This is an author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Inter-Research and can be found at: https://doi.org/10.3354/meps10835
Seagrasses and bivalves co-occur worldwide, and each plays a role in the structure, function, and services of coastal ecosystems. While seagrasses are declining, bivalve aquaculture is expanding, and impacts from culture practices, as opposed to the cultured organisms themselves, need to be distinguished. In 2 experiments, we tested the effects...
Zooplankton fecal pellet flux is a highly variable component of the biological carbon pump. While fecal pellets can comprise 0 to nearly 100% of particulate organic carbon collected in sediment traps, mechanisms for this variability remain poorly understood. Fecal pellet carbon flux is a complex function of several variables. We...
Understanding the ecological role of Pacific oyster aquaculture (Crassostrea gigas) and eelgrass (Zostera marina L.) as important habitats in US Pacific Northwest estuaries is critical for management and regulatory decisions. The oyster aquaculture industry is currently restricted by regulations concerning impacts of their activities on Z. marina. This seagrass is...
As the global demand for seafood increases each year, there is a growing need to expand sustainable aquaculture in the interests of food security and resilience of coastal communities. Pacific oysters, Crassostrea gigas, are grown in West coast estuaries - where cultures often overlap with the federally protected native eelgrass,...
Biotic resistance is the idea that native species negatively affect the invasion success
of introduced species, but whether this can occur at large spatial scales is poorly
understood. Here we re-evaluated the hypothesis that native large-bodied grouper
and other predators are controlling the abundance of exotic lionfish (Pterois volitans/miles) on...
Full Text:
Progress Series 367:233–238 DOI 10.3354/meps07620.
Barbour AB, Allen MS, Frazer TK, Sherman KD. 2011
Highly migratory marine species can travel long distances and across entire ocean basins to reach foraging and breeding grounds, yet gaps persist in our knowledge of oceanic dispersal and habitat use. This is especially true for sea turtles, whose complex life history and lengthy pelagic stage present unique conservation challenges....
Linking marine epizootics to a specific aetiology is notoriously difficult. Recent diagnostic successes show that marine disease diagnosis requires both modern, cutting-edge technology (e.g. metagenomics, quantitative realtime PCR) and more classic methods (e.g. transect surveys, histopathology and cell culture). Here, we discuss how this combination of traditional and modern approaches...
Predators must consume enough prey to support costly events, such as reproduction. Meeting high energetic requirements is particularly challenging for migrating baleen whales as their feeding seasons are typically restricted to a limited temporal window and marine prey are notoriously patchy. We assessed the energetic value of the six most...
Drones provide a privileged birds’-eye view for collecting high-resolution imagery formorphometric and behavioral sampling of animals. Biologically meaningful measurements extracted from overhead images require an accurate estimate of altitude, but current commercial drones include inaccurate barometer estimates. Recent proposals for coupling altimeter systems to drones have provided customized, open-source solutions,...
The undergradtuate research project was the completion, manipulation and assessment of a population model. The stage based population model assessed the late larval and juveniles stages of the hard shell clam Mercenaria mercenaria. There were seven class sizes input into the model starting with pediveligers and ending with juveniles at...
Full Text:
, 417, 171–182. doi:10.3354/meps08809
Waldbusser, G. G., Bergschneider, H., & Green, M. A. (2010b
A majority of the world’s largest net-based fisheries target planktivorous forage fish that serve as a critical trophic link between the plankton and upper-level consumers such as large predatory fishes, seabirds, and marine mammals. Because the plankton production that drives forage fish also drives jellyfish production, these taxa often overlap...
Invasive species are a growing global economic and ecological problem. Invasive Indo-Pacific lionfish (Pterois spp.) are known to have extreme negative effects on coral-reef communities in the Bahamas, so understating their distribution within and among reefs, what limits their local movements, and the effects they have on native prey species...
Zooplankton fecal pellet flux is a highly variable component of the biological carbon pump. While fecal pellets can comprise 0 to nearly 100% of particulate organic carbon collected in sediment traps, mechanisms for this variability remain poorly understood. Fecal pellet carbon flux is a complex function of several variables. We...
Climate-driven changes in biotic interactions can profoundly alter ecological
communities, particularly when they impact foundation species. In marine systems,
changes in herbivory and the consequent loss of dominant habitat forming species can
result in dramatic community phase shifts, such as from coral to macroalgal
dominance when tropical fish herbivory decreases,...
Full Text:
).
3. Nykjaer L. 2009 Mediterranean Sea surface warming 1985-2006. Clim Res 39(1), 11-17. (doi:10.3354
Air-breathing marine animals face a complex set of physical challenges associated with diving that affect the decisions of how to optimize feeding. Baleen whales (Mysticeti) have evolved bulk-filter feeding mechanisms to efficiently feed on dense prey patches. Baleen whales are central place foragers where oxygen at the surface represents the...
We inferred the population densities of blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) and short-beaked
common dolphins (Delphinus delphis) in the Northeast Pacific Ocean as functions
of the water-column’s physical structure by implementing hierarchical models in a Bayesian
framework. This approach allowed us to propagate the uncertainty of the field observations
into the...
The 20-year US GLOBEC (Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics)
program examined zooplankton populations and their predators in four coastal
marine ecosystems. Program scientists learned that environmental controls on
zooplankton vital rates, especially the timing and magnitude of reproduction, growth,
life-cycle progression, and mortality, determine species population dynamics,
seasonal and spatial distributions,...
Marine heatwaves (“MHWs”) are discrete periods of anomalously warm ocean conditions that can lead to shifts in the distribution and abundance of marine organisms. Low-trophic level, pelagic forage species are frequently among those affected by MHWs, often resulting in considerable impacts upon their predators. In the North Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic...
We use density and microstructure data to characterize the properties and physical setting of optical thin layers observed over the New Jersey shelf in the summer of 2006. Layers were differentiated into two types by their vertical position in the water column, fluorescence intensity, and possibly community composition or cell...
What makes invasive species successful, and how do they affect native populations and communities? I addressed these key questions in the context of the invasion of Atlantic coral reefs by Pacific red lionfish (Pterois volitans). To assess the role of parasites in contributing to the success of this invasion, I...
Escape from parasites in their native range is one of many mechanisms that can contribute to the success of an invasive
species. Gnathiid isopods are blood-feeding ectoparasites that infest a wide range of fish hosts, mostly in coral reef habitats.
They are ecologically similar to terrestrial ticks, with the ability...
While much effort has been directed at determining the spatial scales of adaptation in thermal reaction norms for growth, it is widely assumed that these reaction norms have high temporal stability. Water temperatures in the Gulf of Alaska in 2007 were the coldest on record since the mid-1970s and we...
Benthic infaunal communities are important components of coastal ecosystems. Understanding the relationships between the structure of these communities and characteristics of the habitat in which they live is becoming progressively more important as coastal systems face increasing stress from anthropogenic impacts and changes in climate. To examine how sediment characteristics...
Full Text:
Ecology Progress Series 92:205–219 DOI 10.3354/meps092205.
Clarke KR, Warwick RM. 2001. Change in marine
The 20-year US GLOBEC (Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics)
program examined zooplankton populations and their predators in four coastal
marine ecosystems. Program scientists learned that environmental controls on
zooplankton vital rates, especially the timing and magnitude of reproduction, growth,
life-cycle progression, and mortality, determine species population dynamics,
seasonal and spatial distributions,...
Despite nutrient-depleted conditions, coral reef waters harbor abundant and diverse microbes; as major agents of microbial mortality, viruses are likely to influence microbial processes in these ecosystems. However, little is known about marine viruses in these rapidly changing ecosystems. Herewe examined spatial and short-term temporal variability in marine viral abundance...
A wide variety of organisms show morphologically plastic responses to environmental
stressors but in general these changes are not reversible. Though less common, reversible
morphological structures are shown by a range of species in response to changes in predators,
competitors, or food. Theoretical analysis indicates that reversible plasticity increases fitness...
Mechanisms promoting coexistence between closely related species are fundamental for maintaining species diversity. Mechanisms of niche differentiation include allochrony which offsets the peak timing of resource utilisation between species. Many studies focus on spatial and temporal niche partitioning during the breeding season, few have investigated the role allochrony plays in...
Storm events can pulse nutrients and carbon from soils and provide an important subsidy to food webs in oligotrophic streams and lakes. Bacterial nutrient limitation and the potential response of stream aquatic bacteria to storm events was investigated in arctic tundra environments by manipulating both water temperature and inorganic nutrient...
Direct transmission from parents to offspring, referred to as vertical transmission, occurs within essentially all major groups of pathogens. Several microsporidia (Phylum Microsporidia) that infect arthropods employ this mode of transmission, and various lines of evidence have suggested this might occur with certain fish microsporidia. The microsporidium, Pseudoloma neurophilia, is...
Efficient foraging strategies result in a predator spatially overlapping with its prey, foraging in the most profitable patches, and minimizing the time transiting between patches. Previous studies investigating baleen whale foraging strategies have generally focused on investigating spatial overlap with prey patches, patch profitability or movement within feeding grounds. The...
Carbonate communities:The activity of anaerobic methane oxidizing microbes facilitates
precipitation of vast quantities of authigenic carbonate at methane seeps. Here we demonstrate
the significant role of carbonate rocks in promoting diversity by providing unique habitat
and food resources for macrofaunal assemblages at seeps on the Costa Rica margin
(400–1850 m)....
End-to-end models were constructed to examine and compare the trophic structure and energy flow in coastal shelf ecosystems of four US Global Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics (GLOBEC) study regions: the Northern California Current, the Central Gulf of Alaska, Georges Bank, and the Southwestern Antarctic Peninsula. High-quality data collected on system components...
Monitoring marine ambient sound using standardized methods supports assessments of ocean sound levels across widespread ecosystems. This thesis quantifies differences among coastal and deep-water marine soundscapes in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The sources of sound in a soundscape are compartmentalized into three components and compared over time and among...
A major goal of the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) has been to understand the impacts of climate change and variability on the coastal ecosystems of the inner shelf of the California Current Large Marine System in particular, and other marine and even nonmarine systems more generally....
Caribbean coral reefs have deteriorated substantially over the past 30 years, which
is broadly attributable to the effects of global climate change. In the same time,
Indo-Pacific reefs maintain higher coral cover and typically recover rapidly after
disturbances. This difference in reef resilience is largely due to much higher
coral...
Full Text:
coral recruitment. Marine Ecology Progress Series 414:91–105
DOI 10.3354/meps08724.
Babcock R, Mundy C
The adaptive capacity of marine calcifiers to ocean acidification (OA) is a topic of great interest to evolutionary biologists and ecologists. Previous studies have provided evidence to suggest that larval resilience to high pCO2 seawater for these species is a trait with a genetic basis and variability in natural populations....
Individuals within populations often differ substantially in habitat use, the ecological consequences of which can be far reaching. Stable isotope analysis provides a convenient and often cost effective means of indirectly assessing the habitat use of individuals that can yield valuable insights into the spatiotemporal distribution of foraging specialisations within...
Full Text:
, 279–290. doi: 10.3354/meps07258
6. Robson B. W., Goebel M. E., Baker J. D., Ream R. R., Loughlin T. R
We used metatranscriptomics to study the gene transcription patterns of microbial plankton (0.2 to 64 μm) at a mesohaline station
in the Chesapeake Bay under transitions from oxic to anoxic waters in spring and from anoxic to oxic waters in autumn.
Samples were collected from surface (i.e., above pycnocline) waters...
In the past 100 years since the birth of fisheries oceanography, research on the early life history of fishes, particularly the larval stage, has been extensive, and much progress has been made in identifying the mechanisms by which factors such as feeding success, predation, or dispersal can influence larval survival....
Differences in the chemical composition of calcified skeletal structures (e.g. shells, otoliths) have proven useful for reconstructing the environmental history of many marine species. However, the extent to which ambient environmental conditions can be inferred from the elemental signatures within the vertebrae of elasmobranchs (sharks, skates, rays) has not been...
Passive acoustic monitoring is a valuable tool for observing the status of marine environments. Comparisons of underwater soundscapes over temporal and spatial scales can provide data to inform marine conservation efforts, including protection of threatened and endangered species. This dissertation utilizes passive acoustic data collected via a broadly spaced array...
Understanding larval bivalve responses to variable regimes of seawater carbonate chemistry requires realistic quantification of physiological stress. Based on a degree-day modeling approach, we developed a new metric, the ocean acidification stress index for shellfish (OASIS), for this purpose. OASIS integrates over the entire larval period the instantaneous stress associated...
From the planning days preceding the establishment of the US Global
Ocean Ecosystem Dynamics (GLOBEC) program, modeling was recognized as one
of the program’s pillars. In particular, predictions of future ecosystem states in an
evolving climate system required new interdisciplinary approaches that brought
together physicists, biologists, modelers, and observational scientists....
During the discovery and description of seven New Zealand methane seep sites, an infaunal assemblage dominated by ampharetid polychaetes was found in association with high seabed methane emission. This ampharetid-bed assemblage had a mean density of 57,000 ± 7800 macrofaunal individuals m⁻² and a maximum wet biomass of 274 g...
Year-round habitat use of marine predators provides knowledge of important marine areas throughout different life stages. Large-scale, environmental variability, both in space and time, causes changes in the behavior and distribution of marine predators that are important to quantify for conservation. In the Northern California Current System (NCCS), common murres...
Skin condition assessment of wildlife can provide insight into individual and population health. Yet, logistics can limit skin condition assessment of large whales. We developed a standardized, quantitative protocol using photographs to assess skin condition of blue whales in New Zealand, and demonstrate the value gained by testing hypotheses, documenting...
Understanding the effects of climate variability on growth dynamics and timing of early life history events in marine fishes can provide insights into survival, recruitment and productivity. We examined interannual variation in indicators of larval growth rates, size at hatch and metamorphosis, and the timing of metamorphosis of northern rock...
Previous studies of coral viruses have employed either microscopy or metagenomics, but few have attempted to comprehensively link the presence of a virus-like particle (VLP) to a genomic sequence. We conducted transmission electron microscopy imaging and virome analysis in tandem to characterize the most conspicuous viral types found within the...
We report results from an oyster hatchery on the Oregon coast, where intake waters experienced variable carbonate chemistry (aragonite saturation state < 0.8 to > 3.2; pH < 7.6 to > 8.2) in the early summer of 2009. Both larval production and midstage growth (∼ 120 to ∼ 150 µm)...