Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Marine Biology
Achieving global biodiversity goals by 2050 requires urgent and integrated actions
Published: 2022-02-24
Subjects: Agriculture, Animal Sciences, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences
Human impacts on the Earth’s biosphere are driving the global biodiversity crisis. Governments are preparing to agree on a set of actions intended to halt the loss of biodiversity and put it on a path to recovery by 2050. We provide evidence that the proposed actions can bend the curve for biodiversity, but only if these actions are implemented urgently and in an integrated manner.
A set of principles and practical suggestions for equitable fieldwork in biology
Published: 2022-02-04
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Forest Sciences, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences
Field biology is an area of research that involves working directly with living organisms in situ through a practice known as “fieldwork.” Conducting fieldwork often requires complex logistical planning within multiregional or multinational teams, interacting with local communities at field sites, and collaborative research led by one or a few of the core team members. However, existing power [...]
Adaptations and plastic phenotypic responses of marine animals to the environmental challenges of the high intertidal zone
Published: 2022-01-15
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Physiology
The high intertidal zone is home to an incredible variety of marine animals, as it offers an escape from low intertidal/subtidal predation and competition, among other advantages. However, this area of the shore also comes with many tide-driven and emersion-associated environmental stressors, such as desiccation, high temperatures and freezing stress, hypoxia, salinity fluctuations, nitrogenous [...]
Mussels repair shell damage despite limitations imposed by ocean acidification
Published: 2022-01-07
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Bivalves frequently withstand shell boring attempts by predatory gastropods that result in shell damage that must be quickly repaired to ensure survival. While the processes that underlie larval shell development have been extensively studied within the context of ocean acidification (OA), it remains unclear whether shell repair is impaired by elevated pCO2. To better understand the stereotypical [...]
Microbiotic particles in water and soil, water-soil microbiota coalescences, and antimicrobial resistance
Published: 2021-11-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Microbiology
Bacterial organisms like surfaces. Water and soil contain a multiplicity of particulated material where bacterial populations and communities might attach. Microbiotic particles refers to any type of small particles (less than 2 mm) where bacteria (and other microbes) might attach, resulting in medium- long-term colonization. In this work, the interactions of bacterial organisms with microbiotic [...]
A rapidly expanding house of cards: the silent loss of cell physiology hampers marine biosciences
Published: 2021-11-22
Subjects: Biochemistry, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology, Cellular and Molecular Physiology, Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Physiology, Systems and Integrative Physiology Life Sciences
Perspective: An ongoing loss of expertise on the biochemistry and physiology of marine organisms hampers our understanding of biological mechanisms upon rapidly growing “-omics” approaches reply -ultimately affecting our ability to predict organismal responses to climate change.
Selective Breeding to Support the Long-Term Persistence of Coral Reefs
Published: 2021-10-13
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
The decline of coral reefs has prompted an emergent field of research on the potential for various biological interventions focused on increasing stress tolerance in corals. Among these is selective breeding, the selection and reproductive crossing of parental stock based on a trait of interest with the goal of enhancing the frequency or intensity of the trait in subsequent generations. Selective [...]
Sea ice and substratum shape extensive kelp forests in the Canadian Arctic
Published: 2021-09-23
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
The coastal zone of the Canadian Arctic represents 10% of the world’s coastline and is one of the most rapidly changing marine regions on the planet. To predict the consequences of these environmental changes, a better understanding of how environmental gradients shape coastal habitat structure in this area is required. We quantified the abundance and diversity of canopy forming seaweeds [...]
Strategies for Managing Marine Disease
Published: 2021-07-10
Subjects: Life Sciences, Marine Biology
The incidence of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) has increased in wildlife populations in recent years and is expected to continue to increase with global change. Marine diseases in particular are relatively understudied compared to terrestrial disease, but they can disrupt ecosystem resilience, cause economic loss, or threaten human health. While there are many existing tools to combat the [...]
Report on Ocean Frontier Institute Workshop on Fisheries Management Reference Points in Highly Dynamic Ecosystems
Published: 2021-05-18
Subjects: Life Sciences, Marine Biology
A virtual international workshop on fisheries management reference points in highly dynamic ecosystems was held from January 25-29, 2021. Its purpose was to provide a general overview of the theory and implementation of dynamic reference points to inform fisheries management. This workshop report includes motivation, background, challenges, workshop objectives, keynote presentation summaries, [...]
Global Kelp Forest Restoration: Past lessons, status, and future goals
Published: 2021-05-17
Subjects: Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Kelp forest ecosystems and their associated ecosystem services are declining around the world. In response, marine managers are working to restore and counteract these declines. Kelp restoration first started in the 1700s in Japan and since then has spread across the globe. Restoration efforts, however, have been largely disconnected, with varying methodologies trialled by different actors in [...]
The economic value of fisheries, blue carbon, and nutrient cycling in global marine forests
Published: 2021-04-29
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Underwater kelp forests have provided valuable ecosystem services for millennia. However, the global economic value of those services is largely unresolved. Kelp forests are also diminishing globally and efforts to manage these valuable resources are hindered without accurate estimates of the services kelp forests provide to society. We present the first global economic estimation of services - [...]
Sponges facilitate primary producers in a Bahamas seagrass system
Published: 2021-04-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Seagrass beds are important coastal ecosystems worldwide that are shaped by facilitative interactions. Recent theoretical work has emphasized the potential for facilitative interactions involving foundation species to be destabilized in the face of anthropogenic change. Consequently, it is important to identify which taxa facilitate seagrasses. In other ecosystems, sponges contribute to the [...]
Reefscape genomics: leveraging advances in 3D imaging to assess fine-scale patterns of genomic variation on coral reefs
Published: 2021-04-15
Subjects: Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Life Sciences, Marine Biology
Coral reefs across the world are undergoing rapid deterioration, and understanding the ecological and evolutionary processes that govern these ecosystems is critical to our ability to protect them. Molecular ecological studies have been instrumental in advancing such understanding, and while initially focused primarily on broad-scale patterns, they have gradually uncovered the prevalence of local [...]
Contrasting climate velocity impacts in warm and cool locations show that effects of marine warming are worse in already warmer temperate waters
Published: 2021-03-31
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Population Biology, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Species responses to climate change are often measured at broad spatiotemporal scales, which can miss fine-scale changes that are relevant to conservation and fisheries management. We develop a scale-able geostatistical approach to assess how juvenile and adult fish distributions have been shaped by changes in bottom temperature and dissolved oxygen over a recent decade of warming in the [...]