This National Science Foundation project grant of $199,984 supports the development of model enabled machine learning approaches to predict ecosystem regime shifts through the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074). The University of Hawaii at Manoa will receive funding from January 15, 2023 through December 31, 2025 to co-develop numerical methods with stakeholders that combine theoretical ecosystem models with machine learning to forecast regime shifts in coral reefs, freshwater lakes...
This National Science Foundation Project Grant of $524,000 will support the development of network-based models to evaluate functional biodiversity responses to climate change and species invasions in marine biological communities. Funded under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074), this award reflects NSF's mission to promote biological sciences research and strengthen the scientific enterprise. Specifically, researchers at the University of California, Davis will leverage long-term...
This $280,634 federal Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program supports research at the University of Florida on how individual variation in species traits can influence ecosystem stability. The project aims to develop a theoretical framework for studying "trait-shift induced interaction modification" and its effects on ecological dynamics. Researchers will integrate mathematical modeling and empirical analysis to...
The National Science Foundation awarded a $252,096 Project Grant to the University of Texas at Austin under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) to conduct research quantifying energy fluxes on coral reefs from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2024. The research will combine emerging technologies to examine how characteristics of small coral reef patches such as temperature, wave energy, architecture, and cryptic species assemblages shape reliance on different organisms to sustain larger reef fishes....
This $793,094 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program will fund research at the University of Colorado to quantify how global environmental changes, such as drought and warming, impact biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. The project aims to transform understanding of the causal mechanisms by which biodiversity responds to global change drivers and how those biodiversity changes then feed back to alter productivity and other ecosystem...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant, awarded under the Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) program, provides $240,000 in funding from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2027 to support a postdoctoral research fellowship. The fellowship will investigate how interactions among individual coral reef fishes drive ecosystem-scale function in coral reef environments. The research will integrate field and laboratory studies to uncover the relationship between individual behavioral...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences awarded a $134,502 Project Grant to the Smithsonian Institution to conduct collaborative research on the changing trophic niches of large herbivorous fish on modern coral reefs. This study under the NSF Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) aims to: (1) define the feeding behaviors and diets of herbivorous fishes on healthy coral reefs using traditional and cutting-edge techniques to quantify resource partitioning, and (2) determine...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) will quantify the temporal patterns and drivers of fish-mediated ecosystem functions, such as biomass production, nutrient cycling, and piscivory, across six European Large Marine Ecosystems over a 40-year period. The $393,925 award to the University of North Carolina at Wilmington will integrate fish monitoring data, bioenergetics modeling, and statistical inference to map the spatiotemporal...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Geosciences program Project Grant of $328,414.00 awarded to Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, Maine will fund collaborative research to reveal the changing trophic niches (feeding behaviors and diets) of large herbivorous fish on modern coral reefs. The objectives are to (a) define the feeding behaviors and diets of herbivorous fishes on healthy coral reefs using traditional and cutting-edge techniques to better quantify resource...
This two-year, $276,000 National Science Foundation project grant funds statistical modeling and simulation research under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074). The grantee will develop a unified theoretical, empirical and computational framework to predict how ecological and evolutionary dynamics propagate in response to perturbations across scales over time. Using agent-based simulations of random and experimentally perturbed eco-evolutionary systems, the grantee will characterize...
This five-year, $3 million Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) will fund research at the University of Colorado Boulder, Cornell University, Florida Atlantic University, and the University of New Mexico to develop methods for understanding how the functioning and dynamics of complex ecological interaction networks emerge and respond to environmental change. The researchers will measure multivalent interactions among fish and other species in coral reef ecosystems using new field technologies and computational modeling. They will identify key functional traits governing these interactions and develop algorithmic behavioral models. Dimension reduction and machine learning tools will be used to analyze trait data and derive coarse-grained dynamical models of ecosystem function. These models will then project how reef systems may respond to future environmental perturbations. The funding will also support undergraduate internships and international citizen science efforts on reef monitoring. Subawards totaling $XXX,XXX will support related work at Cornell, Florida Atlantic, and New Mexico to develop tools for automated field data collection, behavioral analysis, evolutionary modeling, and agent-based computational modeling of reef ecosystems.