Marine Biology Commons^™

Environmental Dna Identifies Coastal Plant Community Shift 1,000 Years Ago In Torrens Island, South Australia, Nicole R. Foster, Alice R. Jones, Oscar Serrano, Anna Lafratta, Paul S. Lavery, Kor-Jent Van Dijk, Ed Biffin, Bronwyn M. Gillanders, Jennifer Young, Pere Masque, Patricia S. Gadd, Geraldine E. Jacobsen, Atun Zawadzki, Andria Greene, Michelle Waycott

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Anthropogenic activities are causing detrimental changes to coastal plants– namely seagrass, mangrove, and tidal marshes. Looking beyond recent times to past vegetation dynamics is critical to assess the response and resilience of an environment to change. Here, we develop a high-resolution multi-proxy approach, providing a new evidence base to decipher long-term change in coastal plant communities. Combining targeted environmental DNA analysis with chemical analysis of soils, we reconstructed 4,000 years of change at a temperate wetland on Torrens Island South Australia and identified an ecosystem shift that occurred ~ 1000 years ago. What was once a subtidal seagrass system shifted …

Using Bayesian Multispecies Models To Evaluate Fish And Invertebrate Detection Probability And Distribution In The Hypersaline Bahia Grande Tidal Basin, Roy M. Ulibarri, Catherine M. Eckert, David Hicks, David Montagne, Brandon Jones, David R. Stewart

School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objective

In 2000, the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge acquired the Bahia Grande (Texas) management unit, a space that had lain barren and arid for 70 years. A large cooperative partnership launched a restoration project to replenish the basin and recover its original tidal hydrology. In 2005, the construction of a pilot channel successfully restored water throughout the basin, and plans to eventually widen the channel were developed. Our study aims to evaluate an estuarine habitat restoration by assessing ecological drivers and the impacts on species diversity.

Methods

We evaluated species richness, detection/occupancy rates, and species–habitat relationships, and we estimated …

Impacts Of Hematodinium Infection In A Seasonal Population Model Of The Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab, Gwendolyn R. Sargent, Romuald Lipcius, Leah Shaw, Junping Shi, Jeffrey D. Shields

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

The State Of Knowledge Of Cca Diversity In The Caribbean Coral Reefs, Danielle Macias, Alain Duran, Fabio Nauer

FIU Undergraduate Research Journal

Crustose coralline algae (CCA) are a diverse and ecologically important species found in most of the world’s oceans. The current lack of taxonomic knowledge and relative abundance compromises our ability to predict species diversity numbers and, thus, their ecological roles and impacts on coral reefs. To gather a better understanding of the state of knowledge of crustose coralline algae taxonomy in the Caribbean, 107 different research papers, and other primary and secondary literature were studied; any source with taxonomical information, species identification, or genetic markers for identification was recorded. All Genebank codes were collected and sorted by supposed species marker …

With Love, ; An Interdisciplinary And Intersectional Look At Why Creativity Is Essential, Theo Starr Gardner

Whittier Scholars Program

My Whittier Scholars Program self-designed major, Teaching Creativity, is a mixture of Art, Literature, and Education classes. My research and praxis classes have been focused on the ‘how?’s and 'why?’s of creativity, so it felt only right that my project should be a constructivist, generative project. The project I have been working on throughout my time at Whittier, and that has just fully come to fruition on April 11th, 2024, was a solo art gallery/open mic event entitled ‘With Love,’. With Love, was conceptually inspired by the research I’ve conducted on creativity and creative arts education over the past few …

The Influence Of A Ubiquitous Filter Feeder On Coastal Microbial Communities., Melissa Steinman, Moritz S. Schmid, Robert K. Cowen, Su Sponaugle, Kelly R. Sutherland, Anne W. Thompson

Student Research Symposium

Doliolids have a unique ability to impact the marine microbial community through bloom events and high filtration rates. Their predation on large eukaryotic microorganisms is established and evidence of predation on smaller prokaryotic microorganisms is beginning to emerge. We studied the retention of both eukaryotic and prokaryotic microbial taxa by wild-caught doliolids in the northern California Current system. We use qPCR to quantify the impact of doliolids on three important and globally abundant taxa: Synechococcus, SAR11 and diatoms. Doliolids were collected during bloom events identified at three different shelf locations with variable upwelling intensities. We discovered that in addition …

Variability Of Grazing By Appendicularians On Prochlorococcus, Carey Sweeney

Student Research Symposium

The marine picocyanobacterium, Prochlorococcus is the most abundant photosynthetic cell on Earth. These cells are critical to global primary productivity and are critical to biogeochemical cycles of the open ocean. While abiotic environmental factors that influence Prochlorococcus are relatively well-understood, biotic controls, especially predation, are not well-studied. Appendicularians are ubiquitous invertebrate grazers that feed on microbes including Prochlorococcus in the open ocean. However, the details of this feeding interaction have not been characterized. In a laboratory study, I showed that prey retention of Prochlorococcus increases as the life stage of the appendicularians advances and increases with increasing concentration of prey. …

Salt: A Tribute To Ghana's Fishers, Vanessa F. Jaiteh

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

This poem is a tribute to my fieldwork on fisher safety, labour abuses and human rights violations in Ghana’s fisheries.

Year-Round Co2 Emissions From The Drawdown Area Of A Tropical Reservoir: Strong Seasonal And Spatial Variation, Ícaro Barbosa, José R. Paranaíba, Sebastian Sobek, Sarian Kosten, Rafael M. Almeida, Vitor Duque, Natália Mendonça, Nathan Barros, Raquel Mendonça

School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Highlights

• Drawdown areas emitted 80% of reservoir CO2 with just 1/5 area.

• Emissions from reservoir shorelines near forests were greater than from areas near grassland.

• CO2 emissions increase with the distance from the water.

• Estimates of reservoir drawdown CO2 flux vary by ∼ 300 % across the seasons examined here.

• There was no discernible difference in CO2 emissions between day and night-time.

• A significant increase in CO2 fluxes was observed 30 min after a rewetting event.

Abstract

A growing body of literature points to drawdown areas as important sources of atmospheric CO2 within reservoirs. Yet seasonal and temporal patterns of …

Skimming Genomes For Systematics And Dna Barcodes Of Corals, Andrea M. Quattrini, Luke J. Mccartin, Erin E. Easton, Jeremy Horowitz, Herman H. Wirshing, Hailey Bowers, Kenneth Mitchell, María Del P. González-García, Makiri Sei, Catherine S. Mcfadden

School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

Numerous genomic methods developed over the past two decades have enabled the discovery and extraction of orthologous loci to help resolve phylogenetic relationships across various taxa and scales. Genome skimming (or low-coverage genome sequencing) is a promising method to not only extract high-copy loci but also 100s to 1000s of phylogenetically informative nuclear loci (e.g., ultraconserved elements [UCEs] and exons) from contemporary and museum samples. The subphylum Anthozoa, including important ecosystem engineers (e.g., stony corals, black corals, anemones, and octocorals) in the marine environment, is in critical need of phylogenetic resolution and thus might benefit from a genome-skimming approach. We …

West Coast Rock Lobster Resource Harvest Strategy, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Fisheries management papers

Harvest strategies for Western Australia’s (WA) aquatic resources are formal documents developed by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD, the Department) to support decision-making processes that ensure the outcomes are consistent with the principles of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD; Fletcher 2002a) and Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM; Fletcher et al. 2012). Harvest strategies are a key component of all contemporary fishery management systems and a requirement for certification under the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). The objectives of ESD are reflected in the objectives of the Fish Resources Management Act 1994 (FRMA) and the Aquatic Resources Management Act …

Parental Thermal Environment Controls The Offspring Phenotype In Brook Charr (Salvelinus Fontinalis): Insights From A Transcriptomic Study, Ghizlane Banousse, Eric Normandeau, Christine Semeniuk, Louis Bernatchez, Celine Audet

Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research Publications

rook charr is a cold-water species which is highly sensitive to increased water temperatures, such as those associated with climate change. Environmental variation can potentially induce phenotypic changes that are inherited across generations, for instance, via epigenetic mechanisms. Here, we tested whether parental thermal regimes (intergenerational plasticity) and offspring-rearing temperatures (within-generational plasticity) modify the brain transcriptome of Brook charr progeny (fry stage). Parents were exposed to either cold or warm temperatures during final gonad maturation and their progeny were reared at 5 or 8 °C during the first stages of development. Illumina Novaseq6000 was used to sequence the brain transcriptome …

The Historical Biogeography Of Spiny Lobsters In The Genus Panulirus And The Influence Of Environmental Conditions On The Adaptive Evolution Of Mitochondrial Protein-Coding Genes In The Achelata, Alyssa Baker

All Theses

Contemporary and historical changes in marine environmental conditions influence biodiversity drastically. In marine invertebrates with highly dispersive planktonic larvae, diversification is facilitated or constrained by tectonic plate movements altering geography, prevailing current patterns, and climate. The decapod crustacean infraorder Achelata, which contains the spiny (fam. Palinuridae) and slipper (fam. Scyllaridae) lobsters, is characterized by a long-lived phyllosoma larvae stage. Panulirus is the most economically significant and speciose genus of spiny lobsters, with 20 recognized extant species and 5 subspecies distributed throughout shallow tropical and subtropical oceans worldwide. Diversification within these lineages has been proposed to be primarily driven by geological …

An Examination Of The Eastern Nebraska And Western Iowa Flash Flood Event Of 6-7 August 1999, Catherine M. Zapotocny

NOAA Technical Reports and Related Materials

Flash flooding occurs each summer in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. While 10-inch rains are extraordinary, it is not uncommon to have at least one excessive rain event during the annual convective season. A significant flash flood occurred in east central Nebraska and western Iowa the night of August 6, 1999 into the morning of August 7, 1999. Antecedent hydrologic conditions limited the loss of life, however considerable property damage resulted as the heavy rain fell over the urbanized areas in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa.

Several flash flood ingredients came together over the area. These meteorological factors are typical …

Trophic Ecology Of Black Swallowers (Scombriformes: Chiasmodontidae: Chiasmodon) In The Deep-Pelagic Gulf Of Mexico, Travis J. Kirk

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

The ecology of deep-pelagic predatory fishes remains poorly understood despite their importance as ecosystem regulators and energy transfer vectors. This study investigated the trophic ecology of three species of the predatory fish genus Chiasmodon (“black swallowers”) in the Gulf of Mexico, a region that serves as an analog for the global low-latitude deep pelagial, the world’s largest cumulative ecosystem. Foraging habits (e.g., selectivity, chronology, daily ration) of an “advanced” evolutionary fish in a system that is otherwise dominated by basal fish taxa, were quantitatively estimated via high-resolution stomach content analysis. A quantitative dataset of both predator and prey abundance, the …

Rescape: Transforming Coral-Reefscape Images For Quantitative Analysis, Zachary Ferris, Eraldo Ribeiro, Tomofumi Nagata, Robert Van Woesik

Ocean Engineering and Marine Sciences Faculty Publications

Ever since the first image of a coral reef was captured in 1885, people worldwide have been accumulating images of coral reefscapes that document the historic conditions of reefs. However, these innumerable reefscape images suffer from perspective distortion, which reduces the apparent size of distant taxa, rendering the images unusable for quantitative analysis of reef conditions. Here we solve this century-long distortion problem by developing a novel computer-vision algorithm, ReScape, which removes the perspective distortion from reefscape images by transforming them into top-down views, making them usable for quantitative analysis of reef conditions. In doing so, we demonstrate the …

Changes In Reef Tourism’S Adaptive Capacity After Severe Climate Disturbances, Henry Bartelet, Michele Barnes, Lalu Bakti, Graeme S. Cumming

Quantitative Methods and Information Technology Faculty Publications

Knowledge about adaptive capacity and its determinants has increased significantly over the last decade. However, most research on adaptive capacity has been static, not considering how adaptive capacity might change over time, particularly after severe disturbances. We studied the adaptive capacity dynamics of Asian-Pacific reef tourism operators affected by coral bleaching and tropical cyclones compared with a control group with non-affected operators. We found that impacts from tropical cyclones were associated with frequent changes in adaptive capacity. Notably, we found a reduction in tangible attributes (assets and flexibility) of adaptive capacity, whereas intangible attributes (agency and social organization) increased. Our …

Addition And Subtraction: Coral Reproduction And Disease In A Changing Ocean, Ashley Rossin

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Marine diseases are changing the landscapes of coral reefs particularly throughout the Western Atlantic. Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) swept through this region impacting at least 22 stony coral species. White plague (WP) is a more ephemeral disease, but still has a significant impact on coral reef health and perseverance, especially under a changing ocean. While these impacts are seen on the reef-scale, we can zoom into the tissue-level to identify disease markers for both diseases and identify their differences. This has ramifications for disease intervention, as well as mitigation strategies. Despite continuous disease outbreaks, healthy corals persist and …

Ecological Monitoring Program At Vims Esl: Annual Report 2023, Paige G. Ross, Richard A. Snyder

Reports

An Ecological Monitoring Program (EMP) has been established at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science Eastern Shore Laboratory (VIMS ESL) for the coastal environment near the Wachapreague lab. The goals of the initiative are to 1) provide status and trends information to scientists who study and regulators who manage Virginia’s marine resources, 2) provide a scientific context for short-term research and grant proposals 3) provide pedagogical enrichment for educators to use in their classes, and 4) build capacity in staff expertise and training of interns and students at VIMS ESL.

The program formalizes and standardizes data collection for a long-term …

Distribution Of Shell-Boring Polychaetes At Shellfish Aquaculture Sites Along The Northeast Coast Of The Us, Samantha Silverbrand

Honors College

Coastal shellfish aquaculture has expanded substantially in recent years in Maine and New England as traditional wild fishery stocks have declined. As shellfish aquaculture has expanded, producers have become more concerned about marine worm pests (i.e., polychaetes) that infest cultured bivalves. In particular, worms from the genus Polydora (also known as “polydorids”) burrow into oyster and scallop shells where they feed and deposit mud. Bivalves cover over the muddy burrows creating blisters that can decrease their market value and hinder growth. Farmers and researchers have identified methods to control infestations of P. websteri, one common species of shell-boring worm. However, …