Patrick Flanagan very successfully presented and defended his MS Thesis today, “Community-temperature mismatch in a benthic marine ecosystem.” He investigated whether changing temperature could be used to understand ecological community change on the northeast US continental shelf. Congratulations, Patrick! He’s graduating from the Graduate Program in Oceanography.
New York Times coverage today
Front page of the Science section in the New York Times today: Fish Seek Cooler Waters, Leaving Some Fishermen’s Nets Empty, with quotes from Malin.
New paper: where did Nemo go?
Baby fish float on ocean currents. So where do they go? Our paper out this week in Current Biology uses DNA to answer that question for clownfish in Papua New Guinea, and about 20 km is the simple answer. What’s especially exciting is that we show how very common and easily measured population genetic patterns called “isolation by distance” accurately measure the larval dispersal process. We validated our answer against observations of dispersal for hundreds of individual larvae (an incredibly time-consuming endeavor). Our findings help open the door to applying the isolation by distance method to a much wider range of marine species.
This work was the result of an exciting collaboration with Serge Planes, Geoff Jones, Simon Thorrold, Pablo Saenz-Agudelo, Michael Berumen, Michael Bode, and others.
New paper! Marine species respond rapidly to winter temperatures
Jim Morley has a new paper just online early in Global Change Biology (here). Studying marine fish and invertebrates of the coast of the southeast US, he found that winter temperatures quickly and predictably affect species’ distribution and abundance in the following year. In particular, we found a greater abundance of southern, warm-water species following mild winters. We also found that these impacts cascade up to affect fisheries catches for many species. Interestingly, these responses appear in a region that has not been warming over the last couple decades, though 1-3 °C of warming is expected by the end of this century. Warmer winters likely will result in increased abundance of species with more southern affinities, such as white and pink shrimp, southern hake, and star drum.
National Geographic coverage
This bit of nice press just came out on National Geographic online: http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2016/11/30/marine-scientist-follows-hot-fish-as-they-move-to-cooler-waters/
Photos from last field season now online
Took a while to get through all the photos from May/June fieldwork in Leyte, Philippines, but Michelle just posted a few highlights on the Photos page!
Becca presented at the Western Society of Naturalists in Monterey
Becca traveled to Monterey to present, “The role of warming in piscivore dominance on the Northeast US Shelf” at the 100th anniversary of the Western Society of Naturalists on November 12. Wonderful job, Becca, and happy anniversary, WSN!
Ed at the EcoSummit in Montpelier
Ed was at the EcoSummit conference in Montpellier (Sept. 1) to present “Why do fisheries evolve different harvest rates?”. The conference theme was Engineering Sustainability, but covered a wide range of sustainability topics. Also a nice chance to drink some wine and visit with Michel Loreau!Becca gives departmental seminar at Bowdoin College
Becca was invited to present her PhD and post-doctoral research in the departmental seminar series at Bowdoin College, her alma mater. She presented a talk entitled “Climate, fishing, and marine food webs: predator-prey interactions in a changing ocean.” Her research and career to date were featured on the Bowdoin website! See http://community.
Welcoming Wijnand Boonstra, Katrina Catalano, Sarah Gignoux-Wolfsohn, and Emily Moberg!
The lab is busy these days, and we’re excited to welcome a visitor, a new Ph.D. student, and two new postdocs!
- Wijnand Boonstra is a sociologist from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, visiting to work on fisheries dynamics related to our NSF Coastal SEES project and GreenMar.
- Katrina Catalano just finished her B.S. at Boston University and a field season in Belize. She’s interested in larval dispersal and reef fish metapopulation dynamics.
- Sarah Gignoux-Wolfsohn is joining us from a Ph.D. at Northeastern University and will be working on population genomics and white-nose syndrome in bats with Brooke Maslo on our USFWS-funded project.
- Emily Moberg is joining our Coastal SEES project to work on bioeconomic models of fishery responses to climate change in collaboration with Eli Fenichel and Simon Levin. She just finished a Ph.D. in the MIT/WHOI program.
See our updated People page!