CAREER: Flow-mediated mechanisms of marine disease transmission in benthic ecosystems

Outbreaks of marine disease in seagrass and corals can decimate habitat, reduce coastal protective benefits, damage fisheries, and impact recreation and the economy of coastal communities. This project is helping prevent and reduce the impact of marine disease by filling knowledge gaps regarding the physical mechanisms of disease transmission in seagrass and coral reef ecosystems, clarifying physical conditions under which transmission is enhanced or reduced, and developing tools that couple physical mechanisms with biological models.

The results of this research seek to improve our ability to manage marine ecosystem health by informing best practices for restoration of living shoreline ecosystems such as seagrass meadows and coral reefs. Further, the project explores innovative prevention and intervention strategies, such as introducing strategically-designed gaps and patches to act as epidemiological “firebreaks.” This CAREER award is also aiming to cultivate a diverse marine workforce that can engage with the public and has expertise in ocean resilience, key skills needed to manage the impacts of climate change.

Education activities include: (1) the development of a new course on science writing to convey marine science and engineering research to the public; (2) engagement of summer undergraduate research interns from underrepresented groups; and (3) creation of open-source educational modules to integrate marine health and resilience concepts into the existing ocean engineering curriculum.

This project is addressing key knowledge gaps regarding the physical mechanisms that drive disease transmission in benthic ecosystems and the physical conditions that enhance or reduce transmission. Controlled laboratory flume experiments are being used to investigate the local, within-patch spread of disease in foundational seagrass and coral ecosystems, specifically: (1) transmission of seagrass wasting disease through flow-driven plant-to-plant contact; and (2) transport of coral pathogens over rough benthos by turbulent, wave- and current-driven flow.

This work will systematically explore these modes of disease transmission for a range of flow regimes and seagrass/coral canopy geometries using novel dye and connectivity techniques. Results are informing reduced-order models and parameterizations for these dynamics that can be coupled with marine epidemiological models and used to design restoration and conservation projects to optimize resilience to disease.

The results of this work are advancing our understanding of interactions between marine ecosystems with simple and complex morphologies and their surrounding fluid environment.

This project is jointly funded by the Biological Oceanography Program, Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), and the Geosciences Division of Research Innovation, Synergies, and Education.

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.