosystems in the MDV during a cooling trend (from 1986 to 2000) which was associated with the depletion of atmospheric ozone. In the past decade, warming events with strong katabatic winds occurred during two summers and the resulting high streamflows and sediment deposition changed the dry valley landscape, possibly presaging conditions that will occur when the ozone hole recovers. In anticipation of future warming in Antarctica, the overarching hypothesis of the proposed project is: Climate warming in the McMurdo Dry Valley ecosystem will amplify connectivity among landscape units leading to enhanced coupling of nutrient cycles across landscapes, and increased biodiversity and productivity within the ecosystem. Warming in the MDV is hypothesized to act as a slowly developing, long-term press of warmer summers, upon which transient pulse events of high summer flows and strong katabatic winds will be overprinted. Four specific hypotheses address the ways in which pulses of water and wind will influence contemporary and future ecosystem structure, function and connectivity. Because windborne transport of biota is a key aspect of enhanced connectivity from katabatic winds, new monitoring will include high-resolution measurements of aeolian particle flux. Importantly, integrative genomics will be employed to understand the responses of specific organisms to the increased connectivity. The project will also include a novel social science component that will use environmental history to examine interactions between human activity, scientific research, and environmental change in the MDV over the past 100 years. To disseminate this research broadly, MCM scientists will participate in a wide array of outreach efforts ranging from presentations in K-12 classrooms to bringing undergraduates and teachers to the MDV to gain research experience. Planned outreach programs will build upon activities conducted during the International Polar Year (2007-2008), which include development of an interactive DVD for high school students and teachers and publication of a children's book in the LTER Schoolyard Book Series. A teacher's edition of the book with a CD containing lesson plans will be distributed. The project will develop programs for groups traditionally underrepresented in science arenas by publishing some outreach materials in Spanish.
Uncovering the dynamics of dissolved organic matter (DOM) is central to an understanding of the global carbon cycle, as organic material from lakes, streams, oceans and soils passes through this pool. DOM acts as a key energy source for microbes in many ecosystems and therefore can affect regional nutrient cycling patterns. For example, preliminary results suggest that organisms isolated from a supraglacial stream on Cotton Glacier, Antarctica, may be important in DOM cycling in this relatively simple, low temperature system. However, little is known about the functional attributes of the microbes that interact with DOM in the environment. This project will use state-of-the-art genomics, proteomics and metabolomics approaches to understand the mechanisms by which two microbial isolates, CG3 and CG9_1, affect DOM cycling. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry will also be used to better characterize the microbially-derived DOM from this ecosystem. This project will support the research and training of one undergraduate and two graduate students. Results will be widely disseminated through publications as well as through presentations at national and international meetings. In addition, raw data will be made available through open-access databases. Understanding the relationship between cold-adapted microbial metabolisms and DOM pools is important as more than 90% of the Earth?s oceans are below 5 degrees Celsius.
Genome-enabled biology provides a foundation for understanding the genetic basis of organism-environment interactions. . The research project links gene expression, genome methylation, and metabolic rates to assess the mechanisms of environmental adaptation (temperature) across multiple generations in a polar, and closely related temperate, polychaete. By comparing these two species, the research will assess how a polar environment shapes responses to environmental stress. This work will produce: 1) a database of full transcriptome (gene specific) profiling data for the polar polychaete cultured at two temperatures; 2) the contribution of genome methylation to the suppression of gene transcription activities; 3) the linkage between shifts in mRNA pools and total cellular activities (as ATP consumption via respiration); 4) an assessment of the inheritance of patterns of gene expression and metabolic activities across three generations; and 5) a simple demographic model of the polar polychaete population dynamics under normal and 'global-warming' temperature scenarios. Broader impacts include two outreach activities. The first is a mentoring program, where African-American undergraduate students spend 1.5 years working on a research project with a UD faculty member (2 summers plus their senior academic year). The second is a children's display activity at UD?s School of Marine Science "Coast Day".
The proposed research will investigate the genomic basis of the physiological and ecological transition of Antarctic marine phytoplankton from a cold dark winter to a warmer, brighter spring. During a field season at Palmer Station, functional genomics (using next generation sequencing technology to identify expressed genes) and in situ fluorometry (FRRF) will be integrated with classical ecological methods to investigate photosynthetic adaptation during phytoplankton species succession from late winter into spring. Using large data sets, this project will test whether amino acid usages differ based on expression. The specific objectives are (1) To characterize phytoplankton succession from the winter to spring transition, and (2) To correlate community gene expression profiles to adaptational differences among taxa. Broader impacts include training of a post doctoral researcher and two undergraduate science majors, with efforts to attract students from underrepresented groups. The P.I.s also will prepare presentations for the public, regarding research experiences, research results, and the importance of climate change.
The mechanisms enabling bacteria to be metabolically active at very low temperatures are of considerable importance to polar microbial ecology, astrobiology, climate and cryopreservation. This research program has two main objectives. The first is to investigate metabolic activities and gene expression of polar marine psychrophilic bacteria when confronted with freezing conditions at temperatures above the eutectic of seawater (<54C) to unveil cold adaptation mechanisms with relevance to wintertime sea-ice ecology. The second objective is to discern if psychrophilic processes of leucine incorporation into proteins, shown to occur to -196C, amount to metabolic activity providing for the survival of cells or are merely biochemical reactions still possible in flash-frozen samples without any effect on survival. We will examine extracellular and intracellular processes of psychrophilic activity above and below the eutectic by (i) determining the temperature range of metabolic activities such as DNA synthesis, carbon utilization, respiration and ATP generation using radioactive tracer technology, including a control at liquid helium temperature (-268.9C), (ii) analyzing gene expression in ice using whole genome and microarray analyses and iii) examining the role of exopolymeric substances (EPS) and ice micro-physics for the observed activity using an in-situ microscopy technique. Results of the proposed research can be expected to aid in the determination of cellular and genetic strategies that allow cells to maintain activity at extremely low temperatures within an icy matrix and/or to resume activity again when more growth-permissive conditions are encountered. The research is an interdisciplinary collaboration involving three different institutions with participants in Oceanography, Genomics, and Geophysical Sciences. The proposed activity will support the beginning professional career of a female researcher and will serve as the basis for several undergraduate student laboratory projects.
The proposed research will investigate the genomic basis of the physiological and ecological transition of Antarctic marine phytoplankton from a cold dark winter to a warmer, brighter spring. During a field season at Palmer Station, functional genomics (using next generation sequencing technology to identify expressed genes) and in situ fluorometry (FRRF) will be integrated with classical ecological methods to investigate photosynthetic adaptation during phytoplankton species succession from late winter into spring. Using large data sets, this project will test whether amino acid usages differ based on expression. The specific objectives are (1) To characterize phytoplankton succession from the winter to spring transition, and (2) To correlate community gene expression profiles to adaptational differences among taxa. Broader impacts include training of a post doctoral researcher and two undergraduate science majors, with efforts to attract students from underrepresented groups. The P.I.s also will prepare presentations for the public, regarding research experiences, research results, and the importance of climate change.
The Western Antarctic Peninsula is experiencing one of the most rapid rates of climate warming on Earth, with an increase of 5degrees C in the mean winter temperature in 50 years. Impacts on upper trophic levels are evident, though there have been few, if any studies that have considered the impacts on bacterioplankton in the Southern Ocean. This proposal will characterize the winter bacterioplankton genome, transcriptome, and proteome and discover those features (community composition, genes up-regulated, and proteins expressed) that are essential to winter bacterioplankton survival and livelihood. We have assembled a polar ocean ecology and genomics network including strategic partnerships with Palmer LTER, the British Antarctic Survey's ocean metagenome program, US and Canadian scientists studying the Arctic Ocean genome, an Australian colleague who specialized in archaeal proteomics, and French colleagues studying Sub-Antarctic and Coastal Adelie Land marine bacterioplankton. The primary objectives of this program are: 1 Describe the differences in diversity and genomic content between austral winter and summer bacterioplankton communities. 2. Investigate the winter-time bacterioplankton growth and cellular signals (mRNA and proteins expressed) in order to understand the specific adaptations key to survival. <br/><br/>Our results will extend from the Antarctic to the Arctic - as the cold, dark, carbon-limited deep seas linking these two systems have many common features. Education and outreach activities target (i) undergraduate and graduate students, hopefully including minority students recruited through the Diversity in Research in Environmental and Marine Sciences (DREAMS) Program at VIMS; (ii) a broad audience with our education and outreach partnerships with The Cousteau Society and with the Census for Antarctic Marine Life program. Data and links to external databases will be listed on the http://genex2.dri.edu website. Sequence data will be publicly accessible in GenBank and IMG-M databases.
Fungi in Antarctic ecosystems are major contributors to biodiversity and have great influence on many processes such as biodegradation and nutrient cycling. It is essential for biological surveys as well as genomic and proteomic studies to be completed so a better understanding of these organisms is obtained. Previous research has identified unique fungi associated with historic wooden structures brought to Antarctica by Robert F. Scott and Ernest Shackleton during the Heroic Era of exploration. Many of the fungi found are previously undescribed species that belong to the little known genus Cadophora. The research team will obtain important new information on the fungi present in the Ross Sea and Peninsula Regions of Antarctica, particularly their role in decomposition and nutrient recycling and their mechanisms and strategies for survival in the polar environment. New tools and methods include denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE), real-time PCR, and proteomic profiling. These analyses will reveal key details of the physiological adaptations these fungi have evolved to carry out processes such as biodegradation and nutrient cycling under conditions that would inhibit other fungi. This work, coupled with the training and learning opportunities it provides, will be of value to many fields of study including microbial ecology, polar biology, wood microbiology, environmental science, soil science, geobiochemistry, and mycology as well as fungal phylogenetics, proteomics and genomics. Results obtained will have immediate applied use to help preserve and protect Antarctica's historic monuments. The investigations proposed are a continuation of research to identify the microbes attacking these historic structures and artifacts and to elucidate their biology and ecology in the polar environment. New research will also be done at the historic Cape Adare huts, the first wooden structures to be built in Antarctica and also at East Base, an American historic site on Stonington Island from the Admiral Byrd and Ronne Expeditions of 1939-1948. The research team will conduct vital studies needed to successfully conserve the wooden structures and artifacts at these sites and protect them for future generations
Antarctic notothenioid fish evolved antifreeze (AF) proteins that prevent ice crystals that enter their body fluids from growing, and thereby avoid freezing in their icy habitats. However, even in the extreme cold Antarctic marine environment, regional gradations of severity are found. The biological correlate for environmental severity in fish is the endogenous ice load, which likely determines the tolerable limit of environmental severity for notothenioid habitation. The endogenous ice load develops from environmental ice crystals entering through body surfaces and somehow localizing to the spleen. How prone the surface tissues are to ice entry, how ice reaches the spleen, and what the fate of splenic ice is, requires elucidation. Spleen sequestration of ice raises the hypothesis that macrophages may play a role in the translocation and perhaps elimination of AF-bound ice crystals. Antifreeze glycoproteins (AFGP) act in concert with a second, recently discovered antifreeze called antifreeze potentiating protein (AFPP), necessitating an assessment of the contribution of AFPP to freezing avoidance. Recent research suggests that the exocrine pancreas and the anterior stomach, not the liver, synthesize AFGPs and secrete them into the intestine, from where they may be returned to the blood. A GI-to-blood transport is a highly unconventional path for a major plasma protein and also begs the questions, What is the source of blood AFPP?. Why are two distinct AF proteins needed and what is the chronology of their evolution? What genomic changes in the DNA are associated with the development or loss of the antifreeze trait? Experiments described in this proposal address these interrelated questions of environmental, organismal, and evolutionary physiology, and will further our understanding of novel vertebrate physiologies, the limits of environmental adaptation, and climatically driven changes in the genome. The proposed research will (1) determine the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of environmental temperature and iciness in progressively more severe fish habitats in the greater McMurdo Sound area, and in the milder Arthur Harbor at Palmer Station. The splenic ice load in fishes inhabiting these sites will be determined to correlate to environmental severity and habitability. (2) Assess the surface tissue site of ice entry and their relative barrier properties in intact fish and isolated tissues preparations (3) Assess the role of immune cells in the fate of endogenous ice, (4) determine whether the blood AFGPs are from intestinal/rectal uptake, (5) examine the contribution of AFPP to the total blood AF activity (6) evaluate the progression of genomic changes in the AFGP locus across Notothenioidei as modulated by disparate thermal environments, in four selected species through the analyses of large insert DNA BAC clones. The origin and evolution of AFPP will be examined also by analyzing BAC clones encompassing the AFPP genomic locus. The broader impacts of the proposed research include training of graduate and undergraduate students in research approaches ranging from physical field measurements to cutting edge genomics. Undergraduate research projects have lead to co-authored publications and will continue to do so. Outreach includes establishing Wiki websites on topics of Antarctic fish biology and freeze avoidance, providing advisory services to the San Francisco Science Exploratorium, and making BAC libraries available to interested polar biologists. This research theme has repeatedly received national and international science news coverage and will continue to be disseminated to the public in that manner.
This project brings together researchers with expertise in molecular microbial ecology, Antarctic and deep sea environments, and metagenomics to address the overarching question: how do ecosystems dominated by microorganisms adapt to conditions of continuous cold and dark over evolutionarily and geologically relevant time scales? Lake Vostok, buried for at least 15 million years beneath approximately 4 km of ice that has prevented any communication with the external environment for as much as 1.5 million years, is an ideal system to study this question. Water from the lake that has frozen on to the bottom of the ice sheet (accretion ice) is available for study. Several studies have indicated the presence of low abundance, but detectable microbial communities in the accretion ice. Our central hypothesis maintains that Lake Vostok microbes are specifically adapted to life in conditions of extreme cold, dark, and oligotrophy and that signatures of those adaptations can be observed in their genome sequences at the gene, organism, and community levels. To address this hypothesis, we propose to characterize the metagenome (i.e. the genomes of all members of the community) of the accretion ice. using whole genome amplification (WGA), which can provide micrograms of unbiased metagenomic DNA from only a few cells. The results of this project have relevance to evolutionary biology and ecology, subglacial Antarctic lake exploration, biotechnology, and astrobiology. The project directly addresses priorities and themes in the International Polar Year at the national and international levels. A legacy of DNA sequence data and the metagenomic library will be created and maintained. Press releases and a publicly available web page will facilitate communication with the public. K-12 outreach will be the focus of a new, two-tiered program targeting the 7th grade classroom and on site visits to the Joint Genome Institute Production Sequencing Facility by high school juniors and seniors and community college level students. Minority undergraduate researchers will be recruited for research on this project, and support and training are provided to two graduate students, a postdoctoral scholar, and a technician.
This Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) will support the rapid acquisition of DNA sequence for the Antarctic pteropod Limacina helicina, a resource that would allow the development of a cDNA microarray to profile gene expression in this critical marine invertebrate in response to ocean acidification. This request would facilitate the collaboration of the PI (Hofmann), a marine molecular ecologist, with co-PI, Prof. Victoria Fabry, an expert in pteropod calcification biology, and a leader in the ocean acidification research community. Finally, the resources developed here would be shared with the polar research community and all DNA sequence data and protocols would be available via web databases. Notably, the genomic tool developed here would most likely be useful for pteropods from Antarctic and Arctic waters. The broader impacts of this project would be the development of genomic tools for a critical Antarctic marine invertebrate that is threatened by ocean acidification. In addition, these resources would be shared with the polar biology research community.
Although the cold ocean ecosystems comprise seventy-two percent of the biosphere on Earth by volume, they remain sparsely inhabited and relatively unexploited, particularly in terms of metazoan phyla. Consequently, the few animals that can exist at this border of intracellular freezing represent ideal systems for exploring genomic-level processes of environmental adaptations. Understanding life at a margin of the biosphere is likely to convey significant insights into the essential genomic processes necessary for survival under intense selection pressures. This study of adaptive mechanisms in genomic networks focuses on an experimental system that faces a formidable challenge for viability at low water temperatures: embryonic development at sea water temperatures of -1.8 o C in two Antarctic echinoderms, the sea star Odontaster validus and the sea urchin Sterechinus neumayeri. The project strategy will quantify temperature effects on gene expression and protein turnover networks during early development using a Bayesian network analysis to identify clusters of genes and proteins whose expression levels are associated in fixed, synergistic interactions. Ultimately, there is a simple question to be addressed: Is it more or less difficult (complex) for an embryo to develop in an extreme environment? To answer this question, the research plan will decipher network topologies and subnet structuring to uncover gene connectivity patterns associated with embryo development in this polar environment. This is the new area of Environmental Genomics that the PI will explore by expanding his research experience into computational network analyses. Overall, there is a significant need for integrative biologists in the future development of environmental sciences, particularly for the application of genomic-scale technologies to answer ecological-scale questions. The educational goals of this CAREER proposal are focused at two levels in terms of interesting young students in the developing field of environmental genomics: 1) increasing the racial diversity of the scientists attracted to environmental research, and 2) increasing the awareness of career opportunities within environmental research.<br/>These educational objectives are incorporated into the research plan to engage students with the excitement of working in an extreme environment such as Antarctica and to interest them in the insights that genome-level research can reveal about how organisms are adapted to specific habitats. Working in a remote, extreme environment such as Antarctica is always a challenge. However, the adventurous nature of the work can be utilized to establish educational and outreach components of high interest to both undergraduate students and the public in general. The proposed plan will bring the experience of working in Antarctica to a larger audience through several means. These include the following: the project theme of environmental genomics will be incorporated into a new Bioinformatics curriculum currently being developed at the University of Delaware; an intern program will be implemented to involved minority undergraduate students in summer research in the United States and then to bring the students to Antarctica to participate in the research; and a K-12 education program will bring the excitement of working in Antarctica to the classrooms of thousands of children (U.S. and international) through a program produced with the Marine Science Public Education Office at the University of Delaware.