Collaborative Research: BoCP-Implementation: US-China: Multi-scale, multi-proxy, integrative investigation of functional biodiversity on a changing Proterozoic planet

This project supports seven PIs, one postdoctoral fellow, five graduate students, and two undergraduate students from the five U.S. universities to study how the availability of marine nutrients such as nitrate and phosphate may have fueled the expansion of eukaryotes (organisms with nuclei in their cells), transformed their ecological roles, and eventually revolutionized the marine ecosystem during the Tonian Period (1000–720 million years ago). This research will help scientists to better understand the ecological resilience of the marine ecosystem in the present and future. The project takes advantage of unique and complementary geologic records from two continents, leverages available collections and resources, and brings together an array of research expertise. It offers opportunities for the training of a globally engaged STEM workforce, as well as public outreach activities engaging national (geo)parks. This project will test the hypothesis that increasing nutrient availability in Tonian oceans drove the diversification and ecological rise of eukaryotes, which in turn transformed the scope of biodiversity from a prokaryote-dominated world to one teeming with eukaryotes. The researchers will systematically collect and integrate paleontological, geochemical, sedimentological, and stratigraphic data from early Tonian strata in North China and late Tonian strata in the Grand Canyon of Arizona. The data will be integrated with global compilations and an Earth system model to reconstruct nutrient availability, eukaryote taxonomic and functional biodiversity, and marine geochemical cycles to test the hypothesis stated above. The intellectual merit of the project lies in its potential to illuminate the complex feedbacks among nutrient availability, functional biodiversity, and biodiversity dynamics in a major transition in Earth history. The broader impacts of the project will catalyze multidisciplinary research, create synergies between the National Park System and research institutions, foster informal geoscience education, and prepare the next-generation of STEM workforce. This project is funded by the BIO/DEB Biodiversity of a Changing Planet (BoCP) Program and the GEO/EAR Life and Environments through Time (LET) 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.