Digital Commons Network^™

Number 52 (December 2010), Southern Fishes Council

Southeastern Fishes Council Proceedings

(December 2010) - Comparative Conservation Genetics of Two Endangered Darters, Percina rex and Percina jenkinsi By Anna L. George, David Neely, and Richard Mayden

Invasion of Gulf Menhaden in the Alabama River By T. Heath Haley, R. Kyle Bolton, and Carol E. Johnston

Southeastern Fishes Council State Reports

Minutes, Business Meeting, 35th Annual Meeting, Southeastern Fishes Council

2009 Treasurer's Report for the Southeastern Fishes Council

Comparative Conservation Genetics Of Two Endangered Darters, Percina Rex And Percina Jenkinsi, Anna L. George, David A. Neely, Richard L. Mayden

Southeastern Fishes Council Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Distributions Of Sharks Across A Continental Shelf In The Northern Gulf Of Mexico, J. Marcus Drymon, Sean P. Powers, John Dindo, Brian Dzwonkowski, Terry A. Henwood

University Faculty and Staff Publications

Declines in shark populations have sparked researchers and fishery managers to investigate more prudent approaches to the conservation of these fish. As managers strive to improve data collection for stock assessment, fisheries-independent surveys have expanded to include data-deficient areas such as coastal regions. To that end, a catch series from a nearshore survey off Alabama was combined with data from a concurrent offshore survey with identical methodology to examine the depth use of sharks across the continental shelf (2–366 m). The combined data set contained 22 species of sharks collected from 1995 to 2008: 21 species in the offshore data …

Life History And Habitat Use Of The Juvenile Alabama Shad (Alosa Alabamae) In Northern Gulf Of Mexico Rivers, Paul Fraser Mickle

Dissertations

The Alabama shad, Alosa alabamae, is an anadromous species that is in decline and has seen extirpations from impoundments as well as decreased water quality. Alabama shad live in the Gulf of Mexico and ascend Northern Gulf of Mexico Drainages to reproduce early in the year (January-May). The juveniles spend the majority of the year in these freshwater systems before emigrating out to the Gulf of Mexico as late as December.

This dissertation focuses on the juvenile life stages that occur within the Northern Gulf of Mexico drainages. Spawning conditions of the river, as well as the habitat and diet, …

The Influence Of Wave Exposure On Coral Community Development On Man-Made Breakwater Reefs, With A Comparison To A Natural Reef, John A. Burt, David A. Feary, Paolo Usseglio, Andrew G. Bauman, Peter F. Sale

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Breakwaters dominate shorelines in many coastal urban areas, providing substantial hard-bottom habitat upon which diverse and abundant reef communities develop. In recognition of their potential ecological and economic importance, there is increasing interest in understanding how design features can influence community development. We investigated the influence of wave exposure on breakwater coral communities in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Coral community composition, cover, size structure, recruitment, mortality, and growth rates were compared quarterly between two windward and two leeward breakwater sites for 1 yr to explore the influence of wave exposure on coral community development. Comparisons also were made with a …

Virginia Institute Of Marine Science Programs And Services, Virginia Institute Of Marine Science

Miscellaneous

Programs and faculty, education and Institute support resources are described.

Evolution Of Host Associations In Symbiotic Zoanthidea, Timothy D. Swain

Oceanography Faculty Theses and Dissertations

Symbioses are pervasive in life and confer novel adaptive capabilities that enable ecological expansion into unexplored niches. Evolutionary transitions in symbiosis (terminations, origins, host shifts, or changes in relationship outcomes) can therefore have dramatic effects on the fitness, life history, and distribution of organisms. Because symbiotic interactions require coordination among traits that control recognition, colonization, and maintenance of symbiosis, transitions in symbiosis should generally be rare and conserved across evolutionary time. Cnidarians in the order Zoanthidea (class Anthozoa) are symbionts of taxa representing at least five invertebrate phyla and occur in most major benthic habitats from the intertidal to the …

Location-Specific Responses To Thermal Stress In Larvae Of The Reef-Building Coral Montastraea Faveolata, Nicholas R. Polato, Christian Voolstra, Julia Schnetzer, Michael K. Desalvo, Carly J. Randall, Alina M. Szmant, Mónica Medina, Iliana B. Baums

Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

The potential to adapt to a changing climate depends in part upon the standing genetic variation present in wild populations. In corals, the dispersive larval phase is particularly vulnerable to the effects of environmental stress. Larval survival and response to stress during dispersal and settlement will play a key role in the persistence of coral populations. Methodology/Principal Findings: To test the hypothesis that larval transcription profiles reflect location-specific responses to thermal stress, symbiont-free gametes from three to four colonies of the scleractinian coral Montastraea faveolata were collected from Florida and Mexico, fertilized, and raised under mean and elevated (up 1 …

Estuarine Nitrifiers: New Players, Patterns And Processes, Anne E. Bernhard, Annette Bollmann

Biology Faculty Publications

Ever since the first descriptions of ammonia-oxidizing Bacteria by Winogradsky in the late 1800s, the metabolic capability of aerobic ammonia oxidation has been restricted to a phylogenetically narrow group of bacteria. However, the recent discovery of ammonia-oxidizing Archaea has forced microbiologists and ecologists to re-evaluate long-held paradigms and the role of niche partitioning between bacterial and archaeal ammonia oxidizers. Much of the current research has been conducted in open ocean or terrestrial systems, where community patterns of archaeal and bacterial ammonia oxidizers are highly congruent. Studies of archaeal and bacterial ammonia oxidizers in estuarine systems, however, present a very different …

Changing Patterns Of Microhabitat Utilization By The Threespot Damselfish, Stegastes Planifrons, On Caribbean Reefs, William F. Precht, Richard B. Aronson, Ryan M. Moody, Les M. Kaufman

Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

The threespot damselfish, Stegastes planifrons (Cuvier), is important in mediating interactions among corals, algae, and herbivores on Caribbean coral reefs. The preferred microhabitat of S. planifrons is thickets of the branching staghorn coral Acropora cervicornis. Within the past few decades, mass mortality of A. cervicornis from white-band disease and other factors has rendered this coral a minor ecological component throughout most of its range. Methodology/Principal Findings:Survey data from Jamaica (heavily fished), Florida and the Bahamas (moderately fished), the Cayman Islands (lightly to moderately fished), and Belize (lightly fished) indicate that distributional patterns of S. planifrons are positively correlated with live …

Development Of Representative Species-Level Molecular Markers And Morphological Character Analysis Of Leucothoid Amphipods (Crustacea: Amphipoda), Kristine Nicolle White

Dissertations

Leucothoid amphipods were investigated using morphology and molecular rDNA gene sequence fragments. The morphological diagnostic characters for traditional taxonomy have been clarified, a molecular marker for representative species has been developed, and one of the current anamorph-leucomorph connections has been confirmed with molecular sequence data. Ultimately this study has combined traditional morphological and modern molecular methods to clarify the taxonomy and to propose a preliminary phylogeny of the Leucothoidae. Analysis of 18S rDNA gene fragments from 13 species in two genera supported the current morphological species designations and the separation of the family into two clades. Combined analysis of 18S …

Investigations Into The Application Of Single-Beam Acoustic Backscatter For Describing Shallow Water Marine Habitats, Greg Foster

HCNSO Student Theses and Dissertations

Chapter 1

Producing thematic coral reef benthic habitat maps from single-beam acoustic backscatter has been hindered by uncertainties in interpreting the acoustic energy parameters E1 (~roughness) and E2 (~hardness), typically limiting such maps to sediment classification schemes. In this study acoustic interpretation was guided by high-resolution LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) bathymetry. Each acoustic record, acquired from a BioSonics DT-X echosounder and multiplexed 38 and 418 kHz transducers, was paired with a spatially-coincident value of a LIDAR-derived proxy for topographic complexity (Reef-Volume) and its membership to one of eight LIDAR-delineated benthic habitat classes. The discriminatory capabilities of the 38 and …

Perspectives Of Underwater Optics In Biological Oceanography And Plankton Ecology Studies, Hans-Uwe Dahms, Jiang-Shiou Hwang

Journal of Marine Science and Technology

The ever expanding fields of UW (underwater) optics cover principal measurements of the optical properties of the sea, development of new methods of monitoring optical properties, techniques for measurements of organisms or structures in the sea and the development and application of optical instrumentation. In this respect, ocean optics is a multidisciplinary (and multinational) endeavour of science and engineering. Ocean optics has applications in the study of upwelling irradiance and chlorophyll concentrations in the ocean, in the penetration of solar radiation in shallow shelf seas and how this influences temperature profiles and ultimately its effect on sound propagation. Recent development …

Fall 2010, Nsu Oceanographic Center

Currents

No abstract provided.

Interspecific Variation In Palatability Suggests Cospecialization Of Antipredator Defenses In Sea Hares, Kimberly K. Takagi, Nadia N. Ono, William G. Wright

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

Prey species often deploy different kinds of antipredator defenses, which can interact with each other in ways that are not yet completely understood. Much research into these interactions has utilized gastropod mollusks, usually focusing (in part) on the protective utility of the gastropod shell. This makes the evolutionary reduction of the shell in the opisthobranch gastropods (marine slugs) particularly interesting. This loss of protective function of the shell is associated with the evolution of alternative defenses. Particularly well studied are chemical defenses, especially those using secondary metabolites derived from food resources. As a first step toward understanding interspecific variation in …

The Ratio Of Gametophytes To Tetrasporophytes Of Intertidal Chondrus Crispus (Gigartinaceae) Across A Salinity Gradient, Michele Guidone, Sean Grace

Biology Faculty Publications

Population studies of the Gigartinaceae (Rhodophyta) have often observed that the ratio of gametophytes to tetrasporophytes varies with the location of the population or the time of sampling. For some species, patterns have emerged that correlate this ratio to one or a few particular environmental variables, such as elevation, wave exposure, or season. Identifying these distributional patterns is an important step towards understanding what (if any) ecological differences exist between the two free-living life history stages.

The purpose of this study was to measure the ratio of gametophytes to tetrasporophytes of intertidal populations of Chondrus crispus across a decreasing salinity …

The Life History Of Longnose Gar, Lepisosteus Osseus, An Apex Predator In The Tidal Waters Of Virginia, Patrick E. Mcgrath

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Longnose gar (Lepisosteus osseus) inhabit all of the major tributaries of Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, extending from fresh to estuarine waters. Literature concerning longnose gar from tidal environments is limited and this is study concerns important aspects of the life history (e.g., growth, reproduction, dimorphism, movements, and diet). Age, growth, and reproduction are important life history aspects for understanding the biology of fishes and may be affected by the environment in which an individual lives. This study found no differences in the age, growth, and fecundity parameters between longnose gar from tidal portions of Chesapeake Bay tributaries and previous studies …

Recruitment And Colonization Of Macroalgae To A Newly Constructed Rocky Intertidal Habitat In The Northwest Gulf Of Mexico, Ryan L. Fikes, Roy L. Lehman

Gulf and Caribbean Research

Marine macroalgal assemblages on artificial structures play an important ecological role in coastal and estuarine ecosystems and may supplement natural communities in nearby waters. The rocky jetties of Packery Channel, located near Corpus Christi, Texas represent a recent addition of hard structure for colonization in the northwest Gulf of Mexico. The purpose of this research was to monitor the initial immigration of macroalgal species during the first year of colonization and determine the effects of wave energy on recruitment. Ten sampling sites were established along the offshore portion of the new Packery Channel jetties. Samples were taken bimonthly from along …

Copepod Carcasses, Mortality And Population Dynamics In The Tributaries Of The Lower Chesapeake Bay, David Thomas. Elliott

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Several studies have documented the occurrence of substantial numbers of zooplankton carcasses in marine field samples. However, the potential effect of carcasses on conclusions resting on zooplankton abundance estimates, and the reasons for carcass occurrence have been largely disregarded. Many field studies do not account for the presence of carcasses in their sampling methodology. Zooplankton carcasses in situ are significant for several reasons. as concentrated particles of organic matter in the water column, zooplankton carcasses can be important vehicles for organic matter transport and hotspots of microbial abundance and activity. If dead animals are treated alive, carcasses could bias the …