Dynamic Seascape Research Articles

Long-distance communication can enable collective migration in a dynamic seascape

Social information is predicted to enhance the quality of animals’ migratory decisions in dynamic ecosystems, but the relative benefits of social information in the long-range movements of marine megafauna are unknown. In particular, whether and how migrants use nonlocal information gained through social communication at the large spatial scale of oceanic ecosystems remains unclear. Here we test hypotheses about the cues underlying timing of blue whales’ breeding migration in the Northeast Pacific via individual-based models parameterized by empirical behavioral data. Comparing emergent patterns from individual-based models to individual and population-level empirical metrics of migration timing, we find that individual whales likely rely on both personal and social sources of information about forage availability in deciding when to depart from their vast and dynamic foraging habitat and initiate breeding migration. Empirical patterns of migratory phenology can only be reproduced by models in which individuals use long-distance social information about conspecifics’ behavioral state, which is known to be encoded in the patterning of their widely propagating songs. Further, social communication improves pre-migration seasonal foraging performance by over 60% relative to asocial movement mechanisms. Our results suggest that long-range communication enhances the perceptual ranges of migrating whales beyond that of any individual, resulting in increased foraging performance and more collective migration timing. These findings indicate the value of nonlocal social information in an oceanic migrant and suggest the importance of long-distance acoustic communication in the collective migration of wide-ranging marine megafauna.

Modeling the Distribution of Atlantic Croaker and Spot in a Dynamic Seascape Using Metabolic Scope

In estuarine and coastal systems, anthropogenic activities and directional changes in global air temperatures have led to increased water temperatures, as well as increased frequency and severity of episodic hypoxia. These alterations have had population-level effects on aquatic organisms, including changes in species-specific distributions. Because physiology is the transfer function connecting environmental conditions to individual behaviors and eventually to population-level effects, we used individual-based models (IBMs) that incorporate changes in metabolic scope as motivation for movement. Our objective was to investigate the effects of temperature and hypoxia on the distribution of Atlantic croaker and spot in Chesapeake Bay. We compared the predicted monthly fish distributions from the IBMs with apparent fish distributions recorded by the VIMS Juvenile Fish Trawl Survey during 1988–2014. IBMs failed to reproduce accurately the apparent spatial distributions of Atlantic croaker and spot. More specifically, compared with the trawl survey, IBMs predicted larger proportions of these two species would be captured in the lower regions of Chesapeake Bay and smaller proportions in the York and Rappahannock rivers. We postulate that, because similar thermal and oxygen conditions were occupied by fish in the IBMs and in the wild, temperature may not be the most important factor motivating the movement of Atlantic croaker and spot in Chesapeake Bay, and other spatial factors (e.g., prey availability) act in concert with temperature and hypoxia to determine the spatial distributions of Atlantic croaker and spot in Chesapeake Bay. Alternatively, surveys used to estimate species occurrences could be biased if gear vulnerability is affected by temperature or oxygen conditions (or both). Additional research is needed to clarify which condition is true or if a combination of these factors (and others) led to discrepancies between predicted and apparent fish distributions based on trawl survey data.

Effects of seagrass restoration on coastal fish abundance and diversity.

Restoration is accelerating to reverse global declines of key habitats and recover lost ecosystem functions, particularly in coastal ecosystems. However, there is high uncertainty about the long-term capacity of restored ecosystems to provide habitat and increase biodiversity and the degree to which these ecosystem services are mediated by spatial and temporal environmental variability. We addressed these gaps by sampling fishes biannually for 5-7 years (2012-2018) at 16 sites inside and outside a rapidly expanding restored seagrass meadow in coastal Virginia (USA). Despite substantial among-year variation in abundance and species composition, seine catches in restored seagrass beds were consistently larger (6.4 times more fish, p<0.001) and more speciose (2.6 times greater species richness, p<0.001; 3.1 times greater Hill-Shannon diversity, p=0.03) than seine catches in adjacent unvegetated areas. Catches were particularly larger during summer than autumn (p<0.01). Structural equation modeling revealed that depth and water residence time interacted to control seagrass presence, leading to higher fish abundance and richness in shallow, well-flushed areas that supported seagrass. Together, our results indicate that seagrass restoration yields large and consistent benefits for many coastal fishes, but that restoration and its benefits are sensitive to the dynamic seascapes in which restoration is conducted. Consideration of how seascape-scale environmental variability affects the success of habitat restoration and subsequent ecosystem function will improve restoration outcomes and the provisioning of ecosystem services.

Encounters at the Mound in Old Norse Literature: Dialogues between Landscape and Narrative

Encounters at the Mound in Old Norse Literature: Dialogues between Landscape and Narrative

A Dynamic Stress-Scape Framework to Evaluate Potential Effects of Multiple Environmental Stressors on Gulf of Alaska Juvenile Pacific Cod

Quantifying the spatial and temporal footprint of multiple environmental stressors on marine fisheries is imperative to understanding the effects of changing ocean conditions on living marine resources. Pacific Cod(Gadus macrocephalus), an important marine species in the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem, has declined dramatically in recent years, likely in response to extreme environmental variability in the Gulf of Alaska related to anomalous marine heatwave conditions in 2014–2016 and 2019. Here, we evaluate the effects of two potential environmental stressors, temperature variability and ocean acidification, on the growth of juvenile Pacific Cod in the Gulf of Alaska using a novel machine-learning framework called “stress-scapes,” which applies the fundamentals of dynamic seascape classification to both environmental and biological data. Stress-scapes apply a probabilistic self-organizing map (prSOM) machine learning algorithm and Hierarchical Agglomerative Clustering (HAC) analysis to produce distinct, dynamic patches of the ocean that share similar environmental variability and Pacific Cod growth characteristics, preserve the topology of the underlying data, and are robust to non-linear biological patterns. We then compare stress-scape output classes to Pacific Cod growth rates in the field using otolith increment analysis. Our work successfully resolved five dynamic stress-scapes in the coastal Gulf of Alaska ecosystem from 2010 to 2016. We utilized stress-scapes to compare conditions during the 2014–2016 marine heatwave to cooler years immediately prior and found that the stress-scapes captured distinct heatwave and non-heatwave classes, which highlighted high juvenile Pacific Cod growth and anomalous environmental conditions during heatwave conditions. Dominant stress-scapes underestimated juvenile Pacific Cod growth across all study years when compared to otolith-derived field growth rates, highlighting the potential for selective mortality or biological parameters currently missing in the stress-scape model as well as differences in potential growth predicted by the stress-scape and realized growth observed in the field. A sensitivity analysis of the stress-scape classification result shows that including growth rate data in stress-scape classification adjusts the training of the prSOM, enabling it to distinguish between regions where elevated sea surface temperature is negatively impacting growth rates. Classifications that rely solely on environmental data fail to distinguish these regions. With their incorporation of environmental and non-linear physiological variables across a wide spatio-temporal scale, stress-scapes show promise as an emerging methodology for evaluating the response of marine fisheries to changing ocean conditions in any dynamic marine system where sufficient data are available.

Dynamic Satellite Seascapes as a Biogeographic Framework for Understanding Phytoplankton Assemblages in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, United States

Physical, chemical, geological, and biological factors interact in marine environments to shape complex but recurrent patterns of organization of life on multiple spatial and temporal scales. These factors define biogeographic regions in surface waters that we refer to as seascapes. We characterize seascapes for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS) and southwest Florida shelf nearshore environment using multivariate satellite and in situ measurements of Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs) and Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs). The study focuses on three periods that cover separate oceanographic expeditions (March 11-18, May 9-13, and September 12-19, 2016). We collected observations on bio-optical parameters (particulate and dissolved spectral absorption coefficients), phytoplankton community composition, and hydrography from a ship. Phytoplankton community composition was evaluated using 1) chemotaxonomic analysis (CHEMTAX) based on high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) pigment measurements, and 2) analysis of spectral phytoplankton absorption coefficients (aphy). Dynamic seascapes were derived by combining satellite time series of sea surface temperature, chlorophyll-a concentration, and normalized fluorescent line height (nFLH) using a supervised thematic classification. The seascapes identified areas of different salinity and nutrient concentrations where different phytoplankton communities were present as determined by hierarchical cluster analyses of HPLC pigments and aphy spectra. Oligotrophic, Mesotrophic and Transition seascape classes of deeper offshore waters were dominated by small phytoplankton ( 60 %). Spectral analysis of aphy indicated higher absorption levels at 492 and 550 nm wavelengths in seascapes carrying predominantly small phytoplankton than in classes dominated by larger taxa. Seascapes carrying large phytoplankton showed absorption peaks at the 673 nm wavelength. The seascape framework promises to be a tool to detect different biogeographic domains quickly, providing information about the changing environmental conditions experienced by coral reef organisms including coral, sponges, fish and higher trophic levels. The effort illustrates best practices developed under the Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) demonstration project, in collaboration with the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Research (SFER) project managed by the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory of NOAA (AOML-NOAA).

Seascapes as a new vernacular for pelagic ocean monitoring, management and conservation

AbstractFor 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.

Weathering a Dynamic Seascape: Influences of Wind and Rain on a Seabird's Year-Round Activity Budgets.

How animals respond to varying environmental conditions is fundamental to ecology and is a question that has gained impetus due to mounting evidence indicating negative effects of global change on biodiversity. Behavioural plasticity is one mechanism that enables individuals and species to deal with environmental changes, yet for many taxa information on behavioural parameters and their capacity to change are lacking or restricted to certain periods within the annual cycle. This is particularly true for seabirds where year-round behavioural information is intrinsically challenging to acquire due to their reliance on the marine environment where they are difficult to study. Using data from over 13,000 foraging trips throughout the annual cycle, acquired using new-generation automated VHF technology, we described sex-specific, year-round activity budgets in Cape gannets. Using these data we investigated the role of weather (wind and rain) on foraging activity and time allocated to nest attendance. Foraging activity was clearly influenced by wind speed, wind direction and rainfall during and outside the breeding season. Generally, strong wind conditions throughout the year resulted in relatively short foraging trips. Birds spent longer periods foraging when rainfall was moderate. Nest attendance, which was sex-specific outside of the breeding season, was also influenced by meteorological conditions. Large amounts of rainfall (> 2.5 mm per hour) and strong winds (> 13 m s-1) resulted in gannets spending shorter amounts of time at their nests. We discuss these findings in terms of life history strategies and implications for the use of seabirds as bio-indicators.

Predatory Sharks and Sea Turtles

The basic model “landscape of fear” predicts that as an animal's landscape changes from low to high risk of predation, prey species will alter their behavior to risk avoidance. We investigated predator–prey relationships between tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier) and loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) in the North Atlantic. This included the use of satellite tracking to examine shark and turtle distributions as well as their surfacing behaviors under varying levels of home range overlap. Turtles did not alter their surfacing behaviors to risk avoidance when overlap in shark–turtle core home range was high. However, in areas of high overlap with turtles, sharks exhibited modified surfacing behaviors that may enhance predation opportunity. Tiger shark (Galeocerdo cuvier) in the North Atlantic. Tiger sharks may alter their feeding behaviors in the presence of sea turtles. These photographs illustrate the article “Evaluating the landscape of fear between apex predatory sharks and mobile sea turtles across a large dynamic seascape,” by Neil Hammerschlag, Annette C. Broderick, John W. Coker, Michael S. Coyne, Mark Dodd, Michael G. Frick, Matthew H. Godfrey, Brendan J. Godley, DuBose B. Griffin, Kyra Hartog, Sally R. Murphy, Thomas M. Murphy, Emily Rose Nelson, Kristina L. Williams, Matthew J. Witt, and Lucy A. Hawkes, published in Ecology 96(8):2117–2126, August 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1890/14-2113.1

Evaluating the landscape of fear between apex predatory sharks and mobile sea turtles across a large dynamic seascape.

The "landscape of fear" model has been proposed as a unifying concept in ecology, describing, in part, how animals behave and move about in their environment. The basic model predicts that as an animal's landscape changes from low to high risk of predation, prey species will alter their behavior to risk avoidance. However, studies investigating and evaluating the landscape of fear model across large spatial scales (tens to hundreds of thousands of square kilometers) in dynamic, open, aquatic systems involving apex predators and highly mobile prey are lacking. To address this knowledge gap, we investigated predator-prey relationships between. tiger sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier) and loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) in the North Atlantic Ocean. This included the use of satellite tracking to examine shark and turtle distributions as well as their surfacing behaviors under varying levels of home range overlap. Our findings revealed patterns that deviated from our a priori predictions based on the landscape of fear model. Specifically, turtles did not alter their surfacing behaviors to risk avoidance when overlap in shark-turtle core home range was high. However, in areas of high overlap with turtles, sharks exhibited modified surfacing behaviors that may enhance predation opportunity. We suggest that turtles may be an important factor in determining shark,distribution, whereas for turtles, other life history trade-offs may play a larger role in defining their habitat use. We propose that these findings are a result of both biotic and physically driven factors that independently or synergistically affect predator-prey interactions in this system. These results have implications for evolutionary biology, community ecology; and wildlife conservation. Further, given the difficulty in studying highly migratory marine species, our approach and conclusions may be applied to the study of other predator-prey systems.

Microbial diversity and community structure across environmental gradients in Bransfield Strait, Western Antarctic Peninsula.

The Southern Ocean is currently subject to intense investigations, mainly related to its importance for global biogeochemical cycles and its alarming rate of warming in response to climate change. Microbes play an essential role in the functioning of this ecosystem and are the main drivers of the biogeochemical cycling of elements. Yet, the diversity and abundance of microorganisms in this system remain poorly studied, in particular with regards to changes along environmental gradients. Here, we used amplicon sequencing of 16S rRNA gene tags using primers covering both Bacteria and Archaea to assess the composition and diversity of the microbial communities from four sampling depths (surface, the maximum and minimum of the oxygen concentration, and near the seafloor) at 10 oceanographic stations located in Bransfield Strait [northwest of the Antarctic Peninsula (AP)] and near the sea ice edge (north of the AP). Samples collected near the seafloor and at the oxygen minimum exhibited a higher diversity than those from the surface and oxygen maximum for both bacterial and archaeal communities. The main taxonomic groups identified below 100 m were Thaumarchaeota, Euryarchaeota and Proteobacteria (Gamma-, Delta-, Beta-, and Alphaproteobacteria), whereas in the mixed layer above 100 m Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria (mainly Alpha- and Gammaproteobacteria) were found to be dominant. A combination of environmental factors seems to influence the microbial community composition. Our results help to understand how the dynamic seascape of the Southern Ocean shapes the microbial community composition and set a baseline for upcoming studies to evaluate the response of this ecosystem to future changes.

Hierarchical and dynamic seascapes: A quantitative framework for scaling pelagic biogeochemistry and ecology

Comparative analyses of oceanic ecosystems require an objective framework to define coherent study regions and scale the patterns and processes observed within them. We applied the hierarchical patch mosaic paradigm of landscape ecology to the study of the seasonal variability of the North Pacific to facilitate comparative analysis between pelagic ecosystems and provide spatiotemporal context for Eulerian time-series studies. Using 13-year climatologies of sea surface temperature (SST), photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), and chlorophyll a (chl-a), we classified seascapes in environmental space that were monthly-resolved, dynamic and nested in space and time. To test the assumption that seascapes represent coherent regions with unique biogeochemical function and to determine the hierarchical scale that best characterized variance in biogeochemical parameters, independent data sets were analyzed across seascapes using analysis of variance (ANOVA), nested-ANOVA and multiple linear regression (MLR) analyses. We also compared the classification efficiency (as defined by the ANOVA F-statistic) of resultant dynamic seascapes to a commonly-used static classification system. Variance of nutrients and net primary productivity (NPP) were well characterized in the first two levels of hierarchy of eight seascapes nested within three superseascapes (R2=0.5–0.7). Dynamic boundaries at this level resulted in a nearly 2-fold increase in classification efficiency over static boundaries. MLR analyses revealed differential forcing on pCO2 across seascapes and hierarchical levels and a 33% reduction in mean model error with increased partitioning (from 18.5μatm to 12.0μatm pCO2). Importantly, the empirical influence of seasonality was minor across seascapes at all hierarchical levels, suggesting that seascape partitioning minimizes the effect of non-hydrographic variables. As part of the emerging field of pelagic seascape ecology, this effort provides an improved means of monitoring and comparing oceanographic biophysical dynamics and an objective, quantitative basis by which to scale data from local experiments and observations to regional and global biogeochemical cycles.

Shrinking the Haystack: Using an AUV in an Integrated Ocean Observatory to Map Atlantic Sturgeon in the Coastal Ocean

ABSTRACTPhysical processes in the coastal Mid‐Atlantic create a complex and dynamic seascape. Understanding how coastal fishes respond to this complexity has been a major motivation in establishing coastal biotelemetry arrays. Most coastal arrays maximize the probability offish detection by positioning hydrophones near geophysical bottlenecks. The development of a real‐time ocean observatory allows for synchronous mapping of dynamic hydrographic structures important to coastal fishes. These observations provide important context for interpreting the impact of oceanographic features on the behavior of telemetered animals. In a proofofconcept mission, we deployed a Slocum glider in a real‐time ocean observatory to demonstrate how mobile listening assets could be dynamically reallocated in response to the mesoscale physics of the coastal ocean. The Slocum glider detected four Atlantic Sturgeon Acipencer oxyrinchus oxyrinchus that were in a shallow, well‐mixed, and relatively warm and fresh water mass in a region of historic Atlantic Sturgeon bycatch.

Satellite tracking of sea turtles: Where have we been and where do we go next?

The use of satellite tracking for the fundamental and applied study of marine turtles began in the 1980s but has undergone rapid growth in recent years. To provide a background against which to judge the past success and future directions of these research efforts we carried out a com- prehensive review of over 130 scientific papers on the use of this technique in this taxon. We show how satellite tracking has changed over time as well as outlining biases in spatial, species and life- stage coverage. Descriptions of migration routes and other habitats have offered novel insights into the basic life history patterns of some species, highlighted focal areas for conservation and reinforced the multi-national nature of the stakeholders of many populations. In foraging areas, knowledge is growing as to how animals move within dynamic seascapes, thus facilitating our understanding of 3-dimensional habitat use and seasonal patterns of behaviour. More experimental approaches have elucidated navigational capabilities and post-release survival following fisheries interaction and long-term captivity. In addition, through the Internet and other media, satellite tracking appears to have been effective in engaging public attention in many countries. Finally, we discuss why the use of the technique has increased so markedly over time and point out key areas of concern that we feel should be addressed by the community of researchers and donors who focus on sea turtles.

Chemotactic Response of Marine Micro-Organisms to Micro-Scale Nutrient Layers

The degree to which planktonic microbes can exploit microscale resource patches will have considerable implications for oceanic trophodynamics and biogeochemical flux. However, to take advantage of nutrient patches in the ocean, swimming microbes must overcome the influences of physical forces including molecular diffusion and turbulent shear, which will limit the availability of patches and the ability of bacteria to locate them. Until recently, methodological limitations have precluded direct examinations of microbial behaviour within patchy habitats and realistic small-scale flow conditions. Hence, much of our current knowledge regarding microbial behaviour in the ocean has been procured from theoretical predictions. To obtain new information on microbial foraging behaviour in the ocean we have applied soft lithographic fabrication techniques to develop 2 microfluidic devices, which we have used to create (i) microscale nutrient patches with dimensions and diffusive characteristics relevant to oceanic processes and (ii) microscale vortices, with shear rates corresponding to those expected in the ocean. These microfluidic devices have permitted a first direct examination of microbial swimming and chemotactic behaviour within a heterogeneous and dynamic seascape. The combined use of epifluorescence and phase contrast microscopy allow direct examinations of the physical dimensions and diffusive characteristics of nutrient patches, while observing the population-level aggregative response, in addition to the swimming behaviour of individual microbes. These experiments have revealed that some species of phytoplankton, heterotrophic bacteria and phagotrophic protists are adept at locating and exploiting diffusing microscale resource patches within very short time frames. We have also shown that up to moderate shear rates, marine bacteria are able to fight the flow and swim through their environment at their own accord. However, beyond a threshold high shear level, bacteria are aligned in the shear flow and are less capable of swimming without disturbance from the flow. Microfluidics represents a novel and inexpensive approach for studying aquatic microbial ecology, and due to its suitability for accurately creating realistic flow fields and substrate gradients at the microscale, is ideally applicable to examinations of microbial behaviour at the smallest scales of interaction. We therefore suggest that microfluidics represents a valuable tool for obtaining a better understanding of the ecology of microorganisms in the ocean.

Spatial Resilience of Coral Reefs

There have been several earlier studies that addressed the influence of natural disturbance regimes on coral reefs. Humans alter natural disturbance regimes, introduce new stressors, and modify background conditions of reefs. We focus on how coral reef ecosystems relate to disturbance in an increasingly human-dominated environment. The concept of ecosystem resilience—that is, the capacity of complex systems with multiple stable states to absorb disturbance, reorganize, and adapt to change—is central in this context. Instead of focusing on the recovery of certain species and populations within disturbed sites of individual reefs, we address spatial resilience—that is, the dynamic capacity of a reef matrix to reorganize and maintain ecosystem function following disturbance. The interplay between disturbance and ecosystem resilience is highlighted. We begin the identification of spatial sources of resilience in dynamic seascapes and exemplify and discuss the relation between “ecological memory” (biological legacies, mobile link species, and support areas) and functional diversity for seascape resilience. Managing for resilience in dynamic seascapes not only enhances the likelihood of conserving coral reefs, it also provides insurance to society by sustaining essential ecosystem services.