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Coral and macroalgal communities are threatened by global stressors. However, recently reported community shifts from temperate macroalgae to tropical corals offer conservation potential for corals at the expense of macroalgae under climate warming. Although such community shifts are expanding geographically, our understanding of the driving processes is still limited. Here, we reconstruct long-term climate-driven range shifts in 45 species of macroalgae, corals, and herbivorous fishes from over 60 years of records (mainly 1950–2015), stretching across 3,000 km of the Japanese archipelago from tropical to subarctic zones. Based on a revised coastal version of climate velocity trajectories, we found that prediction models combining the effects of climate and ocean currents consistently explained observed community shifts significantly better than those relying on climate alone. Corals and herbivorous fishes performed better at exploiting opportunities offered by this interaction. The contrasting range dynamics for these taxa suggest that ocean warming is promoting macroalgal-to-coral shifts both directly by increased competition from the expansion of tropical corals into the contracting temperate macroalgae, and indirectly via deforestation by the expansion of tropical herbivorous fish. Beyond individual species’ effects, our results provide evidence on the important role that the interaction between climate warming and external forces conditioning the dispersal of organisms, such as ocean currents, can have in shaping community-level responses, with concomitant changes to ecosystem structure and functioning. Furthermore, we found that community shifts from macroalgae to corals might accelerate with future climate warming, highlighting the complexity of managing these evolving communities under future climate change.

While marine kelp forests have provided valuable ecosystem services for millennia, the global ecological and economic value of those services is largely unresolved. Kelp forests are diminishing in many regions worldwide, and efforts to manage these ecosystems are hindered without accurate estimates of the value of the services that kelp forests provide to human societies. Here, we present a global estimate of the ecological and economic potential of three key ecosystem services - fisheries production, nutrient cycling, and carbon removal provided by six major forest forming kelp genera ( Ecklonia, Laminaria, Lessonia, Macrocystis, Nereocystis , and Saccharina ). Each of these genera creates a potential value of between $64,400 and $147,100/hectare each year. Collectively, they generate between $465 and $562 billion/year worldwide, with an average of $500 billion. These values are primarily driven by fisheries production (mean $29,900, 904 Kg/Ha/year) and nitrogen removal ($73,800, 657 Kg N/Ha/year), though kelp forests are also estimated to sequester 4.91 megatons of carbon from the atmosphere/year highlighting their potential as blue carbon systems for climate change mitigation. These findings highlight the ecological and economic value of kelp forests to society and will facilitate better informed marine management and conservation decisions. By combining fisheries, nutrient, and carbon cycling data, this synthesis suggests that marine kelp forests, a dominant but often undescribed habitat, provide services with a potential value of $111,000/ha/year and a global yearly value of $500 billion.

Coral reef ecosystems are highly sensitive to climate change. The Amami Islands in Southern Japan were selected as the study area. It is important to select areas that should be given priority for conservation and subsequently direct resources there. The objective of this study was to identify locations with low bleaching potential against future increases in water temperature, as well as high larval recruitment from other areas and high larval supply capacity to other areas based on connectivity. We simulated the coral bleaching rate and larval connectivity under historical (2000s) and future (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 in the 2090s) climate conditions using a high-resolution (1/30° × 1/50°) future ocean regional projection dataset. From the model simulation, coral bleaching did not occur in most areas in the 2000s. However, the bleaching frequency would increase significantly under RCP8.5 in the 2090s, and it is projected that mass coral bleaching events will occur in more than half of the years of that decade. Larval dispersion simulation shows that some particles released from the Amami Islands remain in the same area. However, fluctuations in both the sink strength and the source strength among the islands were larger than those within each island, and differences in connectivity between scenarios were not apparent. Grid cells that have a low bleaching rate and high potential for a larval sink and source under each scenario were selected. Since our results can identify priority conservation areas, it is important to conduct conservation and/or adaptation strategies according to the specific characteristics of each island.

Determining the success of eradication of an invasive species requires a way to decide when its risk of reoccurrence has become acceptably low. In Japan, the area populated by the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile (Mayr), is expanding, and eradication via chemical treatment is ongoing at various locations. One such program in Tokyo was apparently successful, because the ant population decreased to undetectable levels within a short time. However, construction of a population model for management purposes was difficult because the probability of detecting ants decreases rapidly as the population collapses. To predict the time when the ant was eradicated, we developed a multinomial-mixture model for chemical eradication based on monthly trapping data and the history of pesticide applications. We decided when to declare that eradication had been successful by considering both ‘eradication’ times, which we associated with eradication probabilities of 95% and 99%, and an optimal stopping time based on a ‘minimum expected economic cost’ that considered the possibility that surveys were stopped too soon. By applying these criteria, we retroactively declared that Argentine ants had been eradicated 38–42 months after the start of treatments (16–17 months after the last sighting).

This study aimed to conduct a comparative epidemiological survey of uveitis across various healthcare settings and elucidate the clinical characteristics. We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study in the Ube-City medical region in Yamaguchi prefecture and recruited 268 patients from a university hospital (151 patients), municipal hospitals (51 patients), and private eye clinics (58 patients). Medical records of patients newly diagnosed with uveitis between January 2018 and December 2019 in the institutes were included, reviewed, and compared. The main outcomes included the number of uveitis causes, treatment methods, and visual acuity. Panuveitis, which is associated with systemic diseases, such as Vogt–Koyanagi–Harada disease and sarcoidosis, was more prominent in university hospital patients. Conversely, anterior uveitis, including traumatic iritis, was prominently detected in general hospitals and private eye clinics. The best-corrected visual acuity improved to 1.0 (logMAR = 0); an improvement of 74%, 61%, and 54% was observed in private eye clinic, general hospital, and university hospital patients, respectively. This study identified differences in uveitis presentation and treatment across diverse clinical settings. The results of this study provide valuable data for differentiating the causes of uveitis at university hospitals, general hospitals, and private eye clinics.

Coral reefs are one of the world’s most threatened ecosystems, with global and local stressors contributing to their decline. Excessive sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) can cause coral bleaching, resulting in coral death and decreases in coral cover. A SST threshold of 1 °C over the climatological maximum is widely used to predict coral bleaching. In this study, we refined thermal indices predicting coral bleaching at high-spatial resolution (1 km) by statistically optimizing thermal thresholds, as well as considering other environmental influences on bleaching such as ultraviolet (UV) radiation, water turbidity, and cooling effects. We used a coral bleaching dataset derived from the web-based monitoring system Sango Map Project, at scales appropriate for the local and regional conservation of Japanese coral reefs. We recorded coral bleaching events in the years 2004–2016 in Japan. We revealed the influence of multiple factors on the ability to predict coral bleaching, including selection of thermal indices, statistical optimization of thermal thresholds, quantification of multiple environmental influences, and use of multiple modeling methods (generalized linear models and random forests). After optimization, differences in predictive ability among thermal indices were negligible. Thermal index, UV radiation, water turbidity, and cooling effects were important predictors of the occurrence of coral bleaching. Predictions based on the best model revealed that coral reefs in Japan have experienced recent and widespread bleaching. A practical method to reduce bleaching frequency by screening UV radiation was also demonstrated in this paper.

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has been fixed in the paper.

Background: Removal programs are effective strategies for short-term management of Crown-of-Thorns Starfish (Acanthaster spp.) populations, especially on a small scale. However, management programs are costly, and, in order to be effective, they must be based on local Acanthaster spp. population dynamics. We have developed simple models to predict the annual number of removable A. cf. solaris along the Onna coast of western central Okinawa Island, where chronic outbreaks have continued for several decades. Methods: The Onna coastal area was divided into five sectors, and annual abundance of small A. cf. solaris individuals was used to predict the total number of removable individuals of a cohort in each sector. Three models were developed, based on size class data collected by the Onna Village Fisheries Cooperative (OVFC) for 2003–2015, according to possible patterns of recruitment and adult occurrence. Using the best-fit models selected for each of the five sectors, the number of individuals that potentially escaped removal was calculated. Results: Best-fit models were likely to differ among the five sectors instead of small differences in the coefficients of determination. The models predict differences in the number of residual starfish among sectors; the northernmost sector was predicted to have a high number of residuals and the potential density of A. cf. solaris in the sector exceeded the outbreak criterion. Conclusions: These results suggest how to allocate resources to reduce the population of A. cf. solaris along the Onna coast in 2016. The OVFC implemented a control program for A. cf. solaris based on three model predictions.

Seaweed beds play a key role in providing essential habitats and energy to coastal areas, with enhancements in productivity and biodiversity and benefits to human societies. However, the spatial extent of seaweed beds around Japan has decreased due to coastal reclamation, water quality changes, rising water temperatures, and heavy grazing by herbivores. Using monthly mean sea surface temperature (SST) data from 1960 to 2099 and SST‐based indices, we quantitatively evaluated the effects of warming seawater on the spatial extent of suitable versus unsuitable habitats for temperate seaweed Ecklonia cava, which is predominantly found in southern Japanese waters. SST data were generated using the most recent multiple climate projection models and emission scenarios (the Representative Concentration Pathways or RCPs) used in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5). In addition, grazing by Siganus fuscescens, an herbivorous fish, was evaluated under the four RCP simulations. Our results suggest that continued warming may drive a poleward shift in the distribution of E. cava, with large differences depending on the climate scenario. For the lowest emission scenario (RCP2.6), most existing E. cava populations would not be impacted by seawater warming directly but would be adversely affected by intensified year‐round grazing. For the highest emission scenario (RCP8.5), previously suitable habitats throughout coastal Japan would become untenable for E. cava by the 2090s, due to both high‐temperature stress and intensified grazing. Our projections highlight the importance of not only mitigating regional warming due to climate change, but also protecting E. cava from herbivores to conserve suitable habitats on the Japanese coast. In this study, we quantitatively evaluated the effects of warming seawater on the spatial extent of suitable versus unsuitable habitats for temperate seaweed using the most recent multiple climate projection models and emission scenarios. Our results suggest that continued warming may drive a poleward shift of temperate seaweeds, with large differences depending on the severity of warming, and most of seaweeds' populations would be exposed to intensified grazing by herbivores, even if it were possible to mitigate regional warming.