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Full-Text Articles in Marine Biology

Florida's Pillar Coral (Dendrogyra Cylindrus): The Roles Of The Holobiont Partners In Bleaching, Recovery, And Disease Processes, Cynthia Fairbank Lewis Dec 2018

Florida's Pillar Coral (Dendrogyra Cylindrus): The Roles Of The Holobiont Partners In Bleaching, Recovery, And Disease Processes, Cynthia Fairbank Lewis

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The iconic pillar coral, Dendrogyra cylindrus, is one of five Caribbean species listed in 2014 under the US Federal Endangered Species Act because of its extreme low abundance and continued decline in US waters. Until recently, little was known about the demographics or genetic diversity of Florida’s D. cylindrus population. This study represents the first time two holobiont partners (coral animal and associated photosynthetic algal endosymbionts) have been closely examined, spatially and temporally, in this little-studied species. The aim was to explore the influences of coral animal genotypes, mutualistic photosynthetic algal strains, and hyperthermal stress on bleaching and …


Evolutionary And Population Dynamics Of Crustaceans In The Gulf Of Mexico, Laura Timm Jun 2018

Evolutionary And Population Dynamics Of Crustaceans In The Gulf Of Mexico, Laura Timm

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Evolution occurs and can be conceptualized along a spectrum, bounded on one extreme by the relationships between deep lineages – such as phyla, classes, and orders – and on the other by the molecular dynamics of operational taxonomic units within a species, defined as population genetics. The purpose of this dissertation was to better understand the evolutionary and population dynamics of crustaceans within the Gulf of Mexico. In the second chapter of my dissertation, I provide a guide to best phylogenetic practice while reviewing infraordinal relationships within Decapoda, including the promise held by next-generation sequencing (NGS) approaches such as Anchored …