ALBERT

Description: Insects with complex life-cycles should optimize age and size at maturity during larval development. When inhabiting seasonal environments, organisms have limited reproductive periods and face fundamental decisions: individuals that reach maturity late in season have to either reproduce at a small size or increase their growth rates. Increasing growth rates is costly in insects because of higher juvenile mortality, decreased adult survival or increased susceptibility to parasitism by bacteria and viruses via compromised immune function. Environmental changes such as seasonality can also alter the quantitative genetic architecture. Here, we explore the quantitative genetics of life history and immunity traits under two experimentally induced seasonal environments in the cricket Gryllus bimaculatus. Seasonality affected the life history but not the immune phenotypes. Individuals under decreasing day length developed slower and grew to a bigger size. We found ample additive genetic variance and heritability for components of immunity (haemocyte densities, proPhenoloxidase activity, resistance against Serratia marcescens), and for the life history traits, age and size at maturity. Despite genetic covariance among traits, the structure of G was inconsistent with genetically based trade-off between life history and immune traits (for example, a strong positive genetic correlation between growth rate and haemocyte density was estimated). However, conditional evolvabilities support the idea that genetic covariance structure limits the capacity of individual traits to evolve independently. We found no evidence for G × E interactions arising from the experimentally induced seasonality.

Description: The metabolome is a data-rich source of information concerning all the low-molecular-weight metabolites in a biofluid, which can indicate early biological changes to the host due to perturbations in metabolic pathways. Major changes can be seen after minor stimuli, which make it a valuable target for analysis. Due to the diverse and sensitive nature of the metabolome, studies must be designed in a manner to maintain consistency, reduce variation between subjects, and optimize information recovery. Technological advancements in experimental design, mouse models and instrumentation have aided in this effort. Metabolomics has the ultimate potential to be valuable in a clinical setting where it could be used for early diagnosis of a disease and as a predictor of treatment response and survival. During drug treatment, the metabolic status of an individual could be monitored and used to indicate possible toxic effects. Metabolomics therefore has great potential for improving diagnosis, treatment and aftercare of disease.

Description: Core HU97048-007PC was recovered from the continental Labrador Sea slope at a water depth of 945 m, 250km seaward from the mouth of Cumberland Sound, and 400km north of Hudson Strait. Cumberland Sound is a structural trough partly floored by Cretaceous mudstones and Paleozoic carbonates. The record extends from 10 to 58 ka. On-board logging revealed a complex series of lithofacies, including buff-colored detrital carbonate-rich sediments [Heinrich (H)-events] frequently bracketed by black facies. We investigate the provenance of these facies using quantitative X-ray diffraction on drill-core samples from Paleozoic and Cretaceous bedrock from the SE Baffin Island Shelf, and on the〈2-mm sediment fraction in a transect of five cores from Cumberland Sound to the NW Labrador Sea. A sediment unmixing program was used to discriminate between sediment sources, which included dolomite-rich sediments from Baffin Bay, calcite-rich sediments from Hudson Strait and discrete sources from Cumberland Sound. Results indicated that the bulk of the sediment was derived from Cumberland Sound, but Baffin Bay contributed to sediments coeval with H-0 (Younger Dryas), whereas Hudson Strait was the source during H-events 1–4. Contributions from the Cretaceous outcrops within Cumberland Sound bracket H-events, thus both leading and lagging Hudson Strait-sourced H-events.

Description: Single crystal (U-Th)/He dating was applied to 24 apatite and 23 zircon grains from the Wetumpka impact structure, Alabama, USA. This small approximately 5–7.6 km impact crater was formed in a shallow marine environment, with no known preserved impact melt, thus offering a challenge to common geochronological techniques. A mean (U-Th)/He apatite and zircon age of 84.4 ± 1.4 Ma (2σ) was obtained, which is within error of the previously estimated Late Cretaceous impact age of approximately 83.5 Ma. In addition, helium diffusion modeling of apatite and zircon grains during fireball/contact, shock metamorphism, and hydrothermal events was undertaken, to show the influence of these individual thermal processes on resetting (U-Th)/He ages in the Wetumpka samples. This study has shown that the (U-Th)/He geochronological technique has real potential for dating impact structures, especially smaller and eroded impact structures that lack impact melt lithologies.

Description: Marine natural source electromagnetic data acquired on continental margins are often of considerable scientific and commercial interest. However, the large conductivity contrast between the ocean and coast causes this type of data to be severely distorted. For a 2-D coastal model, this distortion is most pronounced for the marine magnetotelluric and geomagnetic response function derived from induced currents flowing parallel to the coast. A maximal distortion occurs for a given period at a specific distance from the coast and causes severe anomalies in the magnitude and phase of the response functions. Based on a modelling study, we empirically relate the characteristic period and characteristic distance to physical parameters such as the ocean depth and the host resistivity. Based on a simple analytical approach, we test these approximations and show that maximum distortion occurs when destructive interference between the ocean and host response is at its highest. While the coast effect causes a large distortion in the marine responses we show through a resolution analysis that it does not mask subsurface conductivity anomalies but in fact increases the sensitivity to the seafloor.

Description: The cuttlefish Sepia officinalis expresses several hemocyanin isoforms with potentially different pH optima, indicating their reliance on efficient pH regulation in the blood. Ongoing ocean warming and acidification could influence the oxygen-binding properties of respiratory pigments in ectothermic marine invertebrates. This study examined whether S. officinalis differentially expresses individual hemocyanin isoforms to maintain optimal oxygen transport during development and acclimation to elevated seawater pCO2 and temperature. Using quantitative PCR, we measured relative mRNA expression levels of three different hemocyanin isoforms in several ontogenetic stages (embryos, hatchlings, juveniles, and adults), under different temperatures and elevated seawater pCO2. Our results indicate moderately altered hemocyanin expression in all embryonic stages acclimated to higher pCO2, while hemocyanin expression in hatchlings and juveniles remained unaffected. During the course of development, total hemocyanin expression increased independently of pCO2 or thermal acclimation status. Expression of isoform 3 is reported for the first time in a cephalopod in this study and was found to be generally low but highest in the embryonic stages (0.2% of total expression). Despite variable hemocyanin expression, hemolymph total protein concentrations remained constant in the experimental groups. Our data provide first evidence that ontogeny has a stronger influence on hemocyanin isoform expression than the environmental conditions chosen, and they suggest that hemocyanin protein abundance in response to thermal acclimation is regulated by post-transcriptional/translational rather than by transcriptional modifications

Description: Nitrogen fixation by diazotrophic cyanobacteria is a critical source of new nitrogen to the oligotrophic surface ocean. Research to date indicates that some diazotroph groups may increase nitrogen fixation under elevated pCO2. To test this in natural plankton communities, four manipulation experiments were carried out during two voyages in the South Pacific (30–35oS). High CO2 treatments, produced using 750 ppmv CO2 to adjust pH to 0.2 below ambient, and ‘Greenhouse’ treatments (0.2 below ambient pH and ambient temperature +3 °C), were compared with Controls in trace metal clean deckboard incubations in triplicate. No significant change was observed in nitrogen fixation in either the High CO2 or Greenhouse treatments over 5 day incubations. qPCR measurements and optical microscopy determined that the diazotroph community was dominated by Group A unicellular cyanobacteria (UCYN-A), which may account for the difference in response of nitrogen fixation under elevated CO2 to that reported previously for Trichodesmium. This may reflect physiological differences, in that the greater cell surface area:volume of UCYN-A and its lack of metabolic pathways involved in carbon fixation may confer no benefit under elevated CO2. However, multiple environmental controls may also be a factor, with the low dissolved iron concentrations in oligotrophic surface waters limiting the response to elevated CO2. If nitrogen fixation by UCYN-A is not stimulated by elevated pCO2, then future increases in CO2 and warming may alter the regional distribution and dominance of different diazotroph groups, with implications for dissolved iron availability and new nitrogen supply in oligotrophic regions.

Description: Magnetotellurics (MT) uses a frequency-dependent impedance tensor estimated from the spectra of associated time-varying horizontal electric and magnetic fields measured at the Earth's surface to image the sub-surface of the Earth. Most current methods use Fourier transform based procedures to estimate power spectral densities and, therefore, assume that the signals are stationary over the record length. Stationarity in geomagnetic data, however, is not always ensured given the variety of source mechanism causing the geomagnetic variations at different time and spatial scales. Additional complication and bias may arise from the presence of noise in the recorded electric and magnetic file data. Sophisticated MT data processing account for a potential bias through windowing of the time series as well as robust estimates of the impedance. We explore a new heuristic method for dealing with the non-stationarity of MT time series based on empirical mode decomposition. It is a dynamic time series analysis method, in which complicated data sets can be decomposed into a finite and small number of simple intrinsic mode functions. In this paper, we use the empirical mode decomposition method to decompose MT data into intrinsic mode functions and calculate the instantaneous frequencies and spectra to determine the impedance tensor. We investigate the reliability of the impedance estimates on synthetic data by comparing the results to those obtained by analytical methods. Finally, we apply our processing scheme to data measured from the Costa Rica subduction zone, and compare the results from our new method to the frequently-used BIRRP processing method.

Description: The technique of relaxation of the tropical atmosphere towards an analysis in a month-season forecast model has previously been successfully exploited in a number of contexts. Here it is shown that when tropical relaxation is used to investigate the possible origin of the observed anomalies in June–July 2007, a simple dynamical model is able to reproduce the observed component of the pattern of anomalies given by an ensemble of ECMWF forecast runs. Following this result, the simple model is used for a range of experiments on time-scales of relaxation, variables and regions relaxed based on a control model run with equatorial heating in a zonal flow. A theory based on scale analysis for the large-scale tropics is used to interpret the results. Typical relationships between scales are determined from the basic equations, and for a specified diabatic heating a chain of deductions for determining the dependent variables is derived. Different critical time-scales are found for tropical relaxation of different dependent variables to be effective. Vorticity has the longest critical time-scale, typically 1.2 days. For temperature and divergence, the time-scales are 10 hours and 3 hours, respectively. However not all the tropical fields, in particular the vertical motion, are reproduced correctly by the model unless divergence is heavily damped. To obtain the correct extra-tropical fields, it is crucial to have the correct rotational flow in the subtropics to initiate the Rossby wave propagation from there. It is sufficient to relax vorticity or temperature on a time-scale comparable or less than their critical time-scales to obtain this. However if the divergent advection of vorticity is important in the Rossby Wave Source then strong relaxation of divergence is required to accurately represent the tropical forcing of Rossby waves.

Description: [1] The Southern Hemisphere Westerly Winds (SWW) constitute an important zonal circulation system that dominates the dynamics of the Southern Hemisphere mid-latitudes. In the present study, we analyze results from two transient simulations (1630–2000 AD) conducted with the coupled atmosphere-ocean model EGMAM (ECHO-G with Middle Atmosphere Model): one simulation with fixed stratospheric ozone concentration, and one with solar-induced variations in stratospheric ozone content. The results suggest that during periods of lower solar activity, the annual-mean SWW tend to get weaker on their poleward side and shift towards the equator. The SWW shift is more intense and robust for the simulation with varying stratospheric ozone, suggesting an important influence of solar-induced stratospheric ozone variations on mid-latitude troposphere dynamics. Finally, we present proxy evidence from a high-resolution marine sediment core from the Chilean continental slope (41°S), which strongly supports the model result of an equatorward displacement of the SWW during the Maunder Minimum.