ALBERT

Description: We present the analysis of rotational and translational ground motions from earthquakes recorded during October–November 2016, in association with the Central Italy seismic sequence. We use co-located measurements of the vertical ground rotation rate from a large ring laser gyroscope and the three components of ground velocity from a broad-band seismometer. Both instruments are positioned in a deep underground environment, within the Gran Sasso National Laboratories of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare. We collected dozens of events spanning the 3.5–5.9 magnitude range and epicentral distances between 30 and 70 km. This data set constitutes an unprecedented observation of the vertical rotational motions associated with an intense seismic sequence at local distance. Under the plane-wave approximation we process the data set in order to get an experimental estimation of the events backazimuth. Peak values of rotation rate (PRR) and horizontal acceleration (PGA) are markedly correlated, according to a scaling constant which is consistent with previous measurements from different earthquake sequences. We used a prediction model in use for Italy to calculate the expected PGA at the recording site, obtaining consequently predictions for PRR. Within the modelling uncertainties, predicted rotations are consistent with the observed ones, suggesting the possibility of establishing specific attenuation models for ground rotations, like the scaling of peak velocity and peak acceleration in empirical ground-motion prediction relationships. In a second step, after identifying the direction of the incoming wavefield, we extract phase-velocity data using the spectral ratio of the translational and rotational components. This analysis is performed over time windows associated with the P-coda, S-coda and Lg phase. Results are consistent with independent estimates of shear wave velocities in the shallow crust of the Central Apennines

Description: Published

Description: 705-715

Description: 4T. Sismicità dell'Italia

Description: JCR Journal

Description: We present early Cretaceous to present paleobathymetric reconstructions and quantitative uncertainty estimates for the South Atlantic, offering a strong basis for studies of paleocirculation, paleoclimate and paleobiogeography. Circulation in an initially salty and anoxic ocean, restricted by the topography of the Falkland Plateau, Rio Grande Ridge and Walvis Rise, favoured deposition of thick evaporites in shallow water of the Brazilian-Angolan margins. This ceased as sea oor spreading propagated northwards, opening an equatorial gateway to shallow and intermediate circulation. This gateway, together with subsiding volcano-tectonic barriers would have played a key role in Late Cretaceous climate changes. Later deepening and widening of the South Atlantic, together with gateway opening at Drake Passage would lead, by mid-Miocene (∼15 Ma) to the establishment of modern-style thermohaline circulation.

Description: Currently there is a scarcity of paleo-records related to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), particularly in East-Central Europe (ECE). Here we report δ15N analysis of guano from a cave in NW Romania with the intent of reconstructing past variation in ECE hydroclimate and examine NAO impacts on winter precipitation. We argue that the δ15N values of guano indicate that the nitrogen cycle is hydrologically controlled and the δ15N values likely reflect winter precipitation related to nitrogen mineralization prior to the growing season. Drier conditions indicated by δ15N values at AD 1848–1852 and AD 1880–1930 correspond to the positive phase of the NAO. The increased frequency of negative phases of the NAO between AD 1940–1975 is contemporaneous with higher δ15N values (wetter conditions). A 4‰ decrease in δ15N values at the end of the 1970’s corresponds to a strong reduction in precipitation associated with a shift from negative to positive phase of the NAO. Using the relationship between NAO index and δ15N values in guano for the instrumental period, we reconstructed NAO-like phases back to AD 1650. Our results advocate that δ15N values of guano offer a proxy of the NAO conditions in the more distant past, helping assess its predictability.

Description: Slope failure like in the Hinlopen/Yermak Megaslide is one of the major geohazards in a changing Arctic environment. We analysed hydroacoustic and 2D high-resolution seismic data from the apparently intact continental slope immediately north of the Hinlopen/Yermak Megaslide for signs of past and future instabilities. Our new bathymetry and seismic data show clear evidence for incipient slope instability. Minor slide deposits and an internally-deformed sedimentary layer near the base of the gas hydrate stability zone imply an incomplete failure event, most probably about 30000 years ago, contemporaneous to or shortly after the Hinlopen/Yermak Megaslide. An active gas reservoir at the base of the gas hydrate stability zone demonstrate that over-pressured fluids might have played a key role in the initiation of slope failure at the studied slope, but more importantly also for the giant HYM slope failure. To date, it is not clear, if the studied slope is fully preconditioned to fail completely in future or if it might be slowly deforming and creeping at present. We detected widespread methane seepage on the adjacent shallow shelf areas not sealed by gas hydrates.

Description: The Mozambique Ridge, a prominent basement high in the southwestern Indian Ocean, consists of four major geomorphological segments associated with numerous phases of volcanic activity in the Lower Cretaceous. The nature and origin of the Mozambique Ridge have been intensely debated with one hypothesis suggesting a Large Igneous Province origin. High-resolution seismic reflection data reveal a large number of extrusion centres with a random distribution throughout the southern Mozambique Ridge and the nearby Transkei Rise. Intra-basement reflections emerge from the extrusion centres and are interpreted to represent massive lava flow sequences. Such lava flow sequences are characteristic of eruptions leading to the formation of continental and oceanic flood basalt provinces, hence supporting a Large Igneous Province origin of the Mozambique Ridge. We observe evidence for widespread post-sedimentary magmatic activity that we correlate with a southward propagation of the East African Rift System. Based on our volumetric analysis of the southern Mozambique Ridge we infer a rapid sequential emplacement between ~131 Ma and ~125 Ma, which is similar to the short formation periods of other Large Igneous Provinces like the Agulhas Plateau.

Description: Little is known about the production of fluorescent dissolved organic matter (FDOM) in the anoxic oceanic sediments. In this study, sediment pore waters were sampled from four different sites in the Chukchi-East Siberian Seas area to examine the bulk dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and their optical properties. The production of FDOM, coupled with the increase of nutrients, was observed above the sulfate-methane-transition-zone (SMTZ). The presence of FDOM was concurrent with sulfate reduction and increased alkalinity (R2 〉 0.96, p 〈 0.0001), suggesting a link to organic matter degradation. This inference was supported by the positive correlation (R2 〉 0.95, p 〈 0.0001) between the net production of FDOM and the modeled degradation rates of particulate organic carbon sulfate reduction. The production of FDOM was more pronounced in a shallow shelf site S1 with a total net production ranging from 17.9 to 62.3 RU for different FDOM components above the SMTZ depth of ca. 4.1 mbsf, which presumably underwent more accumulation of particulate organic matter than the other three deeper sites. The sediments were generally found to be the sources of CDOM and FDOM to the overlying water column, unearthing a channel of generally bio-refractory and pre-aged DOM to the oceans.

Description: A dominant Antarctic ecological paradigm suggests that winter sea ice is generally the main feeding ground for krill larvae. Observations from our winter cruise to the southwest Atlantic sector of the Southern Ocean contradict this view and present the first evidence that the pack-ice zone is a food-poor habitat for larval development. In contrast, the more open marginal ice zone provides a more favourable food environment for high larval krill growth rates. We found that complex under-ice habitats are, however, vital for larval krill when water column productivity is limited by light, by providing structures that offer protec- tion from predators and to collect organic material released from the ice. The larvae feed on this sparse ice-associated food during the day. After sunset, they migrate into the water below the ice (upper 20 m) and drift away from the ice areas where they have previously fed. Model analyses indicate that this behaviour increases both food uptake in a patchy food environment and the likelihood of overwinter transport to areas where feeding conditions are more favourable in spring.

Description: Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is a key species in Southern Ocean ecosystem where it plays a central role in the Antarctic food web. Available information supports the existence of an endogenous timing system in krill enabling it to synchronize metabolism and behavior with an environment characterized by extreme seasonal changes in terms of day length, food availability, and surface ice extent. A screening of our transcriptome database “KrillDB” allowed us to identify the putative orthologues of 20 circadian clock components. Mapping of conserved domains and phylogenetic analyses strongly supported annotations of the identi ed sequences. Luciferase assays and co-immunoprecipitation experiments allowed us to de ne the role of the main clock components. Our ndings provide an overall picture of the molecular mechanisms underlying the functioning of the endogenous circadian clock in the Antarctic krill and shed light on their evolution throughout crustaceans speciation. Interestingly, the core clock machinery shows both mammalian and insect features that presumably contribute to an evolutionary strategy to cope with polar environment’s challenges. Moreover, despite the extreme variability characterizing the Antarctic seasonal day length, the conserved light mediated degradation of the photoreceptor EsCRY1 suggests a persisting pivotal role of light as a Zeitgeber.

Description: Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba)—one of the most abundant animal species on Earth—exhibits a five to six year population cycle, with oscillations in biomass exceeding one order of magnitude. Previous studies have postulated that the krill cycle is induced by periodic climatological factors, but these postulated drivers neither show consistent agreement, nor are they supported by quantitative models. Here, using data analysis complemented with modelling of krill ontogeny and population dynamics, we identify intraspecific competition for food as the main driver of the krill cycle, while external climatological factors possibly modulate its phase and synchronization over large scales. Our model indicates that the cycle amplitude increases with reduction of krill loss rates. Thus, a decline of apex predators is likely to increase the oscillation amplitude, potentially destabilizing the marine food web, with drastic consequences for the entire Antarctic ecosystem.

Description: We provide an updated present-day stress map for the Italian territory. Following the World Stress Map (WSM) Project guidelines, we list the different stress indicators, explaining the criteria used to select data. We discuss the data, which will also be included in the 2016 release of the WSM, highlighting the areas for which we have added stress information. Our map displays the minimum horizontal stress orientations inferred from crustal stress indicators down to 40 km depth using data of A–C quality, updated for earthquakes until December 2015. We have completely reviewed all data, and the data set now contains 855 entries, in contrast to the previous 715. The number of data with A–C quality of 630 corresponds to an increase of 26 per cent relative to the previous data set. In particular, the new data set contains the results of the analysis of borehole breakouts, critically reviewed data from earthquake focal mechanisms, data concerning active faults, formal inversions of focal mechanisms of seismic sequences or of restricted areas and one stress determination from overcoring. The new data set defines the stress field in areas not well covered by the previous data: the region north to the Po Plain and the central Adriatic sea, both characterized by a thrust- and strike-faulting regime, the northern Sicilian belt with a prevailing normal-faulting regime, and the Ionian sea with a strike-slip regime.

Description: Published

Description: 1525-1531

Description: 2T. Tettonica attiva

Description: JCR Journal

Description: restricted

Description: This article has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Journal International ©: The Authors 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.

Description: Mud volcanoes are geological systems often characterized by elevated fluid pressures at depth deviating from hydrostatic conditions. This near-critical state makes mud volcanoes particularly sensitive to external forcing induced by natural or man-made perturbations. We used the Nirano mud volcanic field as a natural laboratory to test pre- and post-seismic effects generated by distant earthquakes.We first characterized the subsurface structure of the Nirano mud volcanic field with a geoelectrical study. Next, we deployed a broad-band seismic station in the area to understand the typical seismic signal generated by the mud volcano. Seismic records show a background noise below 2 s, sometimes interrupted by pulses of drumbeatlike high-frequency signals lasting from several minutes to hours. To date this is the first observation of drumbeat signal observed in mud volcanoes. In 2013 June we recorded a M4.7 earthquake, that occurred approximately 60 km far from our seismic station. According to empirical estimations the Nirano mud volcanic field should not have been affected by the M4.7 earthquake. Yet, before the seismic event we recorded an increasing amplitude of the signal in the 10–20 Hz frequency band. The signal emerged approximately two hours before the earthquake and lasted for about three hours. Our statistical analysis suggests the presence of a possible precursory signal about 10 min before the earthquake.

Description: Published

Description: 907–917

Description: 7A. Geofisica per il monitoraggio ambientale

Description: JCR Journal

Description: Although there are many methods for investigating tectonic structures, many faults remain hidden, and they can endanger the life and property of people living along them. The slopes of volcanoes are covered with such hidden faults, near which strong earthquakes and gas releases can appear. Revealing hidden faults can therefore contribute significantly to the protection of people living in volcanic areas. In the study, seven different techniques were used for making measurements of in-soil radon concentrations in order to search for hidden faults on the SE flank of the Mt. Etna volcano. These reported methods had previously been proved to be useful tools for investigating fault structures. The main aim of the experiment presented here was to evaluate the usability of these methods in the geological conditions of the Mt. Etna region, and to find the best place for continual radon monitoring using a permanent station in the near future.

Description: Published

Description: 70-73

Description: 5V. Sorveglianza vulcanica ed emergenze

Description: JCR Journal

Description: restricted

Description: The deglacial history of CO2 release from the deep North Pacific remains unresolved. This is due to conflicting indications about subarctic Pacific ventilation changes based on various marine proxies, especially for Heinrich Stadial 1 (HS-1) when a rapid atmospheric CO2 rise occurs. Here, we use a complex Earth System Model to investigate the deglacial North Pacific overturning and its control on ocean stratification. Our results show an enhanced intermediate-to-deep ocean stratification coeval with intensified North Pacific Intermediate Water (NPIW) formation during HS-1, compared to the Last Glacial Maximum. The stronger NPIW formation causes lower salinities and higher temperatures at intermediate depths. By lowering NPIW densities, this enlarges vertical density gradient and thus enhances intermediate-to-deep ocean stratification during HS-1. Physically, this process prevents the North Pacific deep waters from a better communication with the upper oceans, thus prolongs the existing isolation of glacial Pacific abyssal carbons during HS-1.

Description: An approach is presented for high-field MRI studies of the cardiovascular system (CVS) of a marine crustacean, the edible crab Cancer pagurus, submerged in highly conductive seawater. Structure and function of the CVS were investigated at 9.4 T. Cardiac motion was studied using self-gated CINE MRI. Imaging protocols and radio-frequency coil arrangements were tested for anatomical imaging. Haemolymph flow was quantified using phase-contrast angiography. Signal-to-noise-ratios and flow velocities in afferent and efferent branchial veins were compared with Student’s t test (n = 5). Seawater induced signal losses were dependent on imaging protocols and RF coil setup. Internal cardiac structures could be visualized with high spatial resolution within 8 min using a gradient-echo technique. Variations in haemolymph flow in different vessels could be determined over time. Maximum flow was similar within individual vessels and corresponded to literature values from Doppler measurements. Heart contractions were more pronounced in lateral and dorso-ventral directions than in the anterior–posterior direction. Choosing adequate imaging protocols in combination with a specific RF coil arrangement allows to monitor various parts of the crustacean CVS with exceptionally high spatial resolution despite the adverse effects of seawater at 9.4 T.

Description: At mid-ocean ridges volcanism generally decreases with spreading rate but surprisingly massive volcanic centres occur at the slowest spreading ridges. These volcanoes can host unexpectedly strong earthquakes and vigorous, explosive submarine eruptions. Our understanding of the geodynamic processes forming these volcanic centres is still incomplete due to a lack of geophysical data and the difficulty to capture their rare phases of magmatic activity. We present a local earthquake tomographic image of the magma plumbing system beneath the Segment 8 volcano at the ultraslow-spreading Southwest Indian Ridge. The tomography shows a confined domain of partial melt under the volcano. We infer that from there melt is horizontally transported to a neighbouring ridge segment at 35 km distance where microearthquake swarms and intrusion tremor occur that suggest ongoing magmatic activity. Teleseismic earthquakes around the Segment 8 volcano, prior to our study, indicate that the current magmatic spreading episode may already have lasted over a decade and hence its temporal extent greatly exceeds the frequent short-lived spreading episodes at faster opening mid-ocean ridges.

Description: Subglacial lakes are widespread beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet but their control on ice-sheet dynamics and their ability to harbour life remain poorly characterized. Here we present evidence for a palaeo-subglacial lake on the Antarctic continental shelf. A distinct sediment facies recovered from a bedrock basin in Pine Island Bay indicates deposition within a low-energy lake environment. Diffusive-advection modelling demonstrates that low chloride concentrations in the pore water of the corresponding sediments can only be explained by initial deposition of this facies in a freshwater setting. These observations indicate that an active subglacial meltwater network, similar to that observed beneath the extant ice sheet, was also active during the last glacial period. It also provides a new framework for refining the exploration of these unique environments.

Description: Glaciological and oceanographic observations coupled with numerical models show that warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) incursions onto the West Antarctic continental shelf cause melting of the undersides of floating ice shelves. Because these ice shelves buttress glaciers feeding into them, their ocean-induced thinning is driving Antarctic ice-sheet retreat today. Here we present a multi-proxy data based reconstruction of variability in CDW inflow to the Amundsen Sea sector, the most vulnerable part of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, during the Holocene epoch (from 11.7 thousand years ago to the present). The chemical compositions of foraminifer shells and benthic foraminifer assemblages in marine sediments indicate that enhanced CDW upwelling, controlled by the latitudinal position of the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds, forced deglaciation of this sector from at least 10,400 years ago until 7,500 years ago—when an ice-shelf collapse may have caused rapid ice-sheet thinning further upstream—and since the 1940s. These results increase confidence in the predictive capability of current ice-sheet models.

Description: Global warming and ocean acidification are among the most important stressors for aquatic ecosystems in the future. To investigate their direct and indirect effects on a near-natural plankton community, a multiple-stressor approach is needed. Hence, we set up mesocosms in a full-factorial design to study the effects of both warming and high CO2 on a Baltic Sea autumn plankton community, concentrating on the impacts on microzooplankton (MZP). MZP abundance, biomass, and species composition were analysed over the course of the experiment. We observed that warming led to a reduced time-lag between the phytoplankton bloom and an MZP biomass maximum. MZP showed a significantly higher growth rate and an earlier biomass peak in the warm treatments while the biomass maximum was not affected. Increased pCO2 did not result in any significant effects on MZP biomass, growth rate, or species composition irrespective of the temperature, nor did we observe any significant interactions between CO2 and temperature. We attribute this to the high tolerance of this estuarine plankton community to fluctuations in pCO2, often resulting in CO2 concentrations higher than the predicted end-of-century concentration for open oceans. In contrast, warming can be expected to directly affect MZP and strengthen its coupling with phytoplankton by enhancing its grazing pressure.

Description: Author Posting. © Crown Copyright, 2015. This article is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Journal International 204 (2016): 1-20, doi:10.1093/gji/ggv416.

Description: The Canada Basin and the southern Alpha-Mendeleev ridge complex underlie a significant proportion of the Arctic Ocean, but the geology of this undrilled and mostly ice-covered frontier is poorly known. New information is encoded in seismic wide-angle reflections and refractions recorded with expendable sonobuoys between 2007 and 2011. Velocity–depth samples within the sedimentary succession are extracted from published analyses for 142 of these records obtained at irregularly spaced stations across an area of 1.9E + 06 km2. The samples are modelled at regional, subregional and station-specific scales using an exponential function of inverse velocity versus depth with regionally representative parameters determined through numerical regression. With this approach, smooth, non-oscillatory velocity–depth profiles can be generated for any desired location in the study area, even where the measurement density is low. Practical application is demonstrated with a map of sedimentary thickness, derived from seismic reflection horizons interpreted in the time domain and depth converted using the velocity–depth profiles for each seismic trace. A thickness of 12–13 km is present beneath both the upper Mackenzie fan and the middle slope off of Alaska, but the sedimentary prism thins more gradually outboard of the latter region. Mapping of the observed-to-predicted velocities reveals coherent geospatial trends associated with five subregions: the Mackenzie fan; the continental slopes beyond the Mackenzie fan; the abyssal plain; the southwestern Canada Basin; and, the Alpha-Mendeleev magnetic domain. Comparison of the subregional velocity–depth models with published borehole data, and interpretation of the station-specific best-fitting model parameters, suggests that sandstone is not a predominant lithology in any of the five subregions. However, the bulk sand-to-shale ratio likely increases towards the Mackenzie fan, and the model for this subregion compares favourably with borehole data for Miocene turbidites in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. The station-specific results also indicate that Quaternary sediments coarsen towards the Beaufort-Mackenzie and Banks Island margins in a manner that is consistent with the variable history of Laurentide Ice Sheet advance documented for these margins. Lithological factors do not fully account for the elevated velocity–depth trends that are associated with the southwestern Canada Basin and the Alpha-Mendeleev magnetic domain. Accelerated porosity reduction due to elevated palaeo-heat flow is inferred for these regions, which may be related to the underlying crustal types or possibly volcanic intrusion of the sedimentary succession. Beyond exploring the variation of an important physical property in the Arctic Ocean basin, this study provides comparative reference for global studies of seismic velocity, burial history, sedimentary compaction, seismic inversion and overpressure prediction, particularly in mudrock-dominated successions.

Description: © The Author(s), 2015. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Genome Biology and Evolution 7 (2015): 3207-3225, doi:10.1093/gbe/evv210.

Description: High-throughput sequencing of reduced representation libraries obtained through digestion with restriction enzymes—generically known as restriction site associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq)—is a common strategy to generate genome-wide genotypic and sequence data from eukaryotes. A critical design element of any RAD-seq study is knowledge of the approximate number of genetic markers that can be obtained for a taxon using different restriction enzymes, as this number determines the scope of a project, and ultimately defines its success. This number can only be directly determined if a reference genome sequence is available, or it can be estimated if the genome size and restriction recognition sequence probabilities are known. However, both scenarios are uncommon for nonmodel species. Here, we performed systematic in silico surveys of recognition sequences, for diverse and commonly used type II restriction enzymes across the eukaryotic tree of life. Our observations reveal that recognition sequence frequencies for a given restriction enzyme are strikingly variable among broad eukaryotic taxonomic groups, being largely determined by phylogenetic relatedness. We demonstrate that genome sizes can be predicted from cleavage frequency data obtained with restriction enzymes targeting “neutral” elements. Models based on genomic compositions are also effective tools to accurately calculate probabilities of recognition sequences across taxa, and can be applied to species for which reduced representation data are available (including transcriptomes and neutral RAD-seq data sets). The analytical pipeline developed in this study, PredRAD (https://github.com/phrh/PredRAD), and the resulting databases constitute valuable resources that will help guide the design of any study using RAD-seq or related methods.

Description: This research was supported by the Office of Ocean Exploration and Research of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NA09OAR4320129 to T.S.); the Division of Ocean Sciences of the National Science Foundation (OCE-1131620 to T.S.); the Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NNX09AB76G to T.S.); and the Academic Programs Office (Ocean Ventures Fund to S.H.), the Ocean Exploration Institute (Fellowship support to T.M.S.), and the Ocean Life Institute of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (internal grant to T.M.S. and S.H.).

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Molecular Biology and Evolution 34 (2017): 1890-1901, doi:10.1093/molbev/msx125.

Description: The highly conserved ADAR enzymes, found in all multicellular metazoans, catalyze the editing of mRNA transcripts by the deamination of adenosines to inosines. This type of editing has two general outcomes: site specific editing, which frequently leads to recoding, and clustered editing, which is usually found in transcribed genomic repeats. Here, for the first time, we looked for both editing of isolated sites and clustered, non-specific sites in a basal metazoan, the coral Acropora millepora during spawning event, in order to reveal its editing pattern. We found that the coral editome resembles the mammalian one: it contains more than 500,000 sites, virtually all of which are clustered in non-coding regions that are enriched for predicted dsRNA structures. RNA editing levels were increased during spawning and increased further still in newly released gametes. This may suggest that editing plays a role in introducing variability in coral gametes.

Description: This work was supported by the Australian Research Council (to PK), the European Research Council (grant 311257), the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee in Israel (grants 41/11 and 1796/12), and the Israel Science Foundation (1380/14).

Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Nucleic Acids Research 44 (2016): e157, doi:10.1093/nar/gkw738.

Description: Site-directed RNA editing (SDRE) is a strategy to precisely alter genetic information within mRNAs. By linking the catalytic domain of the RNA editing enzyme ADAR to an antisense guide RNA, specific adenosines can be converted to inosines, biological mimics for guanosine. Previously, we showed that a genetically encoded iteration of SDRE could target adenosines expressed in human cells, but not efficiently. Here we developed a reporter assay to quantify editing, and used it to improve our strategy. By enhancing the linkage between ADAR's catalytic domain and the guide RNA, and by introducing a mutation in the catalytic domain, the efficiency of converting a UAG premature termination codon (PTC) to tryptophan (UGG) was improved from ∼11% to ∼70%. Other PTCs were edited, but less efficiently. Numerous off-target edits were identified in the targeted mRNA, but not in randomly selected endogenous messages. Off-target edits could be eliminated by reducing the amount of guide RNA with a reduction in on-target editing. The catalytic rate of SDRE was compared with those for human ADARs on various substrates and found to be within an order of magnitude of most. These data underscore the promise of site-directed RNA editing as a therapeutic or experimental tool.

Description: National Institutes of Health [1R0111223855, 1R01NS64259]; Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics [Rosent14XXO]; Infrastructural support was provided by the National Institutes of Health [NIGMS 1P20GM103642, NIMHD 8G12-MD007600]; National Science Foundation [DBI 0115825, DBI 1337284]; Department of Defense [52680-RT-ISP].

Description: Author Posting. © The Authors, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Journal International 208 (2017): 1026-1042, doi:10.1093/gji/ggw435.

Description: In recent years, marine controlled source electromagnetics (CSEM) has found increasing use in hydrocarbon exploration due to its ability to detect thin resistive zones beneath the seafloor. It is the purpose of this paper to evaluate the physics of CSEM for an ocean whose electrical thickness is comparable to or much thinner than that of the overburden using the in-line configuration through examination of the elliptically polarized seafloor electric field, the time-averaged energy flow depicted by the real part of the complex Poynting vector, energy dissipation through Joule heating and the Fréchet derivatives of the seafloor field with respect to the subseafloor conductivity that is assumed to be isotropic. The deep water (ocean layer electrically much thicker than the overburden) seafloor EM response for a model containing a resistive reservoir layer has a greater amplitude and reduced phase as a function of offset compared to that for a half-space, or a stronger and faster response. For an ocean whose electrical thickness is comparable to or much smaller than that of the overburden, the electric field displays a greater amplitude and reduced phase at small offsets, shifting to a stronger amplitude and increased phase at intermediate offsets and a weaker amplitude and enhanced phase at long offsets, or a stronger and faster response that first changes to stronger and slower, and then transitions to weaker and slower. These transitions can be understood by visualizing the energy flow throughout the structure caused by the competing influences of the dipole source and guided energy flow in the reservoir layer, and the air interaction caused by coupling of the entire subseafloor resistivity structure with the sea surface. A stronger and faster response occurs when guided energy flow is dominant, while a weaker and slower response occurs when the air interaction is dominant. However, at intermediate offsets for some models, the air interaction can partially or fully reverse the direction of energy flux in the reservoir layer toward rather than away from the source, resulting in a stronger and slower response. The Fréchet derivatives are dominated by preferential sensitivity to the reservoir layer conductivity for all water depths except at high frequencies, but also display a shift with offset from the galvanic to the inductive mode in the underburden and overburden due to the interplay of guided energy flow and the air interaction. This means that the sensitivity to the horizontal conductivity is almost as strong as to the vertical component in the shallow parts of the subsurface, and in fact is stronger than the vertical sensitivity deeper down. However, the sensitivity to horizontal conductivity is still weak compared to the vertical component within thin resistive regions. The horizontal sensitivity is gradually decreased when the water becomes deep. These observations in part explain the success of shallow towed CSEM using only measurements of the in-line component of the electric field.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Bioscience 67 (2017): 760–768, doi:10.1093/biosci/bix059.

Description: As the sampling frequency and resolution of Earth observation imagery increase, there are growing opportunities for novel applications in population monitoring. New methods are required to apply established analytical approaches to data collected from new observation platforms (e.g., satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles). Here, we present a method that estimates regional seasonal abundances for an understudied and growing population of gray seals (Halichoerus grypus) in southeastern Massachusetts, using opportunistic observations in Google Earth imagery. Abundance estimates are derived from digital aerial survey counts by adapting established correction-based analyses with telemetry behavioral observation to quantify survey biases. The result is a first regional understanding of gray seal abundance in the northeast US through opportunistic Earth observation imagery and repurposed animal telemetry data. As species observation data from Earth observation imagery become more ubiquitous, such methods provide a robust, adaptable, and cost-effective solution to monitoring animal colonies and understanding species abundances.

Description: We would like to thank generous support from International Fund for Animal Welfare, the Bureau of Ocean Energy, and the Oak Foundation for funding support for the telemetry devices.

Description: Author Posting. © The Authors, 2017. This article is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Journal International 211 (2017): 1046–1061, doi:10.1093/gji/ggx360.

Description: In recent years, marine controlled source electromagnetics (CSEM) has found increasing use in hydrocarbon exploration due to its ability to detect thin resistive zones beneath the seafloor. It is the purpose of this paper to evaluate the physics of CSEM for an ocean whose electrical thickness is comparable to or much thinner than that of the overburden using the in-line configuration through examination of the elliptically-polarized seafloor electric field, the time-averaged energy flow depicted by the real part of the complex Poynting vector, energy dissipation through Joule heating and the Fréchet derivatives of the seafloor field with respect to the sub-seafloor conductivity that is assumed to be transversely anisotropic, with a vertical-to-horizontal resistivity ratio of 3:1. For an ocean whose electrical thickness is comparable to that of the overburden, the seafloor electromagnetic response for a model containing a resistive reservoir layer has a greater amplitude and reduced phase as a function of offset compared to that for a halfspace, or a stronger and faster response, and displays little to no evidence for the air interaction. For an ocean whose electrical thickness is much smaller than that of the overburden, the electric field displays a greater amplitude and reduced phase at small offsets, shifting to a stronger amplitude and increased phase at intermediate offsets, and a weaker amplitude and enhanced phase at long offsets, or a stronger and faster response that first changes to stronger and slower, and then transitions to weaker and slower. By comparison to the isotropic case with the same horizontal conductivity, transverse anisotropy stretches the Poynting vector and the electric field response from a thin resistive layer to much longer offsets. These phenomena can be understood by visualizing the energy flow throughout the structure caused by the competing influences of the dipole source and guided energy flow in the reservoir layer, and the air interaction caused by coupling of the entire sub-seafloor resistivity structure with the sea surface. The Fréchet derivatives are dominated by preferential sensitivity to the vertical conductivity in the reservoir layer and overburden at short offsets. The horizontal conductivity Fréchet derivatives are weaker than to comparable to the vertical derivatives at long offsets in the substrate. This means that the sensitivity to the horizontal conductivity is present in the shallow parts of the subsurface. In the presence of transverse anisotropy, it is necessary to go to higher frequencies to sense the horizontal conductivity in the overburden as compared to an isotropic model with the same horizontal conductivity. These observations in part explain the success of shallow towed CSEM using only measurements of the in-line component of the electric field.

Description: This work was supported at WHOI by an Independent Research and Development award, and by the Walter A. and Hope Noyes Smith Chair for Excellence in Oceanography.

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Gruen, D. S., Wolfe, J. M., & Fournier, G. P.. Paleozoic diversification of terrestrial chitin-degrading bacterial lineages. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 19, (2019): 34, doi:10.1186/s12862-019-1357-8.

Description: Background Establishing the divergence times of groups of organisms is a major goal of evolutionary biology. This is especially challenging for microbial lineages due to the near-absence of preserved physical evidence (diagnostic body fossils or geochemical biomarkers). Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) can serve as a temporal scaffold between microbial groups and other fossil-calibrated clades, potentially improving these estimates. Specifically, HGT to or from organisms with fossil-calibrated age estimates can propagate these constraints to additional groups that lack fossils. While HGT is common between lineages, only a small subset of HGT events are potentially informative for dating microbial groups. Results Constrained by published fossil-calibrated studies of fungal evolution, molecular clock analyses show that multiple clades of Bacteria likely acquired chitinase homologs via HGT during the very late Neoproterozoic into the early Paleozoic. These results also show that, following these HGT events, recipient terrestrial bacterial clades likely diversified ~ 300–500 million years ago, consistent with established timescales of arthropod and plant terrestrialization. Conclusions We conclude that these age estimates are broadly consistent with the dispersal of chitinase genes throughout the microbial world in direct response to the evolution and ecological expansion of detrital-chitin producing groups. The convergence of multiple lines of evidence demonstrates the utility of HGT-based dating methods in microbial evolution. The pattern of inheritance of chitinase genes in multiple terrestrial bacterial lineages via HGT processes suggests that these genes, and possibly other genes encoding substrate-specific enzymes, can serve as a “standard candle” for dating microbial lineages across the Tree of Life.

Description: This work was supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program Award to DSG., and Simons Collaboration on the Origins of Life Award #339603 and NSF Integrated Earth Systems Program Award #1615426 to GPF. The funding agencies for this study had no role in study design, data collection, data analysis and interpretation, or in writing the manuscript.

Description: Seismological findings show a complex scenario of plume upwellings from a deep thermo-chemical anomaly (superplume) beneath the East African Rift System (EARS). It is unclear if these geophysical observations represent a true picture of the superplume and its influence on magmatism along the EARS. Thus, it is essential to find a geochemical tracer to establish where upwellings are connected to the deep-seated thermo-chemical anomaly. Here we identify a unique non-volatile superplume isotopic signature (‘C’) in the youngest (after 10 Ma) phase of widespread EARS rift-related magmatism where it extends into the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. This is the first sound evidence that the superplume influences the EARS far from the low seismic velocities in the magma-rich northern half. Our finding shows for the first time that superplume mantle exists beneath the rift the length of Africa from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean offshore southern Mozambique

Description: This article has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Journal International ©: The Authors 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.

Description: The Amatrice–Norcia–Visso sequence is characterized by complex behaviour that is somewhat atypical of main-shock–aftershock sequences, as there were multiple large main shocks that continued for months. In this study we focus on the Amatrice sequence (main shock 2016 August 24, Mw = 5.97) to evaluate the apparent stress values and magnitude-dependent scaling in order to improve our knowledge of processes that control small and large earthquakes within this active region of Italy. Apparent stress is proportional to the ratio of radiated seismic energy and seismic moment, and as such, these stress parameters play an important role in hazard prediction as they have a strong effect on the observed and predicted ground shaking. We analyse 83 events of the sequence from 2016 August 24 to October 16, within a radius of 20 km from the main shock and with an Mw ranging between 5.97 and 2.72. Taking advantage of the averaging nature of coda waves, we analyse coda-envelope-based spectral ratios between neighbouring event pairs.We use equations proposed byWalter et al. to consider stable, low-frequency and high-frequency spectral ratio levelswhich provide measures of the corner frequency and apparent stress ratios of the events within the sequence. The results demonstrate non-self-similar behaviour within the sequence, suggesting a change in dynamics between the largest events and the smaller aftershocks. The apparent stress and corner frequency estimates are compared to those obtained by Malagnini and Munaf`o who utilized hundreds of direct S-wave spectral ratio measurements to obtain their results. Although our analysis is based only on 83 events, our results are in very good agreement, demonstrating once more that the use of coda waves is very stable and provides lower variance measures than those using direct waves. A comparison with recent Central Apennines source scaling models derived from various seismic sequences (1997–1998 Colfiorito, 2002 San Giuliano di Puglia, 2009 L’Aquila) shows that the Amatrice sequence source scaling in this study is well represented by the models proposed by Pacor et al. and Malagnini and Mayeda.

Description: Published

Description: 446-455

Description: 3T. Sorgente sismica

Description: JCR Journal

Description: A major uncertainty in determining the mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet from measurements of satellite gravimetry, and to a lesser extent satellite altimetry, is the poorly known correction for the ongoing deformation of the solid Earth caused by glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). Although much progress has been made in consistently modeling the ice-sheet evolution throughout the last glacial cycle, as well as the induced bedrock deformation caused by these load changes, forward models of GIA remain ambiguous due to the lack of observational constraints on the ice sheet's past extent and thickness and mantle rheology beneath the continent. As an alternative to forward-modeling GIA, we estimate GIA from multiple space-geodetic observations: Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), Envisat/ICESat and Global Positioning System (GPS). Making use of the different sensitivities of the respective satellite observations to current and past surface-mass (ice mass) change and solid Earth processes, we estimate GIA based on viscoelastic response functions to disc load forcing. We calculate and distribute the viscoelastic response functions according to estimates of the variability of lithosphere thickness and mantle viscosity in Antarctica. We compare our GIA estimate with published GIA corrections and evaluate its impact in determining the ice-mass balance in Antarctica from GRACE and satellite altimetry. Particular focus is applied to the Amundsen Sea Sector in West Antarctica, where uplift rates of several centimetres per year have been measured by GPS. We show that most of this uplift is caused by the rapid viscoelastic response to recent ice-load changes, enabled by the presence of a low-viscosity upper mantle in West Antarctica. This paper presents the second and final contributions summarizing the work carried out within a European Space Agency funded study, REGINA (www.regina-science.eu).

Description: Author Posting. © The Authors, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of The Royal Astronomical Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Journal International 218(3), (2019): 1822-1837, doi: 10.1093/gji/ggz253.

Description: Joint inversion of multiple electromagnetic data sets, such as controlled source electromagnetic and magnetotelluric data, has the potential to significantly reduce uncertainty in the inverted electrical resistivity when the two data sets contain complementary information about the subsurface. However, evaluating quantitatively the model uncertainty reduction is made difficult by the fact that conventional inversion methods—using gradients and model regularization—typically produce just one model, with no associated estimate of model parameter uncertainty. Bayesian inverse methods can provide quantitative estimates of inverted model parameter uncertainty by generating an ensemble of models, sampled proportional to data fit. The resulting posterior distribution represents a combination of a priori assumptions about the model parameters and information contained in field data. Bayesian inversion is therefore able to quantify the impact of jointly inverting multiple data sets by using the statistical information contained in the posterior distribution. We illustrate, for synthetic data generated from a simple 1-D model, the shape of parameter space compatible with controlled source electromagnetic and magnetotelluric data, separately and jointly. We also demonstrate that when data sets contain complementary information about the model, the region of parameter space compatible with the joint data set is less than or equal to the intersection of the regions compatible with the individual data sets. We adapt a trans-dimensional Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm for jointly inverting multiple electromagnetic data sets for 1-D earth models and apply it to surface-towed controlled source electromagnetic and magnetotelluric data collected offshore New Jersey, USA, to evaluate the extent of a low salinity aquifer within the continental shelf. Our inversion results identify a region of high resistivity of varying depth and thickness in the upper 500 m of the continental shelf, corroborating results from a previous study that used regularized, gradient-based inversion methods. We evaluate the joint model parameter uncertainty in comparison to the uncertainty obtained from the individual data sets and demonstrate quantitatively that joint inversion offers reduced uncertainty. In addition, we show how the Bayesian model ensemble can subsequently be used to derive uncertainty estimates of pore water salinity within the low salinity aquifer.

Description: We gratefully acknowledge funding support from National Science Foundation grants 1458392 and 1459035. We thank the captain and crew of the R.V. Marcus G. Langseth for a successful cruise and the Marine EM Lab at Scripps Institution of Oceanography for providing the instrumentation. We also thank Chris Armerding, Marah Dahn, John Desanto, Jimmy Elsenbeck, Matt Folsom, Keiichi Ishizu, Jeff Pepin, Charlotte Wiman and Georgie Zelenak for participating in the cruise. We gratefully acknowledge Alberto Malinverno for the idea to use a Monte Carlo scheme to estimate the distribution of pore fluid salinity, and William Menke for many constructive conversations and suggestions.

Description: Author Posting. © The Authors, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of The Royal Astronomical Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Journal International 218(3), (2019): 2122-2135, doi: 10.1093/gji/ggz272.

Description: We have conducted the first passive Ocean Bottom Seismograph (OBS) experiment near the Challenger Deep at the southernmost Mariana subduction zone by deploying and recovering an array of 6 broad-band OBSs during December 2016–June 2017. The obtained passive-source seismic records provide the first-ever near-field seismic observations in the southernmost Mariana subduction zone. We first correct clock errors of the OBS recordings based on both teleseismic waveforms and ambient noise cross-correlation. We then perform matched filter earthquake detection using 53 template events in the catalogue of the US Geological Survey and find 〉7000 local earthquakes during the 6-month OBS deployment period. Results of the two independent approaches show that the maximum clock drifting was ∼2 s on one instrument (OBS PA01), while the rest of OBS waveforms had negligible time drifting. After timing correction, we locate the detected earthquakes using a newly refined local velocity model that was derived from a companion active source experiment in the same region. In total, 2004 earthquakes are located with relatively high resolution. Furthermore, we calibrate the magnitudes of the detected earthquakes by measuring the relative amplitudes to their nearest relocated templates on all OBSs and acquire a high-resolution local earthquake catalogue. The magnitudes of earthquakes in our new catalogue range from 1.1 to 5.6. The earthquakes span over the Southwest Mariana rift, the megathrust interface, forearc and outer-rise regions. While most earthquakes are shallow, depths of the slab earthquakes increase from ∼100 to ∼240 km from west to east towards Guam. We also delineate the subducting interface from seismicity distribution and find an increasing trend in dip angles from west to east. The observed along-strike variation in slab dip angles and its downdip extents provide new constraints on geodynamic processes of the southernmost Mariana subduction zone.

Description: We express our appreciation to the science parties and crew members of the R/V Shiyan 3 for deployment and collection of the OBS instruments during the Mariana expeditions. This study is supported by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council Grants (No. 14313816), Faculty of Science at CUHK, Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. Y4SL021001, QYZDY-SSW-DQC005, 133244KYSB20180029), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41890813, 91628301, 41676042, U1701641, 41576041, 91858207 and U1606401), the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFC0309800 and 2018YFC0310100). Generic Mapping Tools (Wessel & Smith 1991) and PSSAC (developed by Prof Lupei Zhu) are used for data analysis and figure preparation in this study. Constructive comments from Dr Lidong Bie and two anonymous reviewers are helpful in improving the manuscript.

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in ISME Journal (2019), doi:10.1038/s41396-019-0373-4.

Description: The benthos in estuarine environments often experiences periods of regularly occurring hypoxic and anoxic conditions, dramatically impacting biogeochemical cycles. How oxygen depletion affects the growth of specific uncultivated microbial populations within these diverse benthic communities, however, remains poorly understood. Here, we applied H218O quantitative stable isotope probing (qSIP) in order to quantify the growth of diverse, uncultured bacterial populations in response to low oxygen concentrations in estuarine sediments. Over the course of 7- and 28-day incubations with redox conditions spanning from hypoxia to euxinia (sulfidic), 18O labeling of bacterial populations exhibited different patterns consistent with micro-aerophilic, anaerobic, facultative anaerobic, and aerotolerant anaerobic growth. 18O-labeled populations displaying anaerobic growth had a significantly non-random phylogenetic distribution, exhibited by numerous clades currently lacking cultured representatives within the Planctomycetes, Actinobacteria, Latescibacteria, Verrucomicrobia, and Acidobacteria. Genes encoding the beta-subunit of the dissimilatory sulfate reductase (dsrB) became 18O labeled only during euxinic conditions. Sequencing of these 18O-labeled dsrB genes showed that Acidobacteria were the dominant group of growing sulfate-reducing bacteria, highlighting their importance for sulfur cycling in estuarine sediments. Our findings provide the first experimental constraints on the redox conditions underlying increased growth in several groups of “microbial dark matter”, validating hypotheses put forth by earlier metagenomic studies.

Description: This work was supported by a grant OR 417/1-1 from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and a Junior Researcher Fund grant from LMU Munich to WDO. This work was performed in part, through the Master’s Program in Geobiology and Paleontology (MGAP) at LMU Munich.

Description: Author Posting. © Oxford University Press, 2016. This article is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Journal International 205 (2016): 728-743, doi:10.1093/gji/ggw044.

Description: While elasticity is a defining characteristic of the Earth's lithosphere, it is often ignored in numerical models of long-term tectonic processes in favour of a simpler viscoplastic description. Here we assess the consequences of this assumption on a well-studied geodynamic problem: the growth of normal faults at an extensional plate boundary. We conduct 2-D numerical simulations of extension in elastoplastic and viscoplastic layers using a finite difference, particle-in-cell numerical approach. Our models simulate a range of faulted layer thicknesses and extension rates, allowing us to quantify the role of elasticity on three key observables: fault-induced topography, fault rotation, and fault life span. In agreement with earlier studies, simulations carried out in elastoplastic layers produce rate-independent lithospheric flexure accompanied by rapid fault rotation and an inverse relationship between fault life span and faulted layer thickness. By contrast, models carried out with a viscoplastic lithosphere produce results that may qualitatively resemble the elastoplastic case, but depend strongly on the product of extension rate and layer viscosity U × ηL. When this product is high, fault growth initially generates little deformation of the footwall and hanging wall blocks, resulting in unrealistic, rigid block-offset in topography across the fault. This configuration progressively transitions into a regime where topographic decay associated with flexure is fully accommodated within the numerical domain. In addition, high U × ηL favours the sequential growth of multiple short-offset faults as opposed to a large-offset detachment. We interpret these results by comparing them to an analytical model for the fault-induced flexure of a thin viscous plate. The key to understanding the viscoplastic model results lies in the rate-dependence of the flexural wavelength of a viscous plate, and the strain rate dependence of the force increase associated with footwall and hanging wall bending. This behaviour produces unrealistic deformation patterns that can hinder the geological relevance of long-term rifting models that assume a viscoplastic rheology.

Description: This work was supported by NSF grants OCE-11-54238 (JAO, MDB), EAR-10-10432 (MDB) and OCE-11-55098 (GI), as well as a WHOI Deep Exploration Institute grant and start-up support from the University of Idaho (EM).

Description: © The Author(s), 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Conservation Physiology 4 (2016): cow014, doi:10.1093/conphys/cow014.

Description: Reproduction of mysticete whales is difficult to monitor, and basic parameters, such as pregnancy rate and inter-calving interval, remain unknown for many populations. We hypothesized that baleen plates (keratinous strips that grow downward from the palate of mysticete whales) might record previous pregnancies, in the form of high-progesterone regions in the sections of baleen that grew while the whale was pregnant. To test this hypothesis, longitudinal baleen progesterone profiles from two adult female North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) that died as a result of ship strike were compared with dates of known pregnancies inferred from calf sightings and post-mortem data. We sampled a full-length baleen plate from each female at 4 cm intervals from base (newest baleen) to tip (oldest baleen), each interval representing ∼60 days of baleen growth, with high-progesterone areas then sampled at 2 or 1 cm intervals. Pulverized baleen powder was assayed for progesterone using enzyme immunoassay. The date of growth of each sampling location on the baleen plate was estimated based on the distance from the base of the plate and baleen growth rates derived from annual cycles of stable isotope ratios. Baleen progesterone profiles from both whales showed dramatic elevations (two orders of magnitude higher than baseline) in areas corresponding to known pregnancies. Baleen hormone analysis shows great potential for estimation of recent reproductive history, inter-calving interval and general reproductive biology in this species and, possibly, in other mysticete whales.

Description: This work was supported by the Eppley Foundation for Research, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Program and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Ocean Life Institute.

Description: Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2016. This article is posted here by permission of The Royal Astronomical Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Journal International 205 (2016): 785-795, doi:10.1093/gji/ggw036.

Description: An L-configured, three-component short period seismic array was deployed on the Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica during November 2014. Polarization analysis of ambient noise data from these stations shows linearly polarized waves for frequency bands between 0.2 and 2 Hz. A spectral peak at about 1.6 Hz is interpreted as the resonance frequency of the water column and is used to estimate the water layer thickness below the ice shelf. The frequency band from 4 to 18 Hz is dominated by Rayleigh and Love waves propagating from the north that, based on daily temporal variations, we conclude were generated by field camp activity. Frequency–slowness plots were calculated using beamforming. Resulting Love and Rayleigh wave dispersion curves were inverted for the shear wave velocity profile within the firn and ice to ∼150 m depth. The derived density profile allows estimation of the pore close-off depth and the firn–air content thickness. Separate inversions of Rayleigh and Love wave dispersion curves give different shear wave velocity profiles within the firn. We attribute this difference to an effective anisotropy due to fine layering. The layered structure of firn, ice, water and the seafloor results in a characteristic dispersion curve below 7 Hz. Forward modelling the observed Rayleigh wave dispersion curves using representative firn, ice, water and sediment structures indicates that Rayleigh waves are observed when wavelengths are long enough to span the distance from the ice shelf surface to the seafloor. The forward modelling shows that analysis of seismic data from an ice shelf provides the possibility of resolving ice shelf thickness, water column thickness and the physical properties of the ice shelf and underlying seafloor using passive-source seismic data.

Description: PDB, AD and PG were supported by NSF Grant PLR 1246151. RAS was supported by NSF Grant PLR-1246416. DAW, RA and AN were supported under NSF Grants PLR-1142518, 1141916 and 1142126, respectively. PDB also received support from the California Department of Parks and Recreation, Division of Boating and Waterways under contract 11-106-107.

Description: Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2019. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in ICES Journal of Marine Science 76(4), (2010): 781-786, doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsy194.

Description: Whales are federally protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act; endangered species, such as the North Atlantic right whale, receive additional protection under the Endangered Species Act. However, their regulations have failed to satisfy conservation and animal welfare concerns. From 1990 to 2011 the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis, NARW) population grew at a mean of 2.8% annually. However, population trends reversed since 2011; the species is in decline, with only ∼100 reproductively active females remaining. This failure is driven by vessel collisions and increasingly fatal and serious entanglement in fixed fishing gear, whose rope strength has increased substantially. Chronic entanglement, drag, and associated morbidity have been linked to poor fecundity. Genuine solutions involve designating areas to be avoided and speed restrictions for ships and removing fishing trap ropes from the water column. A trap fishing closure for NARW habitat in the Cape Cod Bay (U.S.) area has been in place seasonally since 2015. 2017 mortalities in Eastern Canada elicited substantive management changes whereby the 2018 presence of NARW in active trap fishing areas resulted in an effective closure. To avoid these costly closures, the traditional trap fishery model of rope end lines attached to surface marker buoys has to be modified so that traps are marked virtually, and retrieved with gear that does not remain in the water column except during trap retrieval. Consumer demand for genuinely whale-safe products will augment and encourage the necessary regulatory changes so that trap fisheries conserve target and nontarget species.

Description: I thank Mark Baumgartner, Scott Kraus, Tim Werner, Amy Knowlton, Heather Pettis, Scott Landry, Stormy Mayo, Fred Penney, and Beth Casoni for discussions on this topic and Natalie Renier for drawing Figures 5 and 6. Funding was provided by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Independent Research and Development Program.

Description: 2020-01-10

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Trembath-Reichert, E., Butterfield, D. A., & Huber, J. A. Active subseafloor microbial communities from Mariana back-arc venting fluids share metabolic strategies across different thermal niches and taxa. Isme Journal, 13(9), (2019): 2264-2279, doi: 10.1038/s41396-019-0431-y.

Description: There are many unknowns regarding the distribution, activity, community composition, and metabolic repertoire of microbial communities in the subseafloor of deep-sea hydrothermal vents. Here we provide the first characterization of subseafloor microbial communities from venting fluids along the central Mariana back-arc basin (15.5–18°N), where the slow-spreading rate, depth, and variable geochemistry along the back-arc distinguish it from other spreading centers. Results indicated that diverse Epsilonbacteraeota were abundant across all sites, with a population of high temperature Aquificae restricted to the northern segment. This suggests that differences in subseafloor populations along the back-arc are associated with local geologic setting and resultant geochemistry. Metatranscriptomics coupled to stable isotope probing revealed bacterial carbon fixation linked to hydrogen oxidation, denitrification, and sulfide or thiosulfate oxidation at all sites, regardless of community composition. NanoSIMS (nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry) incubations at 80 °C show only a small portion of the microbial community took up bicarbonate, but those autotrophs had the highest overall rates of activity detected across all experiments. By comparison, acetate was more universally utilized to sustain growth, but within a smaller range of activity. Together, results indicate that microbial communities in venting fluids from the Mariana back-arc contain active subseafloor communities reflective of their local conditions with metabolisms commonly shared across geologically disparate spreading centers throughout the ocean.

Description: This work was funded by the NOAA Ocean Exploration and Research (OER) Program, the NSF Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI) (OCE-0939564), and NOAA/PMEL and JISAO under NOAA Cooperative Agreement NA15OAR4320063. ETR was supported by a NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship with the NASA Astrobiology Institute and a L’Oréal USA For Women in Science Fellowship. The data collected in this study includes work supported by the Schmidt Ocean Institute during cruise FK161129 aboard R/V Falkor. We thank the captains and crews of the R/V Falkor and ROV SuBastian. Critical support in cruise planning and sampling at sea was carried out by Andra Bobbitt, Bill Chadwick, Bob Embley, Ben Larson, and Kevin Roe. Caroline Fortunato, Connor Skennerton, Rika Anderson, Karthik Anantharaman, Jaclyn Saunders, Hank Yu, Lewis Ward, Elaina Graham, and Ben Tully aided bioinformatics pipeline development and Victoria Orphan and Yunbin Guan aided with NanoSIMS analysis. This is C-DEBI Contribution 470, JISAO Contribution 2018-0173, and PMEL Contribution 4867.

Description: Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2019. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Oxford University Press for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Journal International, 219(1), (2019): 464-478, doi:10.1093/gji/ggz315.

Description: The electromagnetic (EM) field generated by ocean tidal flow is readily detectable in both satellite magnetic field data, and in ocean-bottom measurements of electric and magnetic fields. The availability of accurate charts of tidal currents, constrained by assimilation of modern satellite altimetry data, opens the possibility of using tidal EM fields as a source to image mantle electrical resistivity beneath the ocean basins, as highlighted by the recent success in defining the globally averaged lithosphere–asthenosphere boundary (LAB) with satellite data. In fact, seafloor EM data would be expected to provide better constraints on the structure of resistive oceanic lithosphere, since the toroidal magnetic mode, which can constrain resistive features, is a significant component of the tidal EM field within the ocean, but is absent above the surface (in particular in satellite data). Here we consider this issue in more detail, using a combination of simplified theoretical analysis and 1-D and 3-D numerical modelling to provide a thorough discussion of the sensitivity of satellite and seafloor data to subsurface electrical structure. As part of this effort, and as a step toward 3-D inversion of seafloor tidal data, we have developed a new flexible 3-D spherical-coordinate finite difference scheme for both global and regional scale modelling, with higher resolution models nested in larger scale solutions. We use the new 3-D model, together with Monte Carlo simulations of errors in tidal current estimates, to provide a quantitative assessment of errors in the computed tidal EM signal caused by uncertainty in the tidal source. Over the open ocean this component of error is below 0.01 nT in Bz at satellite height and 0.05 nT in Bx on the seafloor, well below typical signal levels. However, as coastlines are approached error levels can increase substantially. Both analytical and 3-D modelling demonstrate that the seafloor magnetic field is most sensitive to the lithospheric resistance (the product of resistivity and thickness), and is more weakly influenced (primarily in the phase) by resistivity of the underlying asthenosphere. Satellite data, which contain only the poloidal magnetic mode, are more sensitive to the conductive asthenosphere, but have little sensitivity to lithospheric resistance. For both seafloor and satellite data’s changes due to plausible variations in Earth parameters are well above error levels associated with source uncertainty, at least in the ocean interior. Although the 3-D modelling results are qualitatively consistent with theoretical analysis, the presence of coastlines and bathymetric variations generates a complex response, confirming that quantitative interpretation of ocean tidal EM fields will require a 3-D treatment. As an illustration of the nested 3-D scheme, seafloor data at five magnetic and seven electric stations in the northeastern Pacific (41○N, 165○W) are fit with trial-and-error forward modelling of a local domain. The simulation results indicate that the lithospheric resistance is roughly 7 × 108 Ωm2. The phase of the seafloor data in this region are inconsistent with a sharp transition between the resistive lithosphere and conductive asthenosphere.

Description: This work has been supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China grants 41804072 and 41574104, and NSF grant EAR-1447109. Special thanks to Dr Benjamin Murphy who provided the conductivity-depth profile for 1-D earth model, Dr Min Ding who provided valuable discussion about the oceanic lithosphere and Dr Jeffery Love who provided comments on the stylistics of the manuscript.

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Genome Biology and Evolution 9 (2017): 659-676, doi:10.1093/gbe/evx023.

Description: Understanding and predicting the fate of populations in changing environments require knowledge about the mechanisms that support phenotypic plasticity and the adaptive value and evolutionary fate of genetic variation within populations. Atlantic killifish (Fundulus heteroclitus) exhibit extensive phenotypic plasticity that supports large population sizes in highly fluctuating estuarine environments. Populations have also evolved diverse local adaptations. To yield insights into the genomic variation that supports their adaptability, we sequenced a reference genome and 48 additional whole genomes from a wild population. Evolution of genes associated with cell cycle regulation and apoptosis is accelerated along the killifish lineage, which is likely tied to adaptations for life in highly variable estuarine environments. Genome-wide standing genetic variation, including nucleotide diversity and copy number variation, is extremely high. The highest diversity genes are those associated with immune function and olfaction, whereas genes under greatest evolutionary constraint are those associated with neurological, developmental, and cytoskeletal functions. Reduced genetic variation is detected for tight junction proteins, which in killifish regulate paracellular permeability that supports their extreme physiological flexibility. Low-diversity genes engage in more regulatory interactions than high-diversity genes, consistent with the influence of pleiotropic constraint on molecular evolution. High genetic variation is crucial for continued persistence of species given the pace of contemporary environmental change. Killifish populations harbor among the highest levels of nucleotide diversity yet reported for a vertebrate species, and thus may serve as a useful model system for studying evolutionary potential in variable and changing environments.

Description: This work was primarily supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (collaborative research grants DEB-1265282, DEB-1120512, DEB-1120013, DEB-1120263, DEB-1120333, DEB-1120398 to J.K.C., D.L.C., M.E.H., S.I.K., M.F.O., J.R.S., W.W., and A.W.). Further support was provided by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (1R01ES021934-01 to A.W., P42ES7373 to T.H.H., P42ES007381 to M.E.H., and R01ES019324 to J.R.S.), the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (P20GM103423 and P20GM104318 to B.L.K.), and the National Science Foundation (DBI-0640462 and XSEDE-MCB100147 to D.G.).

Description: © The Author(s), 2017. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Conservation Physiology 5 (2017): cox061, doi:10.1093/conphys/cox061.

Description: Recent studies have demonstrated that some hormones are present in baleen powder from bowhead (Balaena mysticetus) and North Atlantic right (Eubalaena glacialis) whales. To test the potential generalizability of this technique for studies of stress and reproduction in large whales, we sought to determine whether all major classes of steroid and thyroid hormones are detectable in baleen, and whether these hormones are detectable in other mysticetes. Powdered baleen samples were recovered from single specimens of North Atlantic right, bowhead, blue (Balaenoptera [B.]musculus), sei (B. borealis), minke (B. acutorostrata), fin (B. physalus), humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae) and gray (Eschrichtius robustus) whales. Hormones were extracted with a methanol vortex method, after which we tested all species with commercial enzyme immunoassays (EIAs, Arbor Assays) for progesterone, testosterone, 17β-estradiol, cortisol, corticosterone, aldosterone, thyroxine and tri-iodothyronine, representing a wide array of steroid and thyroid hormones of interest for whale physiology research. In total, 64 parallelism tests (8 species × 8 hormones) were evaluated to verify good binding affinity of the assay antibodies to hormones in baleen. We also tested assay accuracy, although available sample volume limited this test to progesterone, testosterone and cortisol. All tested hormones were detectable in baleen powder of all species, and all assays passed parallelism and accuracy tests. Although only single individuals were tested, the consistent detectability of all hormones in all species indicates that baleen hormone analysis is likely applicable to a broad range of mysticetes, and that the EIA kits tested here perform well with baleen extract. Quantification of hormones in baleen may be a suitable technique with which to explore questions that have historically been difficult to address in large whales, including pregnancy and inter-calving interval, age of sexual maturation, timing and duration of seasonal reproductive cycles, adrenal physiology and metabolic rate.

Description: This work was supported by (1) the Center for Bioengineering Innovation at Northern Arizona University and (2) the New England Aquarium.

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Aslan, C., Beckman, N. G., Rogers, H. S., Bronstein, J., Zurell, D., Hartig, F., Shea, K., Pejchar, L., Neubert, M., Poulsen, J., HilleRisLambers, J., Miriti, M., Loiselle, B., Effiom, E., Zambrano, J., Schupp, G., Pufal, G., Johnson, J., Bullock, J. M., Brodie, J., Bruna, E., Cantrell, R. S., Decker, R., Fricke, E., Gurski, K., Hastings, A., Kogan, O., Razafindratsima, O., Sandor, M., Schreiber, S., Snell, R., Strickland, C., & Zhou, Y. Employing plant functional groups to advance seed dispersal ecology and conservation. AoB Plants, 11(2), (2019):plz006, doi:10.1093/aobpla/plz006.

Description: Seed dispersal enables plants to reach hospitable germination sites and escape natural enemies. Understanding when and how much seed dispersal matters to plant fitness is critical for understanding plant population and community dynamics. At the same time, the complexity of factors that determine if a seed will be successfully dispersed and subsequently develop into a reproductive plant is daunting. Quantifying all factors that may influence seed dispersal effectiveness for any potential seed-vector relationship would require an unrealistically large amount of time, materials and financial resources. On the other hand, being able to make dispersal predictions is critical for predicting whether single species and entire ecosystems will be resilient to global change. Building on current frameworks, we here posit that seed dispersal ecology should adopt plant functional groups as analytical units to reduce this complexity to manageable levels. Functional groups can be used to distinguish, for their constituent species, whether it matters (i) if seeds are dispersed, (ii) into what context they are dispersed and (iii) what vectors disperse them. To avoid overgeneralization, we propose that the utility of these functional groups may be assessed by generating predictions based on the groups and then testing those predictions against species-specific data. We suggest that data collection and analysis can then be guided by robust functional group definitions. Generalizing across similar species in this way could help us to better understand the population and community dynamics of plants and tackle the complexity of seed dispersal as well as its disruption.

Description: Ideas for this manuscript initiated during the Seed Dispersal Workshop held in May 2016 at the Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center in Annapolis, MD and supported by the US National Science Foundation Grant DEB-1548194 to N.G.B. and the National Socio‐Environmental Synthesis Center under the US National Science Foundation Grant DBI‐1052875. D.Z. received funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF, grant: PZ00P3_168136/1) and from the German Science Foundation (DFG, grant: ZU 361/1- 1). Contributions by the authors C.A. led the development of the concepts, writing, and revising of the manuscript with input from N.G.B. and H.S.R. All authors contributed to the development of concepts and are listed in order of contribution and alphabetical order within each level of contribution.

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Alexander, H., Johnson, L. K., & Brown, C. T.. Keeping it light: (re)analyzing community-wide datasets without major infrastructure. Gigascience, 8(2),(2019): giy159, doi:10.1093/gigascience/giy159.

Description: DNA sequencing technology has revolutionized the field of biology, shifting biology from a data-limited to data-rich state. Central to the interpretation of sequencing data are the computational tools and approaches that convert raw data into biologically meaningful information. Both the tools and the generation of data are actively evolving, yet the practice of re-analysis of previously generated data with new tools is not commonplace. Re-analysis of existing data provides an affordable means of generating new information and will likely become more routine within biology, yet necessitates a new set of considerations for best practices and resource development. Here, we discuss several practices that we believe to be broadly applicable when re-analyzing data, especially when done by small research groups.

Description: Funding was provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (award GBMF4551 to C.T.B.).

Description: Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2019. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer Nature for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Zakroff, C., Mooney, T.A. & Wirth, C. Ocean acidification responses in paralarval squid swimming behavior using a novel 3D tracking system. Hydrobiologia, 808(1),(2018):83-106, doi:10.1007/s10750-017-3342-9.

Description: Chronic embryonic exposure to ocean acidification (OA) has been shown to degrade the aragonitic statolith of paralarval squid, Doryteuthis pealeii, a key structure for their swimming behavior. This study examined if day-of-hatching paralarval D. pealeii from eggs reared under chronic OA demonstrated measurable impairments to swimming activity and control. This required the development of a novel, cost-effective, and robust method for 3D motion tracking and analysis. Squid eggs were reared in pCO2 levels in a dose-dependent manner ranging from 400 - 2200 ppm. Initial 2D experiments showed paralarvae in higher acidification environments spent more time at depth. In 3D experiments, velocity, particularly positive and negative vertical velocities, significantly decreased from 400 to 1000 ppm pCO2, but showed non-significant decreases at higher concentrations. Activity and horizontal velocity decreased linearly with increasing pCO2, indicating a subtle impact to paralarval energetics. Patterns may have been obscured by notable individual variability in the paralarvae. Responses were also seen to vary between trials on cohort or potentially annual scales. Overall, paralarval swimming appeared resilient to OA, with effects being slight. The newly developed 3D tracking system provides a powerful and accessible method for future studies to explore similar questions in the larvae of aquatic taxa.

Description: We thank D. Remsen, the MBL Marine Resources Center staff, and MBL Gemma crew for their support in acquiring squid. R. Galat and the facilities staff of the WHOI ESL provided system support. D. McCorkle, KYK Chan, and M. White provided valuable insight on the OA system. E. Moberg, A. Beet, and A. Solow assisted in the development and coding of the 3D model system. We also thank E. Bonk, K. Hoering, M. Lee, D. Weiler, and A. Schlunk for their assistance and input with the experiments. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. 1122374. This project is funded by NSF Grant No. 1220034.

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Chen, R.; Park, H. A.; Mnatsakanyan, N.; Niu, Y.; Licznerski, P.; Wu, J.; Miranda, P.; Graham, M.; Tang, J.; Boon, A. J. W.; Cossu, G.; Mandemakers, W.; Bonifati, V.; Smith, P. J. S.; Alavian, K. N.; Jonas, E. A. Parkinson's disease protein DJ-1 regulates ATP synthase protein components to increase neuronal process outgrowth. Cell Death & Disease, 10(6), (2019):469, doi:10.1038/s41419-019-1679-x.

Description: Familial Parkinson’s disease (PD) protein DJ-1 mutations are linked to early onset PD. We have found that DJ-1 binds directly to the F1FO ATP synthase β subunit. DJ-1’s interaction with the β subunit decreased mitochondrial uncoupling and enhanced ATP production efficiency while in contrast mutations in DJ-1 or DJ-1 knockout increased mitochondrial uncoupling, and depolarized neuronal mitochondria. In mesencephalic DJ-1 KO cultures, there was a progressive loss of neuronal process extension. This was ameliorated by a pharmacological reagent, dexpramipexole, that binds to ATP synthase, closing a mitochondrial inner membrane leak and enhancing ATP synthase efficiency. ATP synthase c-subunit can form an uncoupling channel; we measured, therefore, ATP synthase F1 (β subunit) and c-subunit protein levels. We found that ATP synthase β subunit protein level in the DJ-1 KO neurons was approximately half that found in their wild-type counterparts, comprising a severe defect in ATP synthase stoichiometry and unmasking c-subunit. We suggest that DJ-1 enhances dopaminergic cell metabolism and growth by its regulation of ATP synthase protein components.

Description: The research was supported by NIH (NS081746) to E.A.J., W.M. and V.B. are supported by the Stichting Parkinson Fonds (The Netherlands).

Description: © International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in ICES Journal of Marine Science 73 (2016): 1839-1850, doi: 10.1093/icesjms/fsw086.

Description: For terrestrial and marine benthic ecologists, landscape ecology provides a framework to address issues of complexity, patchiness, and scale—providing theory and context for ecosystem based management in a changing climate. Marine pelagic ecosystems are likewise changing in response to warming, changing chemistry, and resource exploitation. However, unlike spatial landscapes that migrate slowly with time, pelagic seascapes are embedded in a turbulent, advective ocean. Adaptations from landscape ecology to marine pelagic ecosystem management must consider the nature and scale of biophysical interactions associated with organisms ranging from microbes to whales, a hierarchical organization shaped by physical processes, and our limited capacity to observe and monitor these phenomena across global oceans. High frequency, multiscale, and synoptic characterization of the 4-D variability of seascapes are now available through improved classification methods, a maturing array of satellite remote sensing products, advances in autonomous sampling of multiple levels of biological complexity, and emergence of observational networks. Merging of oceanographic and ecological paradigms will be necessary to observe, manage, and conserve species embedded in a dynamic seascape mosaic, where the boundaries, extent, and location of features change with time.

Description: This work was supported by NASA grant NNX14AP62A “National Marine Sanctuaries as Sentinel Sites for a Demonstration Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON)” funded under the National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP RFP NOAA-NOS-IOOS-2014-2003803 in partnership between NOAA, BOEM, and NASA), the NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) Program Office, and the LenFest Ocean Program.

Description: Author Posting. © The Authors, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of The Royal Astronomical Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Journal International 218(3), (2019): 2165-2178, doi: 10.1093/gji/ggz280.

Description: A multitaper estimator is proposed that accommodates time-series containing gaps without using any form of interpolation. In contrast with prior missing-data multitaper estimators that force standard Slepian sequences to be zero at gaps, the proposed missing-data Slepian sequences are defined only where data are present. The missing-data Slepian sequences are frequency independent, as are the eigenvalues that define the energy concentration within the resolution bandwidth, when the process bandwidth is [−1/2,1/2) for unit sampling and the sampling scheme comprises integer multiples of unity. As a consequence, one need only compute the ensuing missing-data Slepian sequences for a given sampling scheme once, and then the spectrum at an arbitrary set of frequencies can be computed using them. It is also shown that the resulting missing-data multitaper estimator can incorporate all of the optimality features (i.e. adaptive-weighting, F-test and reshaping) of the standard multitaper estimator, and can be applied to bivariate or multivariate situations in similar ways. Performance of the missing-data multitaper estimator is illustrated using length of day, seafloor pressure and Nile River low stand time-series.

Description: The length of day utilized in Section 3 are available from http://hpiers.obspm.fr. The pressure data used in Section 4 are available from https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JC014586. A Matlab function MDmwps.m to compute missing-data power spectra is available from the Mathworks file exchange website. The author thanks Jeff Park and editor F.J. Simons for thorough reviews. This work was supported by an Internal Research and Development award at WHOI, and by the Walter A. and Hope Noyes Smith Chair for Excellence in Oceanography.

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Johnson, L. K., Alexander, H., & Brown, C. T. Re-assembly, quality evaluation, and annotation of 678 microbial eukaryotic reference transcriptomes. Gigascience, 8(4), (2019): giy158, doi: 10.1093/gigascience/giy158.

Description: Background: De novo transcriptome assemblies are required prior to analyzing RNA sequencing data from a species without an existing reference genome or transcriptome. Despite the prevalence of transcriptomic studies, the effects of using different workflows, or “pipelines,” on the resulting assemblies are poorly understood. Here, a pipeline was programmatically automated and used to assemble and annotate raw transcriptomic short-read data collected as part of the Marine Microbial Eukaryotic Transcriptome Sequencing Project. The resulting transcriptome assemblies were evaluated and compared against assemblies that were previously generated with a different pipeline developed by the National Center for Genome Research. Results: New transcriptome assemblies contained the majority of previous contigs as well as new content. On average, 7.8% of the annotated contigs in the new assemblies were novel gene names not found in the previous assemblies. Taxonomic trends were observed in the assembly metrics. Assemblies from the Dinoflagellata showed a higher number of contigs and unique k-mers than transcriptomes from other phyla, while assemblies from Ciliophora had a lower percentage of open reading frames compared to other phyla. Conclusions: Given current bioinformatics approaches, there is no single “best” reference transcriptome for a particular set of raw data. As the optimum transcriptome is a moving target, improving (or not) with new tools and approaches, automated and programmable pipelines are invaluable for managing the computationally intensive tasks required for re-processing large sets of samples with revised pipelines and ensuring a common evaluation workflow is applied to all samples. Thus, re-assembling existing data with new tools using automated and programmable pipelines may yield more accurate identification of taxon-specific trends across samples in addition to novel and useful products for the community.

Description: Funding was provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation under award number GBMF4551 to C.T.B. Jetstream cloud platform was used with XSEDE allocation TG-BIO160028 [66, 67].

Description: © The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Millette, N. C., Kelble, C., Linhoss, A., Ashby, S., & Visser, L. Using spatial variability in the rate of change of chlorophyll a to improve water quality management in a subtropical oligotrophic estuary. Estuaries and Coasts, 42(7), (2019): 1792-1803, doi:10.1007/s12237-019-00610-5.

Description: Anthropogenic eutrophication threatens numerous aquatic ecosystems across the globe. Proactive management that prevents a system from becoming eutrophied is more effective and cheaper than restoring a eutrophic system, but detecting early warning signs and problematic nutrient sources in a relatively healthy system can be difficult. The goal of this study was to investigate if rates of change in chlorophyll a and nutrient concentrations at individual stations can be used to identify specific areas that need to be targeted for management. Biscayne Bay is a coastal embayment in southeast Florida with primarily adequate water quality that has experienced rapid human population growth over the last century. Water quality data collected at 48 stations throughout Biscayne Bay over a 20-year period (1995–2014) were examined to identify any water quality trends associated with eutrophication. Chlorophyll a and phosphate concentrations have increased throughout Biscayne Bay, which is a primary indicator of eutrophication. Moreover, chlorophyll a concentrations throughout the northern area, where circulation is restricted, and in nearshore areas of central Biscayne Bay are increasing at a higher rate compared to the rest of the Bay. This suggests increases in chlorophyll a are due to local nutrient sources from the watershed. These areas are also where recent seagrass die-offs have occurred, suggesting an urgent need for management intervention. This is in contrast with the state of Florida listing of Biscayne Bay as a medium priority impaired body of water.

Description: Data provided by the SERC-FIU/SFWMD Water Quality Monitoring Network is supported by SFWMD/SERC Cooperative Agreement #4600000352 as well as EPA Agreement #X7-96410603-3. This research was also funded by a NOAA/Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory grant to the Northern Gulf Institute (award number NA160AR4320199).

Description: Organisms in shallow waters at high latitudes are under pressure due to climate change. These areas are typically inhabited by microphytobenthos (MPB) communities, composed mainly of diatoms. Only sparse information is available on the ecophysiology and acclimation processes within MPBs from Arctic regions. The physico-chemical environment and the ecology and ecophysiology of benthic diatoms in Kongsfjorden (Svalbard, Norway) are addressed in this review. MPB biofilms cover extensive areas of sediment. They show high rates of primary production, stabilise sediment surfaces against erosion under hydrodynamic forces,and affect the exchange of oxygen and nutrients across the sediment-water interface. Additionally, this phototrophic community represents a key component in the functioning of the Kongsfjorden trophic web, particularly as a major food source for benthic suspension- or deposit-feeders. MPB in Kongsfjorden is confronted with pronounced seasonal variations in solar radiation, low temperatures, and hyposaline (meltwater) conditions in summer, as well as long periods of ice and snow cover in winter. From the few data available, it seems that these organisms can easily cope with these environmental extremes. The underlying physiological mechanisms that allow growth and photosynthesis to continue under widely varying abiotic parameters, along with vertical migration and heterotrophy, and biochemical features such as a pronounced fatty-acid metabolism and silicate incorporation are discussed. Existing gaps in our knowledge of benthic diatoms in Kongsfjorden, such as the chemical ecology of biotic interactions, need to be filled. In addition, since many of the underlying molecular acclimation mechanisms are poorly understood, modern approaches based on transcriptomics, proteomics, and/or metabolomics, in conjunction with cell biological and biochemical techniques, are urgently needed. Climate change models for the Arctic predict other multifactorial stressors, such as an increase in precipitation and permafrost thawing, with consequences for the shallow-water regions. Both precipitation and permafrost thawing are likely to increase nutrient-enriched, turbid freshwater runoff and may locally counteract the expected increase in coastal radiation availability. So far, complex interactions among factors, as well as the full genetic diversity and physiological plasticity of Arctic benthic diatoms, have only rarely been considered. The limited existing information is described and discussed in this review.

Description: Effects of temperature changes on phytoplankton communities seem to be highly context-specific, but few studies have analyzed whether this context specificity depends on differences in the abiotic conditions or in species composition between studies. We present an experiment that allows disentangling the contribution of abiotic and biotic differences in shaping the response to two aspects of temperature change: permanent increase of mean temperature versus pulse disturbance in form of a heat wave. We used natural communities from six different sites of a floodplain system as well as artificially mixed communities from laboratory cultures and grew both, artificial and natural communities, in water from the six different floodplain lakes (sites). All 12 contexts (2 communities × 6 sites) were first exposed to three different temperature levels (12, 18, 24 °C, respectively) and afterward to temperature pulses (4 °C increase for 7 h day(-1)). Temperature-dependent changes in biomass and community composition depended on the initial composition of phytoplankton communities. Abiotic conditions had a major effect on biomass of phytoplankton communities exposed to different temperature conditions, however, the effect of biotic and abiotic conditions together was even more pronounced. Additionally, phytoplankton community responses to pulse temperature effects depended on the warming history. By disentangling abiotic and biotic effects, our study shows that temperature-dependent effects on phytoplankton communities depend on both, biotic and abiotic constraints.

Description: Identifying stabilizing factors in foodwebs is a long standing challenge with wide implications for community ecology and conservation. Here, we investigate the stability of spatially resolved meta-foodwebs with far-ranging super-predators for whom the whole meta-foodwebs appears to be a single habitat. By using a combination of generalized modeling with a master stability function approach, we are able to efficiently explore the asymptotic stability of large classes of realistic many-patch meta-foodwebs. We show that meta-foodwebs with far-ranging top predators are more stable than those with localized top predators. Moreover, adding far-ranging generalist top predators to a system can have a net stabilizing effect. These results highlight the importance of top predator conservation.

Description: We evaluated whether the central nervous system (CNS) chooses muscle activations not only to achieve behavioral goals but also to minimize stresses and strains within joints. We analyzed the coordination between quadriceps muscles during locomotion in rats before and after imposing a lateral force on the patella. Vastus lateralis (VL) and vastus medialis (VM) in the rat produce identical knee torques but opposing mediolateral patellar forces. If the CNS regulates internal joint stresses, we predicted that after imposing a lateral patellar load by attaching a spring between the patella and lateral femur, the CNS would reduce the ratio between VL and VM activation to minimize net mediolateral patellar forces. Our results confirmed this prediction, showing that VL activation was reduced after attaching the spring whereas VM and rectus femoris (RF) activations were not significantly changed. This adaptation was reversed after the spring was detached. These changes were not observed immediately after attaching the spring but only developed after 3–5 days, suggesting that they reflected gradual processes rather than immediate compensatory reflexes. Overall, these results support the hypothesis that the CNS chooses muscle activations to regulate internal joint variables.