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"Ocean Juvenile literature"
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The crown-of-thorns seastar species complex: knowledge on the biology and ecology of five corallivorous Acanthaster species
Coral-eating crown-of-thorns seastars (CoTS,
Acanthaster
spp.) are major contributors to the coral reef crises across the Indo-Pacific region. Until recently, CoTS throughout the Indo-Pacific were regarded to be a single species,
Acanthaster planci
. However, genetic and morphological analyses demonstrated that there are at least four distinct species:
Acanthaster benziei
in the Red Sea,
Acanthaster mauritiensis
and
A. planci
in the Indian Ocean, and
Acanthaster
cf.
solaris
in the western Pacific.
Acanthaster
cf.
ellisii
in the eastern Pacific needs more taxonomic attention. Here, we review the biological knowledge for each species adapting a pragmatic geographical species definition and using a systematic literature review complemented with more focused searches for individual species. The vast majority of CoTS research (88%) was conducted on
A.
cf.
solaris
, with much of this research undertaken on the Great Barrier Reef or in Japan. Many studies of
A.
cf.
solaris
are focused on monitoring or documenting incidences of outbreaks, though there is a solid base of knowledge on larval, juvenile and adult ecology derived from field and laboratory experiments. By contrast, most of the published studies on the four remaining species simply document cases of population outbreaks. The major taxonomic bias in CoTS research constitutes a significant limitation for understanding and managing these species for two reasons. First, even for
A.
cf.
solaris
, which is the most studied species, limited fundamental knowledge of their biology and ecology constrains understanding of the drivers of outbreaks and hinders corresponding management actions for prevention and control of these events. Second, understanding and management of other species are predicated on the assumption that all CoTS species have similar biology and behaviour, an unsatisfying assumption for ecosystem management.
Journal Article
Ocean discoveries
\"Imagine a fish without a face, drones exploring the ocean floor, and underwater waterfalls! Readers learn all about these amazing underwater discoveries and many more in these carefully-leveled and engaging books reviewed by Smithsonian experts\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Overview of Predation by Birds, Cephalopods, Fish and Marine Mammals on Marine Benthic Amphipods
With about 8000 marine benthic species, the amphipod crustaceans form one of the richest animal groups of the worldwide Ocean. They have colonized a wide range of soft- and hard-bottom natural and artificial habitats extending from the intertidal to hadal zones. Moreover, they show a broad size spectrum, with numerous giant species exceeding 20 cm in length and some species smaller than 2 mm. When biofouling artificial hard surfaces, some tube-building species can form very dense populations comprising up to 100,000 individuals per square meter. Amphipods are important prey for fish and mammals. Along with cephalopod juveniles, they are also included in the trophic diet of shorebirds that consume amphipods mostly during the low tide on tidal flats. They display diel migration, which reinforces the predation by demersal fish in the suprabenthic zone just above the sea bed, as well as by pelagic fish in the water column. Despite their importance in terms of biodiversity and trophic transfer, no general overview is available on the role of benthic amphipods in marine ecosystem food webs. Various methods, including laboratory and field experiments, as well as the analysis of stomach contents and DNA extraction, have been used to identify the prey/predator trophic links. Based on an extensive literature review, this study discusses the role of marine benthic amphipods as potential food for higher trophic levels in natural and artificial hard-bottom communities created via the construction of offshore wind farms.
Journal Article
Southern Ocean
What's at the bottom of the Southern Ocean? Which rare animals are found in the Ross Sea? What do people use krill for?
Book
Could future ocean acidification be affecting the energy budgets of marine fish?
Abstract
With the unprecedented environmental changes caused by climate change including ocean acidification, it has become crucial to understand the responses and adaptive capacity of fish to better predict directional changes in the ecological landscape of the future. We conducted a systematic literature review to examine if simulated ocean acidification (sOA) could influence growth and reproduction in fish within the dynamic energy budget theory framework. As such, we chose to examine metabolic rate, locomotion, food assimilation and growth in early life stages (i.e. larvae and juvenile) and adults. Our goal was to evaluate if acclimatization to sOA has any directional changes in these traits and to explore potential implications for energetic trade-offs in these for growth and reproduction. We found that sOA had negligible effects on energetic expenditure for maintenance and aerobic metabolism due to the robust physiological capacity regulating acid–base and ion perturbations but substantive effects on locomotion, food assimilation and growth. We demonstrated evidence that sOA significantly reduced growth performance of fish in early life stages, which may have resulted from reduced food intake and digestion efficiency. Also, our results showed that sOA may enhance reproduction with increased numbers of offspring although this may come at the cost of altered reproductive behaviours or offspring fitness. While these results indicate evidence for changes in energy budgets because of physiological acclimatization to sOA, the heterogeneity of results in the literature suggests that physiological and neural mechanisms need to be clearly elucidated in future studies. Lastly, most studies on sOA have been conducted on early life stages, which necessitates that more studies should be conducted on adults to understand reproductive success and thus better predict cohort and population dynamics under ongoing climate change.
Lay Summary
Ocean acidification (OA) could alter energy budgets of marine fish. OA had negligible effects on aerobic metabolism, but substantive effects on locomotion, food assimilation and growth, suggesting a potential shift in energy budgets in the future. Also, OA may enhance reproduction potentially at the cost of altered reproductive behaviours or offspring fitness.
Journal Article
Deep oceans
\"Read this book to learn about one of Earth's last frontiers: deep oceans. Learn about the cold and dark depths of the ocean, where scientists find extreme landforms and unusual living things.\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Seasonal Abundance and Size Structure of Sharks Taken in the Pelagic Longline Fishery off Northwestern Cuba
The Straits of Florida comprise an important migratory route for apex predators moving among the Gulf of Mexico, Atlantic Ocean, and Caribbean Sea. Off Cuba’s northwestern coast, various gear types are used by Cuban fishers, including small‐scale pelagic longlines. We report here the results of a 2011–2019 monitoring program for the longline fleet based in Cojímar, Cuba. This fleet comprises 134 small vessels targeting mostly swordfish (family Xiphiidae), billfishes (family Istiophoridae), tunas (family Scombridae), and sharks (class Chondrichthyes) within 20 km of Cuba’s coast. Most operations are nocturnal with 11–12‐h sets comprising an average of 56 hooks on 6,643 m of mainline. Five orders, eight families, and 18 species of sharks were documented in this fishery. Two carcharhinids (Silky Shark Carcharhinus falciformis and Oceanic Whitetip Shark C. longimanus) and two lamnids (Longfin Mako Isurus paucus and Shortfin Mako I. oxyrinchus) were the most abundant shark species caught, with shark CPUE averaging 1.98 sharks/trip (SD = 0.938). Catch abundance showed seasonal differences, with Silky Sharks and Longfin Makos more common in winter and Oceanic Whitetip Sharks more common in summer and autumn. Bimodal size structure in some species suggests multiple life stages utilizing the area, while the predominance of young sharks in species including the Oceanic Whitetip Shark suggests the importance of the area as juvenile habitat, possibly as a pupping and/or nursery ground. This characterization of the Cuban longline fishery is an important step forward for Cuba’s National Plan of Action for Sharks and demonstrates the potential impacts that small‐scale fisheries can have on vulnerable sharks.
Journal Article
Oceans
Explores oceans, discusses how they affect the climate, and describes the variety of life forms found there.
Book
Acoustic tag retention rate varies between juvenile green and hawksbill sea turtles
Background
Biotelemetry has become a key tool for studying marine animals in the last decade, and a wide range of electronic tags are now available for answering a range of research questions. However, comparatively, less attention has been given to attachment methods for these tags and the implications of tag retention on study design, especially when designing a comparative study looking at multiple species. Here, we reported our findings on acoustic tag retention rates for juveniles of two species of marine turtle: the green sea turtle (
Chelonia mydas
) and the hawksbill sea turtle (
Eretmochelys imbricata
). We captured both species twice annually (spring and fall) from 2012 through 2017, as part of a capture–mark–recapture study at Buck Island Reef National Monument, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. We assessed tag retention rates using physical recaptures of turtles previously outfitted with an acoustic tag.
Results
We deployed 72 acoustic tags on 60 juvenile greens and 37 acoustic tags on 29 hawksbills. We estimated the half-life for tags on greens to be 150 days (95% CI 117–188 days), whereas the half-life for tags on hawksbills was 1077 days (95% CI 870–2118 days), a marked difference. We observed that tag attachment holes, drilled into the posterior marginal scutes, migrated laterally towards the outer edge of the marginals in both species. Green turtles tended to exhibit tear-outs, as their attachment holes wore and/or tags grew near the edge of their scutes, whereas hawksbills tended to maintain the structure of these holes and did not exhibit these tear-outs.
Conclusions
We conclude that hawksbills can be tagged with long-battery-life acoustic tags for long-term studies of habitat use and movement patterns, whereas greens are likely to shed their tags in the 1st year, making long-term studies difficult. This study is the first clear evidence that tagging protocols should vary between species of hard-shelled turtles. Furthermore, shed tags on the seafloor continue to be detected by acoustic receivers, creating a challenge in data filtering before analysis. We encourage future research into an efficient method for filtering these data points prior to analysis.
Journal Article