Annette Engel, the Jones Associate Professor of Aqueous Geochemistry in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, at UT has been awarded a National Science Foundation grant for $794,000 to lead a research group to learn more about these clams, called lucinids, and the role they play in the ecosystem. The project is part of the NSF’s Dimensions of Biodiversity program.

Findings could have implications for the recovery and management of fast-disappearing coastal environments.

Engel will collaborate with Laurie Anderson at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and Barbara Campbell at Clemson University on the project over the next five years, with a total project budget of $1.6 million.

Lucinids play a key role in detoxifying coastal environments for other creatures such as fish, crabs, and manatees. They do this through a process called chemosymbiosis, a form of symbiosis in which a bacterium provides chemically derived energy and nutrients to a higher organism. Lucinids have bacteria that live within their gills and allows them to convert toxic compounds such as hydrogen sulfide—a neurotoxin to humans—into less toxic versions such as sulfate.

“These clams show us how chemosymbiosis, a unique evolutionary adaptation, is very important to life on earth,” said Engel. “The lucinids clean up environments for other animals and allow them to live. Yet little is known about their chemosymbioses and how they are affected by environmental changes.”

Lucinids’ symbiotic relationship also has allowed them to survive millions of years of extinctions and disturbances. Researchers will tap into a 400-million-year-old fossil record of the lucinids’ past to reconstruct environments and relationships over time. They will collect modern-day lucinid data from biomes in Florida, California, and the Bahamas with varying degrees of disturbance.

Their findings will uncover the genetic, taxonomic, and functional diversity of modern lucinid chemosymbioses and ways to identify the distinctive features of lucinid-bacteria biodiversity through the past. The goals are to be able to predict future lucinid evolutionary adaptations and help save or recover seagrass beds being lost at tremendous rates due to climate change, pollution, sea level rise, and other disruptions.

“Environmental managers are working to save these lands, yet they do not know about all the living beings in the ecosystems,” said Engel. “We will look at how the effect of human activities is changing water chemistry, how this change in water is impacting the clams and how this change is impacting the whole ecosystem.”

This project will train graduate and undergraduate students in interdisciplinary research; involve students underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; and provide mentoring and outreach to the public on the topics of symbiosis and biodiversity.

The Dimensions of Biodiversity awards are supported by NSF’s Directorates for Biological Sciences and Geosciences along with NASA, which co-funds projects that use state-of-the-art remote sensing technologies. To learn more the program, visit http://1.usa.gov/1bMi7Bn.

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CONTACT:

Whitney Heins (865-974-5460, wheins@utk.edu)

Engel and dozens of scientists from across the country pooled their resources to conduct research they knew would be needed once the oil began spilling into the Gulf— to determine what the coastal ecosystems were like before the inevitable spill. It took almost three months for the well to be capped.

Now, Engel and her fellow researchers, led by the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON), will be able to finish what they started with a three-year $12 million grant to study the effects of the spill on coastal ecosystems. The award is from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GRI), an independent research program and board established by British Petroleum, the White House, and the governors of the five Gulf Coastal states.

Traveling along the coast by boat and by foot—taking samples of water, sediment, grasses, oysters, fish, and insects—the team of researchers is evaluating the changes in the quality and quantity of oil, how the oil altered aquatic sediment and wetland soil stability, and the impacts that environmental stressors like oil have had on the coastal ecosystems and commercial fisheries.

“Our examination starts at the microbial level,” said Engel. “Microbes can efficiently break down different compounds in oil by consuming oxygen. But removal of oxygen from already low-oxygen environments like wetland soil can create stress for grass roots, for example. If the marsh grass dies, insects disappear, and birds do not come around. Grass die-off can also lead to lower soil strength and marsh shoreline erosion. So, you have these cascading stress effects, all because oil was introduced into the ecosystem.”

Engel’s results of the effects of the spill on changing the diversity and distribution of microbial communities will be integrated into large-scale ecosystem models to illuminate what will be the long-term consequences of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and the spill in the Gulf. They also will be used to enable appropriate responses should there be future releases, not only in the Gulf of Mexico, but in other ocean environments where oil and gas exploration occurs. The project can assist local, state, and federal agencies in their work to remediate the consequences of the oil spill in coastal and marine environments.

GRI has committed $500 million over a ten-year period to fund research into the effects of the accident. Engel and the LUMCON team are one of eight consortia that will investigate the effects of petroleum in the environment, the impacts of the spill, and the development of new tools and technology for responding to future spills and improving mitigation and restoration.

For more information about the project, visit http://griresearchboard.org/.

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C O N T A C T:

Whitney Holmes (865-974-5460, wholmes7@utk.edu)