Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Spectral Sensitivity In Ray-Finned Fishes: Diversity, Ecology And Shared Descent, Lorian E. Schweikert, Robert R. Fitak, Eleanor M. Caves, Tracey Sutton, Sonke Johnsen

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

A major goal of sensory ecology is to identify factors that underlie sensory-trait variation. One open question centers on why fishes show the greatest diversity among vertebrates in their capacity to detect color (i.e. spectral sensitivity). Over the past several decades, λ_max values (photoreceptor class peak sensitivity) and chromacy (photoreceptor class number) have been cataloged for hundreds of fish species, yet the ecological basis of this diversity and the functional significance of high chromacy levels (e.g. tetra- and pentachromacy) remain unclear. In this study, we examined phylogenetic, physiological and ecological patterns of spectral sensitivity of ray-finned fishes (Actinoptergyii) via …

Serotonin: Octopus Love Potion?, Lauren E. Nadler

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

No abstract provided.

The Octocoral Fishery In The Southeastern U.S. And Gulf Of Mexico, Mark Chiappone, Paola Espitia, Leanne M. Rutten, Steven Miller

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Octocorals, also known as gorgonians and soft corals, were previously managed by the U.S. South Atlantic (SAFMC) and Gulf of Mexico (GMFMC) Fishery Management Councils through a joint Coral Fishery Management Plan (FMP). Because octocorals are mostly collected from Florida waters, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) is currently tasked with managing octocoral collection, including the monitoring of colony landings, in the Economic Exclusive Zone (EEZ) adjacent to Florida. Collection of 70,000 colonies per year total, which applies to both state and EEZ waters off Florida, is permitted under Rule 68B- 42.006 of the Florida Administrative Code, but …

Role Of Water Flow Regime In The Swimming Behaviour And Escape Performance Of A Schooling Fish, Lauren E. Nadler, Shaun S. Killen, Paolo Domenici, Mark I. Mccormick

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Animals are exposed to variable and rapidly changing environmental flow conditions, such as wind in terrestrial habitats and currents in aquatic systems. For fishes, previous work suggests that individuals exhibit flow-induced changes in aerobic swimming performance. Yet, no one has examined whether similar plasticity is found in fast-start escape responses, which are modulated by anaerobic swimming performance, sensory stimuli and neural control. In this study, we used fish from wild schools of the tropical damselfish Chromis viridis from shallow reefs surrounding Lizard Island in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. The flow regime at each site was measured to ascertain differences …

Hypoplectrus Liberte, A New And Endangered Microendemic Hamlet From Haiti (Teleostei: Serranidae), Benjamin C. Victor, Kenneth W. Marks

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

The hamlets of the genus Hypoplectrus comprise a species flock of about 20 species found on coral reefs of the tropical western Atlantic Ocean, distinguished by complex color patterns and sharing mitochondrial DNA haplotypes within the Caribbean Sea (Gulf of Mexico and Florida-centered species are about 3% divergent in the COI marker). The species show a variety of biogeographic patterns, from widespread common species to relatively rare species limited to small parts of the Greater Caribbean region. We describe here a distinctive striped morph of barred hamlet, apparently limited to Fort-Liberté Bay in northeastern Haiti, as the new species Hypoplectrus …

An Additional Nomenclatural Transfer In The Pantropical Genus Myrsine (Primulaceae: Myrsinoideae), John J. Pipoly Iii, Jon M. Ricketson

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Rapanea pellucidostriata Gilg & Schellenb. is transferred to Myrsine L. as M. pellucidostriata (Gilg & Schellenb.) Pipoly & Ricketson, comb. nov. To our knowledge, this is the last species of Rapanea Aubl. remaining that did not have a name in the genus Myrsine. With the transfer of this species complete, all species of Rapanea and Suttonia A. Rich. have been transferred into Myrsine.

Impacts Of A Regional, Multi-Year, Multi-Species Coral Disease Outbreak In Southeast Florida, Charles Walton, Nicole K. Hayes, David S. Gilliam

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Globally coral reefs have been declining at alarming rates as a result of anthropogenic stressors, leading to increased frequency and severity of widespread bleaching and disease events. These events are often associated with increased water temperatures due to climate change as well as regional and local stress from nutrient enrichment through runoff and sedimentation from coastal development. In late 2014, a white syndrome disease outbreak was reported off the coast of southeast Florida and was subsequently documented spreading throughout the region. This study examined the regional impacts of the disease event on the southeast Florida stony coral population utilizing stony …

A Multidisciplinary Approach For Generating Globally Consistent Data On Mesophotic, Deep-Pelagic, And Bathyal Biological Communities, Lucy C. Woodall, Dominic A. Andradi-Brown, Andrew S. Brierley, Malcolm R. Clark, Douglas Connelly, Rob A. Hall, Kerry L. Howell, Veerle A. I. Huvenne, Katrin Linse, Rebecca E. Ross, Paul Snelgrove, Paris V. Stefanoudis, Tracey Sutton, Michelle Taylor, Thomas F. Thornton, Alex D. Rogers

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Approaches to measuring marine biological parameters remain almost as diverse as the researchers who measure them. However, understanding the patterns of diversity in ocean life over different temporal and geographic scales requires consistent data and information on the potential environmental drivers. As a group of marine scientists from different disciplines, we suggest a formalized, consistent framework of 20 biological, chemical, physical, and socioeconomic parameters that we consider the most important for describing environmental and biological variability. We call our proposed framework the General Ocean Survey and Sampling Iterative Protocol (GOSSIP). We hope that this framework will establish a consistent approach …

Thresholds And Drivers Of Coral Calcification Responses To Climate Change, Niklas Kornder, Bernhard Riegl, Joana Figueiredo

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Increased temperature and CO₂ levels are considered key drivers of coral reef degradation. However, individual assessments of ecological responses (calcification) to these stressors are often contradicting. To detect underlying drivers of heterogeneity in coral calcification responses, we developed a procedure for the inclusion of stress–effect relationships in ecological meta‐analyses. We applied this technique to a dataset of 294 empirical observations from 62 peer‐reviewed publications testing individual and combined effects of elevated temperature and pCO₂ on coral calcification. Our results show an additive interaction between warming and acidification, which reduces coral calcification by 20% when pCO₂ levels exceed …

Antipredatory Escape Behaviors Of Two Benthic Ctenophores In South Florida, Peter W. Glynn, Brian Coffman, Jeongran Vanderwoude, Nicolas Martinez, Joshua H. Dominguez, Julie M. Gross, Dorothy-Ellen A. Renegar

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Benthic ctenophores, members of the family Coeloplanidae (Order Platyctenida, Phylum Ctenophora) are more widespread and abundant in tropical and subtropical marine environments than formerly recognized. Coeloplanid ctenophores are members of the most speciose family of benthic ctenophores, with 33 recognized species of Coeloplana and one species of the genus Vallicula (Mills 1998). The majority of coeloplanids are ectosymbionts of algae and diverse benthic invertebrates (Matsumoto 1999, Alamaru et al. 2015). Hundreds to thousands of individuals can occupy preferred habitats in < 1 m² of substrate patches. Galt (1998) noted Vallicula multiformis inhabiting algae in Hawaii at population densities as high as 10,000 …

Ongoing Transposon-Mediated Genome Reduction In The Luminous Bacterial Symbionts Of Deep-Sea Ceratioid Anglerfishes, Tory Hendry, Lindsay L. Freed, Dana Fadera, Dante Fenolio, Tracey Sutton, Jose Lopez

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Diverse marine fish and squid form symbiotic associations with extracellular bioluminescent bacteria. These symbionts are typically free-living bacteria with large genomes, but one known lineage of symbionts has undergone genomic reduction and evolution of host dependence. It is not known why distinct evolutionary trajectories have occurred among different luminous symbionts, and not all known lineages previously had genome sequences available. In order to better understand patterns of evolution across diverse bioluminescent symbionts, we de novo sequenced the genomes of bacteria from a poorly studied interaction, the extracellular symbionts from the “lures” of deep-sea ceratioid anglerfishes. Deep-sea anglerfish symbiont genomes are …

Coral Reef Carbonate Chemistry Variability At Different Functional Scales, Yuichiro Takeshita, Tyler Cyronak, Todd R. Martz, Theodor Kindeberg, Andreas J. Andersson

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

There is a growing recognition for the need to understand how seawater carbonate chemistry over coral reef environments will change in a high-CO₂ world to better assess the impacts of ocean acidification on these valuable ecosystems. Coral reefs modify overlying water column chemistry through biogeochemical processes such as net community organic carbon production (NCP) and calcification (NCC). However, the relative importance and influence of these processes on seawater carbonate chemistry vary across multiple functional scales (defined here as space, time, and benthic community composition), and have not been fully constrained. Here, we use Bermuda as a case study to …

Assessment Of Mesophotic Coral Ecosystem Connectivity For Proposed Expansion Of A Marine Sanctuary In The Northwest Gulf Of Mexico: Larval Dynamics, Lysel Garavelli, Michael S. Studivan, Joshua D. Voss, Alyson Kuba, Joana Figueiredo, Laurent M. Cherubin

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

In coral reef ecosystems, mesophotic coral habitat (>30 m to the end of the photic zone) are extensions of shallow reefs and contribute to the persistence of coral reef populations. In the North West Gulf of Mexico (NW GOM), the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary (FGBNMS) is an isolated reef ecosystem comprising contiguous shallow and mesophotic reefs habitats on two central banks along the margin of the continental shelf. A future expansion of the sanctuary is proposed to include additional mesophotic banks and aims at building a network of protected areas in the NW GOM to ensure the …

Fine Grained Compositional Analysis Of Port Everglades Inlet Microbiome Using High Throughput Dna Sequencing, Lauren M. O'Connell, Song Gao, Donald S. Mccorquodale Jr., Jay M. Fleisher, Jose Lopez

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Background

Similar to natural rivers, manmade inlets connect inland runoff to the ocean. Port Everglades Inlet (PEI) is a busy cargo and cruise ship port in South Florida, which can act as a source of pollution to surrounding beaches and offshore coral reefs. Understanding the composition and fluctuations of bacterioplankton communities (“microbiomes”) in major port inlets is important due to potential impacts on surrounding environments. We hypothesize seasonal microbial fluctuations, which were profiled by high throughput 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and analysis.

Methods & Results

Surface water samples were collected every week for one year. A total of four samples …

Outplanting Technique, Host Genotype, And Site Affect The Initial Success Of Outplanted Acropora Cervicornis, Elizabeth Goergen, David S. Gilliam

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Acropora cervicornis is the most widely used coral species for reef restoration in the greater Caribbean. However, outplanting methodologies (e.g., colony density, size, host genotype, and attachment technique) vary greatly, and to date have not been evaluated for optimality across multiple sites. Two experiments were completed during this study, the first evaluated the effects of attachment technique, colony size, and genotype by outplanting 405 A. cervicornis colonies, from ten genotypes, four size classes, and three attachment techniques (epoxy, nail and cable tie, or puck) across three sites. Colony survival, health condition, tissue productivity, and growth were assessed across one year …

A Global Perspective On The Trophic Geography Of Sharks, Christopher S. Bird, Ana Verissimo, Sarah Magozzi, Katya G. Abrantes, Alex Aguilar, Hassan Al-Reasi, Adam Barnett, Dana M. Bethea, Gerard Biais, Asuncion Borrell, Marc Bouchoucha, Mariah Boyle, Edward J. Brooks, Juerg Brunnschweiler, Paco Bustamante, Aaron Carlisle, Diana Catarino, Stephane Caut, Yves Cherel, Tiphaine Chouvelon, Diana Churchill, Javier Ciancio, Julien Claes, Ana Colaço, Dean L. Courtney, Pierre Cresson, Ryan Daly, Leigh De Necker, Tetsuya Endo, Ivon Figueiredo, Ashley J. Frisch, Joan Holst Hansen, Michael Heithaus, Nigel E. Hussey, Johannes Iitembu, Francis Jaunes, Michael J. Kinney, Jeremy J. Kiszka, Sebastian A. Klarian, Dorothee Kopp, Robert Leaf, Yunkai Li, Anne Lorrain, Daniel J. Madigan, Aleksandra Maljkovic, Luis Malpica-Cruz, Philip Matich, Mark G. Meekan, Frederic Menard, Gui M. Menezes, Samantha E. M. Munroe, Michael C. Newman, Yannis P. Papastamatiou, Heidi Pethybridge, Jeffrey D. Plumlee, Carlos Polo-Silva, Katie Quaeck-Davis, Vincent Raoult, Jonathan Reum, Yassir Eden Torres-Rojas, David S. Shiffman, Oliver N. Shipley, Conrad W. Speed, Michelle D. Staudinger, Amy K. Teffer, Alexander Tilley, Maria Valls, Jeremy Vaudo, Tak-Cheung Wai, R. J. David Wells, Alex S. J. Wyatt, Andrew Yool, Clive N. Trueman

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Sharks are a diverse group of mobile predators that forage across varied spatial scales and have the potential to influence food web dynamics. The ecological consequences of recent declines in shark biomass may extend across broader geographic ranges if shark taxa display common behavioural traits. By tracking the original site of photosynthetic fixation of carbon atoms that were ultimately assimilated into muscle tissues of 5,394 sharks from 114 species, we identify globally consistent biogeographic traits in trophic interactions between sharks found in different habitats. We show that populations of shelf-dwelling sharks derive a substantial proportion of their carbon from regional …

Relative Abundance Of Bacillus Spp., Surfactant-Associated Bacterium Present In A Natural Sea Slick Observed By Satellite Sar Imagery Over The Gulf Of Mexico, Kathryn Howe, Cayla W. Dean, John Alexander Kluge, Alexander Soloviev, Aurelien Tartar, Mahmood S. Shivji, Susanne Lehner, William Perrie

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

The damping of short gravity-capillary waves (Bragg waves) due to surfactant accumulation under low wind speed conditions results in the formation of natural sea slicks. These slicks are detectable visually and in synthetic aperture radar satellite imagery. Surfactants are produced by natural life processes of many marine organisms, including bacteria, phytoplankton, seaweed, and zooplankton. In this work, samples were collected in the Gulf of Mexico during a research cruise on the R/V F.G. Walton Smith to evaluate the relative abundance of Bacillus spp., surfactant-associated bacteria, in the sea surface microlayer compared to the subsurface water at 0.2 m depth. A …

Physiological Integration Of Coral Colonies Is Correlated With Bleaching Resistance, Timothy D. Swain, Emily C. Bold, Phillip C. Osborn, Andrew H. Baird, Mark W. Westneat, Vadim Backman, Luisa A. Marcelino

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Inter-module physiological integration of colonial organisms can facilitate colony-wide coordinated responses to stimuli that strengthen colony fitness and stress resistance. In scleractinian corals, whose colonial integration ranges from isolated polyps to a seamless continuum of polyp structures and functions, this coordination improves responses to injury, predation, disease, and stress and may be one of the indications of an evolutionary origin of Symbiodinium symbiosis. However, observations of species-specific coral bleaching patterns suggest that highly integrated coral colonies may be more susceptible to thermal stress, and support the hypothesis that communication pathways between highly integrated polyps facilitate the dissemination of toxic byproducts …

Taking The Metabolic Pulse Of The World's Coral Reefs, Tyler Cyronak, Andreas J. Andersson, Chris Langdon, Rebecca Albright, Nicholas R. Bates, Ken Caldeira, Renee Carlton, Jorge E. Corredor, Rob B. Dunbar, Ian Enochs, Jonathan Erez, Bradley D. Eyre, Jean-Pierre Gattuso, Dwight Gledhill, Hajime Kayanne, David I. Kline, David A. Koweek, Coulson Lantz, Boaz Lazar, Derek Manzello, Ashly Mcmahon, Melissa Melendez, Heather N. Page, Isaac R. Santos, Kai G. Schulz, Emily Shaw, Jacob Silverman, Atsushi Suzuki, Lida Teneva, Atsushi Watanabe, Shoji Yamamoto

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

Worldwide, coral reef ecosystems are experiencing increasing pressure from a variety of anthropogenic perturbations including ocean warming and acidification, increased sedimentation, eutrophication, and overfishing, which could shift reefs to a condition of net calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dissolution and erosion. Herein, we determine the net calcification potential and the relative balance of net organic carbon metabolism (net community production; NCP) and net inorganic carbon metabolism (net community calcification; NCC) within 23 coral reef locations across the globe. In light of these results, we consider the suitability of using these two metrics developed from total alkalinity (TA) and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) …

Diet Of The Invasive Lionfish Pterois Sp. In Broward County, Florida, Sarah Ann Jasper, J. D. Thomas, David Kerstetter

Marine & Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles

The geographic range of invasive lionfish Pterois sp. currently extends throughout the Greater Caribbean in the western North Atlantic, prompting concerns about the impacts of its predation on local ecosystems. We focused on dietary habits of lionfish in Broward County, Florida, where there is only limited, anecdotal information on the species’ prey selection. Diet was determined using percent number, percent occurrence and percent weight, as well as the composite index of relative abundance (%IRI). A high percent teleost diet was documented during the third quarter (July-September) and a high crustacean diet in the fourth quarter (October-December), but seasonal effects by …