The National Science Foundation Division of Ocean Sciences awarded a $516,757 project grant to Trustees of Boston University to support research titled "COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: HOW DO SELECTION, PLASTICITY, AND DISPERSAL INTERACT TO DETERMINE CORAL SUCCESS IN WARMER AND MORE VARIABLE ENVIRONMENTS?" from November 15, 2021 through October 31, 2024. This project grant funding will support research under the NSF's Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050), which aims to strengthen understanding of...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) is funding a $783,165 research project titled "The Role of Diel Thermal Variability on Coral Performance" at Boston University. The project aims to understand how differences in diel thermal variability (DTV) influence the plasticity of coral thermal physiology and molecular function, focusing on the coral species Siderastrea siderea across sites in Bocas del Toro, Panama. The key...
This $689,238 federal Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) supports research on the energetic tradeoffs of coral-algal symbioses by the Trustees of Boston University. The project aims to examine how the facultative symbiosis between the coral Astrangia poculata and its algal symbiont Breviolum psygmophilum affects the energy allocation towards coral development, growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Key activities include: 1)...
This National Science Foundation project grant of $298,357 supports research investigating coral demographic processes and their interaction with climate change and local stressors to influence coral recovery trajectories. Funded under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050), the award will support analysis of time series coral size-frequency data across four Pacific regions to assess demographic rates following bleaching events and evaluate their importance in driving recovery dynamics....
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Project Grant award, funded under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050), provides $533,560 to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to develop a quantitative physicochemical framework for accurately interpreting elemental variations in coral skeletons. The key objectives are to: Construct a physicochemical model to simulate microscale (micrometer-scale) elemental variations, such as magnesium, lithium, and strontium, in coral skeletons. Develop...
The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, through its Clinical Practices division, was awarded a $200,000 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) on May 15, 2024. The grant supports research to understand whether life-long acclimatization to temperature variability can improve coral reef climate resilience and survival during severe marine heatwaves. The project compares coral community bleaching resilience and the gene expression and...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $873,836 Project Grant under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) to the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) on August 15, 2024. The grant will fund a 5-year research project to investigate rapid evolution in reef-building corals during marine heatwave events. The project aims to study how the mortality induced by these extreme climate events changes the genetic composition of coral populations. Using a combination of field experiments...
This National Science Foundation Project Grant of $370,100 awarded to the University of Rhode Island from September 1, 2022 to August 31, 2024 will fund research investigating the impacts of ocean warming on the symbiotic nutritional exchange between microbes and reef-building corals during early life stages. As part of the Geosciences program under the CFDA 47.050, the awardee will characterize the development of the coral-algal symbiosis across life histories in Hawaiian and French...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering (CFDA 47.041) Project Grant award to Northwestern University in the amount of $299,986 will fund a project focused on developing biophotonic technologies to increase the resilience of coral reefs to the impacts of climate change-induced ocean warming. The project aims to use optical imaging techniques to understand the role of gene expression and chromatin remodeling in coral thermal stress tolerance, with the goal of identifying strategies to...
The National Science Foundation awarded a $138,000 Project Grant to support postdoctoral fellowship research titled "Tracing Coral Reef Energy Fluxes from Genes to Ecosystems in a Changing Climate." The two-year award, made under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074), will fund fellowships for research examining how coral reef ecosystems respond to climate change impacts at multiple levels of biological organization, from genes to whole reef systems. The fellowships will be...
This Project Grant award of $343,716 from the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) will support a postdoctoral research project at Trustees of Boston University to investigate sex-specific physiological differences in coral responses to climate change. The project aims to assess shifts in sex distributions and physiological trade-offs across marginal and non-marginal coral habitats by integrating field and mesocosm experiments with genomic tools. It will examine differences in thermal tolerance between male and female corals, providing insights into coral resilience to climate change. The project will also include mentoring of undergraduate and high school students, as well as public educational outreach on climate impacts on marine ecosystems. The award period is from September 1, 2024 to August 31, 2026.