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All the recent news and retro hits in the field of marine ecology
Hannah Waters
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- February 1, 2011
- 08:34 AM
- 852 views
Self-Help for Seabirds: How to manage your time and outcompete your neighbors for maximum survival
by Hannah Waters in Sleeping with the Fishes
Last night was my first night in NYC and, as such, it was my first experience with modern-day human foraging: the Trader Joes in Chelsea at 7:30 pm. Despite the many shelves previously stuffed with various types of bagged lettuce, there was NO LETTUCE LEFT. No granola bars. The customers were nasty, ramming their carts into me to get to the dried cranberries. While sometimes I’ve been to groceries that have been out of a particular item I wanted, I have never thought to myself, “well, maybe I’ll go somewhere else because I simply cannot feed myself properly from this store.” Call the waaahhmbulance, why don’t you? It really is an under-appreciated fact, that living in civilized America frees us from foraging, which all other species spend most of their time doing. Every moment, non-human organisms have to balance food quality, difficulty of acquisition, competition, and distance to ensure that they are in the right place to feed themselves and their offspring. And they don’t just have other members of their species to compete with, but also the other species living nearby. Seabirds have been used to study how organisms manage their time. I’m not talking about procrastination, but rather what are known as “time budgets:” for how long do the birds forage, how far will they go for food, will they trade off shorter distances (less time) for less nutritional food, etc. Most seabirds gather in great numbers once a year for the breeding season when they face . . . → Read More: Self-Help for Seabirds: How to manage your time and outcompete your neighbors for maximum survival... Read more »
Masello, J., Mundry, R., Poisbleau, M., Demongin, L., Voigt, C., Wikelski, M., & Quillfeldt, P. (2010) Diving seabirds share foraging space and time within and among species. Ecosphere, 1(6). DOI: 10.1890/ES10-00103.1
- December 8, 2010
- 09:49 AM
- 898 views
How clownfish help their anemones: nutrient transfer in a triple symbiosis
by Hannah Waters in Sleeping with the Fishes
The vision of a tropical beach is something we take for granted: the white sands, crystal blue water, and colorful, diverse reefs. It’s like a playground designed just for us where everything is beautiful and comfortable (well, minus the sunburn). But we actually shouldn’t take this for granted, as the existence of coral reefs in warm tropical waters is not a give-in, but rather the result of millions of years of slow evolution and coevolution to cope with this nutrient-poor habitat. Heaven. Symbiotic relationships in tropical coral reefs At first thought, it might seem like there would be more production in the warm tropical water: cells can grow faster, and the constant sunlight should lead to an abundance of photosynthetic activity. But it is not so simple. The sun warms the clear surface water, creating a thermocline where the warm water gets trapped at the surface and doesn’t mix with colder, deeper water. When organisms die, their bodies sink to the bottom, dragging a major source of nutrients with them. This lack of nutrients in surface water, and thus lack of water-mucking phytoplankton and plankton, is why tropical waters are crystal clear, but it also raises questions about how coral reefs can thrive there. Many species in reefs have coevolved with another species in mutualistic symbioses, often to extract . . . → Read More: How clownfish help their anemones: nutrient transfer in a triple symbiosis... Read more »
Fautin, D. (1986) Why do anemonefishes inhabit only some host actinians?. Environmental Biology of Fishes, 15(3), 171-180. DOI: 10.1007/BF00002992
Hoegh-Guldberg, O. (2005) Low coral cover in a high-CO2 world . Journal of Geophysical Research, 110(C9). DOI: 10.1029/2004JC002528
L. Muscatine, & James W. Porter. (1977) Reef Corals: Mutualistic Symbioses Adapted to Nutrient-Poor Environments. Bioscience, 27(7), 454-460. info:other/
Stanley Jr., G. (2006) ECOLOGY: Photosymbiosis and the Evolution of Modern Coral Reefs. Science, 312(5775), 857-858. DOI: 10.1126/science.1123701
Wood, R. (1998) The Ecological Evolution of Reefs. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 29(1), 179-206. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.29.1.179
- December 1, 2010
- 01:09 PM
- 1,089 views
Coddle me, please: parallel evolution and fishery management in Atlantic cod
by Hannah Waters in Sleeping with the Fishes
Historically, perhaps due to human interest in maximizing fishing activity, we have assumed that there is a great deal of gene flow in marine populations. This assumption allowed us to maximize fishing efforts without guilt, since a large, ocean-wide population would allow fish from other parts of the world to refill populations that we had reduced by overfishing. But you know what they say about assumptions: they make an ASS out of U and ME. Thus marine biologists have taken an interest in uncovering whether or not the genetic diversity of fished species vary globally. While we have our various oceans labelled and divided up into 5 sections, in reality, that is just human geography: the ocean is one vast interconnected body of water. And it is this connectivity that raises questions for evolutionary biologists. In the case of sessile organisms, such as rocky tidal mollusks, how far are the fertilized eggs and larvae dispersing before “landing” upon their permanent home? If they stay close to where the eggs were laid and fertilized, we’d expect speciation to occur since populations are based locally. But if the organisms are traveling miles on ocean currents before landing, we’d expect greater interbreeding between populations, less genetic variability, and slower adaptation and evolution. Don’t assume that this constraint breaks down amongst more mobile organisms. In many oceanic species, despite ocean-wide dispersal, huge populations will gather together yearly in one spot to breed. This would make any . . . → Read More: Coddle me, please: parallel evolution and fishery management in Atlantic cod... Read more »
Beacham, T. (2002) Multiple stock structure of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) off Newfoundland and Labrador determined from genetic variation. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 59(4), 650-665. DOI: 10.1006/jmsc.2002.1253
Bradbury, I., Hubert, S., Higgins, B., Borza, T., Bowman, S., Paterson, I., Snelgrove, P., Morris, C., Gregory, R., Hardie, D.... (2010) Parallel adaptive evolution of Atlantic cod on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean in response to temperature. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 277(1701), 3725-3734. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2010.0985
Hellberg, M. (2009) Gene Flow and Isolation among Populations of Marine Animals. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 40(1), 291-310. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.110308.120223
- October 27, 2010
- 03:04 PM
- 774 views
The grand diversity of marine phytoplankton species: focusing from space
by Hannah Waters in Sleeping with the Fishes
In a recent email exchange with a (skeptically) wonderful blogger about why we are interested in what we are and where past/current biases lie, I wrote that I “grew up wanting to look at the planet from space.” This is true in multiple senses: my drive to seek patterns in collected studies and data, and also my interest in large-scale ecology generally. But, of course, we can actually look at the planet from space! And collect data at the same time! Via the wonder of SATELLITES! In 1997, NASA began launching satellites into earth’s orbit as part of its Earth Observing System in its Earth Science Enterprise program. These satellites collect data on a number of global environmental factors including ice cover, cloud cover, chlorophyll concentration, and sea surface temperature mainly using radar and surface coloration. NASA earth observatories. These are satellites in orbit Chlorophyll concentration has been of particular interest lately because it is used as a proxy for photosynthesis, and thus carbon uptake and oxygen release. In the ocean, these data are collected by color sensors such as SeaWiFS, OCTS and MODIS. Since chlorophyll is green, the satellites essentially collect ocean color data and then remove the regional background color of the water, resulting in the amount of green, indicating the concentration of chlorophyll-a. For . . . → Read More: The grand diversity of marine phytoplankton species: focusing from space... Read more »
Alvain, S., Moulin, C., Dandonneau, Y., & Loisel, H. (2008) Seasonal distribution and succession of dominant phytoplankton groups in the global ocean: A satellite view. Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 22(3). DOI: 10.1029/2007GB003154
d'Ovidio, F., De Monte, S., Alvain, S., Dandonneau, Y., & Levy, M. (2010) Fluid dynamical niches of phytoplankton types. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(43), 18366-18370. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1004620107
- October 5, 2010
- 11:46 AM
- 776 views
Seabirds as indicators of marine ecosystem health: an introduction
by Hannah Waters in Sleeping with the Fishes
The primary reason for studying marine ecology is for ecosystem and resource management. Over half of the human population lives in the coastal zone, and we all are dependent on the ocean, either for food resources of simply because phytoplankton are responsible for the production of nearly half of atmospheric oxygen. Add to that the great biodiversity of marine life and its sheer beauty… and we have a resource that we should all be dedicated to conserving and protecting. Research cruises are expensive and time-consuming. Can we use observations of seabirds instead? Aboard Hatfield Marine Science Center's "Elahka," Summer 2008. Photo by Hannah Waters The first step in ecosystem management is determining the “natural state” of the system, and accounting for whether observed variation in the abundances and distributions of organisms is from negative anthropogenic effects such as overfishing or eutrophication. But how can we keep track of all these populations? Marine ecology is notoriously difficult to study, since the organisms are all embedded in a cold mass of water. Taking yearly measurements of abiotic factors (e.g. oxygen, temperature, salinity), as well as counts of the organisms within (phytoplankton, zooplankton, forage fish, larger predatory fish, etc.) is possible, but takes an incredible amount of time and man power. Add to that the compilation and interpretation of massive sets of data and the task seems formidable at best. This is . . . → Read More: Seabirds as indicators of marine ecosystem health: an introduction... Read more »
D. K. Cairns. (1987) Seabirds as indicators of marine food supplies. Biological Oceanography, 261-271. info:/
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