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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Collaborative Research: The Role Of Wind In Estuarine Dynamics, Upper Chesapeake Bay, Vims Instruments Deployed In Collaboration With Umces And Whoi; March-May, 2012 Deployment., Grace M. Cartwright, Kelsey A. Fall, Carl T. Friedrichs, William C. Boicourt, Malcolm E. Scully Mar 2012

Collaborative Research: The Role Of Wind In Estuarine Dynamics, Upper Chesapeake Bay, Vims Instruments Deployed In Collaboration With Umces And Whoi; March-May, 2012 Deployment., Grace M. Cartwright, Kelsey A. Fall, Carl T. Friedrichs, William C. Boicourt, Malcolm E. Scully

Data

While the project is a collaborative effort involving several researchers from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS), the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), the Data archive here is primarily from VIMS owned instrumentation deployed as part of the project. A series of instruments were deployed in three transects in Upper Chesapeake Bay, South of the Choptank River from March to May 2012. This Dataset was collected with autonomously deployed Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCP), Acoustic Doppler Velicometers (ADV), and Conductivity and Temperature Sensors (CT).


Interannual And Regional Differences In Krill And Fish Prey Quality Along The Western Antarctic Peninsula, Kate E. Ruck Jan 2012

Interannual And Regional Differences In Krill And Fish Prey Quality Along The Western Antarctic Peninsula, Kate E. Ruck

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Polar zooplankton and fish safeguard against the seasonality of food availability by using the summer months to build large reserves of lipids, which in turn are utilized to meet the metabolic demands of apex predators such as penguins, seals, and whales. A warming trend in the northern part of the western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) has led to a decrease in perennial and summer sea ice, an increase in heat content over the shelf, and lower phytoplankton biomass, which could affect prey quality. We compared prey quality, including elemental (C, N) content and ratios, total, neutral, and polar lipid content, and …


Movements, Growth, And Mortality Of Chesapeake Bay Summer Flounder Based On Multiple Tagging Technologies, Mark J. Henderson Jan 2012

Movements, Growth, And Mortality Of Chesapeake Bay Summer Flounder Based On Multiple Tagging Technologies, Mark J. Henderson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The research projects presented in this dissertation used multiple tagging technologies to examine the movements, growth, and mortality rates of summer flounder tagged and released in Chesapeake Bay. In the first two chapters, I used acoustic, archival, and conventional tags to examine the behavior of summer flounder on different spatial scales. Investigating the movement behavior of individuals on different scales is an important step towards understanding how large-scale distributions of a population are established. Based on the observed behaviors of summer flounder, I hypothesize that the movements of these fish are primarily related to foraging behavior while they are resident …


Distribution And Feeding Ecology Of Bathylagus Euryops (Teleostei: Microstomatidae) Along The Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge From Iceland To The Azores, Christopher J. Sweetman Jan 2012

Distribution And Feeding Ecology Of Bathylagus Euryops (Teleostei: Microstomatidae) Along The Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge From Iceland To The Azores, Christopher J. Sweetman

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, from Iceland to the Azores (MAR), ranges in depth from 800 – 4500 m and extends over an area of 3.7 million km2. Recent evidence from MAR-ECO, a Census of Marine Life field project, reported increased abundance and biomass of deep-pelagic fishes below 1000 m on the MAR. Among the fishes sampled, Bathylagus euryops was found to be the biomass-dominant species and ranked third in total abundance. In this thesis, we characterize the distribution and feeding ecology of B. euryops as a function of physical, biological, and life history parameters along a mid-ocean ridge system. Multiple …


Shedding Light On The Estuarine Coastal Filter: The Relative Importance Of Benthic Macroalgae In Shallow Photic Systems, Johnathan Daniel Maxey Jan 2012

Shedding Light On The Estuarine Coastal Filter: The Relative Importance Of Benthic Macroalgae In Shallow Photic Systems, Johnathan Daniel Maxey

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Seed Burial In The Seagrass Zostera Marina: The Role Of Infauna, Natalia J. Blackburn Jan 2012

Seed Burial In The Seagrass Zostera Marina: The Role Of Infauna, Natalia J. Blackburn

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

In terrestrial systems, seed burial is widely recognized as a vital process that influences small- and large-scale plant population patterns. Despite its demonstrated importance in terrestrial literature, very little is known about seed burial in seagrasses. Zostera marina is a perennial seagrass found in northern temperate oceans worldwide, and is the dominant seagrass found in the Chesapeake Bay. In terrestrial systems, seed burial is frequently mediated by soil-dwelling invertebrates. The goal of this work was to determine the role that benthic infauna play in the burial of Z. marina seeds by addressing the following questions: 1. Are seeds on sediments …


Two Decades Of Pelagic Ecology Of The Western Antarctic Peninsula, Deborah K. Steinberg, D G. Martinson, D P. Costa Jan 2012

Two Decades Of Pelagic Ecology Of The Western Antarctic Peninsula, Deborah K. Steinberg, D G. Martinson, D P. Costa

VIMS Articles

Significant strides in our understanding of the marine pelagic ecosystem of the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) region have been made over the past two decades, resulting from research conducted aboard ARSV Laurence M. Gould and RVIB Nathaniel B. Palmer. These advances range from an understanding of the physical forcing on biology, to food web ecology (from microbes to top predators), to biogeochemical cycling, often in the larger context of rapid climate warming in the region. The proximity of the WAP to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and WAP continental shelf bathymetry affects the hydrography and helps structure the biological community. Seasonal, …


Patterns Of Population Structure And Historical Dispersal In Squaloid Sharks: A Species-Level Approach Using Molecular Markers, Ana Christina Pimenta Verissimo Jan 2012

Patterns Of Population Structure And Historical Dispersal In Squaloid Sharks: A Species-Level Approach Using Molecular Markers, Ana Christina Pimenta Verissimo

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Squaloids (Order Squaliformes) are a highle diverse group of mostly deepwater habitats (> 200 m). Many species are regularly caught in commercial fisheries worldwide but their low productivity and correspondingly low intrinsic rebound potentials make them particularly vulnerable to population depletion and overexploitation. of special concern to fisheries management and conservation efforts are the spiny dogfish Squalus acanthias, the leafscale gulper shark Centrophorus squamosus and the Portuguese dogfish Centroscymnus coelolepis. These taxa have recently been declared overfished in several parts of each species' distribution but management efforts have been made to recover the "stocks" without a good understanding of the …


Microzooplankton Community Structure And Grazing Impact Along The Western Antarctic Peninsula, Lori M. Price Jan 2012

Microzooplankton Community Structure And Grazing Impact Along The Western Antarctic Peninsula, Lori M. Price

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Microzooplankton (zooplankton 20 – 200 μm) are an integral part of aquatic food webs as they can be significant grazers of phytoplankton and bacteria, remineralizers of nutrients, and prey for higher trophic levels. The importance of microzooplankton in many pelagic ecosystems has been established, yet compared to larger zooplankton, microzooplankton are understudied in the Southern Ocean. I quantified microzooplankton community composition and grazing rates along the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) as part of the Palmer Antarctica Long-Term Ecological Research project (PAL LTER). This region is experiencing rapid warming, causing declines in sea ice and changes in the marine food web. …


The Effects Of Salinity Pulses Of Varying Duration And Intensity On Three Freshwater Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Species, Rebecca Wright Jan 2012

The Effects Of Salinity Pulses Of Varying Duration And Intensity On Three Freshwater Submerged Aquatic Vegetation Species, Rebecca Wright

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Myctophid Feeding Ecology And Carbon Transport Along The Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Jeanna M. Hudson Jan 2012

Myctophid Feeding Ecology And Carbon Transport Along The Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Jeanna M. Hudson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) is the largest topographic feature in the Atlantic Ocean, yet little is known about the food web structure and trophic ecology of fishes inhabiting mesopelagic waters along the MAR. To better understand the food web structure and to compare the feeding ecology of abundant MAR fishes to those in offridge areas, MAR-ECO, a Mid-Atlantic Ridge ecosystem field project of the Census of Marine Life, sampled the pelagic fauna of the northern MAR (Iceland to the Azores) during June-July, 2004. Samples were collected with two midwater trawls outfitted with multiple opening and closing cod ends to sample …


Mobile Animals As A Potential Dispersal Mechanism In Zostera Marina (Eelgrass), Sarah E. Sumoski Jan 2012

Mobile Animals As A Potential Dispersal Mechanism In Zostera Marina (Eelgrass), Sarah E. Sumoski

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.