Challenges to mangroves of the Semiarid Equatorial Coast of Brazil in the Anthropocene.

The semiarid northeast coast of Brazil harbours just less than 44,300 ha of mangroves, 4% of Brazilian total. Notwithstanding this relatively small area, these forests have high ecological and economic importance, sustaining traditional fisheries and protecting biodiversity, including many threatened species. They present unique biogeochemical characteristics resulting in distinct ecosystem functioning compared to mangroves located in humid areas.

Logging disrupts the ecology of molecules in headwater streams.

Global demand for wood products is increasing forest harvest. One understudied consequence of logging is that it accelerates mobilization of dissolved organic matter (DOM) from soils to aquatic ecosystems where it is more easily rereleased to the atmosphere. Here, we tested how logging changed DOM in headwaters of hardwood-dominated catchments in northern Ontario, Canada.

Improvement of Electrospray Ionization Response Linearity and Quantification in Dissolved Organic Matter Using Synthetic Deuterated Internal Standards.

Aquatic dissolved organic matter (DOM) is an ultracomplex mixture of compounds covering a wide range of masses and with an unknown extent of isomeric complexity, making its structural elucidation and quantification highly challenging. Electrospray ionization high-resolution mass spectrometry (ESI-HRMS) has advanced DOM analysis, but accurate concentration determination remains limited by the lack of a response factor correction. Here, we address this limitation by introducing novel deuterated compounds as internal standards that mimic DOM structures.

Refining Zooplankton Diet Composition Studies Over Short and Long Time Scales by Combining 18S Metabarcoding With Fatty Acid Analyses.

Understanding diet composition is essential for unravelling trophic interactions in aquatic ecosystems. DNA metabarcoding, utilising various variable regions of the 18S rRNA gene, is increasingly employed to investigate zooplankton diet composition. However, accurate results depend on rapid inactivation of digestive enzymes and DNA nucleases through proper sample processing and preservation.

Future of coral bleaching research.

Coral bleaching is the largest global threat to coral reef ecosystem persistence this century. Advancing our understanding of coral bleaching and developing solutions to protect corals and the reefs they support are critical. In the present article, we, the US National Science Foundation-funded Coral Bleaching Research Coordination Network, outline future directions for coral bleaching research.

Cycloprodigiosin: A multispecies settlement cue for scleractinian coral larvae.

The survival of coral reefs depends on the rejuvenation of coral populations with the potential to adapt and survive a changing climate. Assisted sexual reproduction has become an important tool in reef management. One bottleneck is the efficient and manageable induction of coral larval settlement.

Proactive assisted gene flow for Caribbean corals in an era of rapid coral reef decline.

Regulatory action could facilitate cross-border efforts to retain ecosystem function.

Gifting future scientists the past through well-preserved specimens of modern microbial ecosystems.

Historical specimens have enabled transformative insights across kingdoms and ecosystems with new technologies, yet microbes remain largely overlooked in preservation efforts. As we recognize microbial communities as fundamental drivers of planetary health, comprehensive microbial archiving becomes an urgent intergenerational responsibility.

Small Things that Make a Big Difference: Single-Cell Transcriptomic of Nanociliates Reveals Genes Potentially Involved in Mixotrophy.

Nanociliates play an important role in the microbial food web of oligotrophic marine systems as grazers of picoplankton on one side, and as prey for microplankton, on the other. However, knowledge on their taxonomy, phylogeny, and trophic strategies is very limited, as well as their potential role as mixotrophs. In the present study, we investigated the transcriptomes of five marine planktonic nanociliates isolated from the Eastern Mediterranean Sea.

Mercury levels in chicks of a long-lived seabird - parental effects and links with growth and survival.

Environmental mercury levels continue to rise, leading to increased exposure, especially in long-lived species at high trophic positions, such as many seabirds. During breeding, female seabirds can transfer mercury to their eggs, exposing their offspring to its harmful effects. After hatching, dietary exposure may further compound the risk, although excretion pathways exist as well.

Small-scale habitat heterogeneity and genotype modulate in situ gene expression of the Antarctic bivalve Aequiyoldia eightsii in front of a melting glacier.

Regulation of gene expression is a pivotal adaptive mechanism of organisms facing environmental variation. We studied the in situ gene expression of the shallow-water bivalve Aequiyoldia eightsii in Potter Cove (King George Island, Antarctica) occupying different habitats in front of a melting glacier on a local scale (1 km). The expression of nuclear genes was determined by (1) variation of the nuclear genome itself (nuclear SNPs) and equally strongly by (2) different environmental conditions characterizing the three locations and (3) the composition of the mitochondrial genotype (mitochondrial SNPs).

Meta-analysis of stage-specific vertical distribution in relation to hydrography and chlorophyll in the North Atlantic.

is an important, extensively studied zooplankton species in the North Atlantic. Many studies have explored its abundance and life cycle, but basin-wide relationships between its vertical distribution and environment during the feeding season remain poorly known. We conducted a meta-analysis of stage-specific vertical distribution and its relationships with environmental variables (temperature, salinity, irradiance, chlorophyll-) in the epipelagic layer (0-200 m) of the North Atlantic during spring and summer (21 March to 21 September).

Cell type-specific immune regulation under symbiosis in a facultatively symbiotic coral.

Many cnidarians host single-celled algae within gastrodermal cells, yielding a mutually beneficial exchange of nutrients between host and symbiont, and dysbiosis can lead to host mortality. Previous research has uncovered symbiosis tradeoffs, including suppression of immune pathways in hosts, and correlations between symbiotic state and pathogen susceptibility. Here, we used a multiomic approach to characterize symbiotic states of the facultatively symbiotic coral Oculina arbuscula by generating genotype-controlled fragments of symbiotic and aposymbiotic tissue.

High-resolution multiomics links nutrients and mixotrophy to toxicity in a harmful bloom of the haptophyte .

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) of the toxigenic haptophyte are known to cause fish mortalities and collateral ecosystem damage. The ichthyotoxic mechanisms are poorly understood but likely dependent on toxigenesis by polyketide synthases (PKSs). We hypothesize that induction of PKS activity facilitates mixotrophic behavior during nutrient-depleted bloom conditions.

Warming increases richness and shapes assemblages of eukaryotic parasitic plankton.

Background: Anthropogenic activities have led to a global rise in water temperatures, prompting increased interest in how warming affects infectious disease ecology. While most studies have focused on individual host-parasite systems, there is a gap in understanding the impact of warming on multi-host, multi-parasite assemblages in natural ecosystems. To address this gap, we investigated freshwater eukaryotic parasite communities in ten natural lakes near Konin, Poland: five artificially heated and five non-heated "control" lakes.

Time matters: Transcriptomic insights into temporally regulated reproductive and physiological processes in the life cycle of salps.

Despite the increasing importance of salps and the recognition of their role as important players in food webs and biogeochemical cycles, their life cycle characteristics and physiology remain mysterious. This uncertainty encourages oversimplifying modeling approaches, leading to inaccuracies that may affect population dynamics results. This lack of knowledge is critical, making it difficult to adequately assess their sensitivity to global warming and their impact on ecosystems if their abundance and distribution change with rising seawater temperatures.

Synthesis of Population Trends Reveals Seascape-Wide Reorganisation of Biodiversity From Microalgae to Birds.

Many monitoring programs aim to understand regional biodiversity patterns in relation to global and regional conservation targets, using either community-wide biodiversity metrics to describe the community status or trends of pre-selected "key" species as biodiversity change indicators. However, the former often lacks information on which species are changing, and the latter is heavily skewed towards specific taxa, potentially overlooking changes in other, functionally important taxa. We gathered an extensive set of monitoring data with over 3000 population trends (ranging from 5 to 91 years in duration) for a wide range of taxa across the Wadden Sea.

Mapping encounters between Antarctic krill fishing vessels and air-breathing krill predators using acoustic data from the fishery.

Antarctic krill is a keystone species in the Antarctic marine ecosystem and the target of a growing fishery. Given the ecological importance of krill, concerns have been raised about potential negative impacts of fishing on the Southern Ocean ecosystem. Resource-efficient approaches to fisheries monitoring are particularly valuable in this context due to the high costs associated with data collection in Antarctica.

Microbes with higher metabolic independence are enriched in human gut microbiomes under stress.

A wide variety of human diseases are associated with loss of microbial diversity in the human gut, inspiring a great interest in the diagnostic or therapeutic potential of the microbiota. However, the ecological forces that drive diversity reduction in disease states remain unclear, rendering it difficult to ascertain the role of the microbiota in disease emergence or severity. One hypothesis to explain this phenomenon is that microbial diversity is diminished as disease states select for microbial populations that are more fit to survive environmental stress caused by inflammation or other host factors.

Phase and gain stability for adaptive dynamical networks.

In adaptive dynamical networks, the dynamics of the nodes and the edges influence each other. We show that we can treat such systems as a closed feedback loop between edge and node dynamics. Using recent advances on the stability of feedback systems from control theory, we derive local, sufficient conditions for steady states of such systems to be linearly stable.

Cross-feeding creates tipping points in microbiome diversity.

A key unresolved question in microbial ecology is how the extraordinary diversity of microbiomes emerges from the interactions among their many functionally distinct populations. This process is driven in part by the cross-feeding networks that help to structure these systems, in which consumers use resources to fuel their metabolism, creating by-products which can be used by others in the community. Understanding the effects of cross-feeding presents a major challenge, as it creates complex interdependencies between populations which can be hard to untangle.

Multi-year dynamics of harmful algae in Disko Bay, West Greenland.

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) increasingly affect Arctic coastal ecosystems, due to hydrographic and bathymetric conditions that support the accumulation of cells and cysts, and coupled with increasing temperatures, extensive bloom events can be easily triggered. However, various harmful algae species have been reported in the past and it is unclear which are most threatening in Greenlandic waters, a region that vitally depend on its fisheries. Here, we explore the diversity and succession of harmful algae by metabarcoding at a multi-year station in Greenlandic coastal waters, offering a comprehensive analysis of species dynamics over time.

Characterization of the daily and circadian valve behavior of the European flat oyster Ostrea edulis.

Marine organisms exhibit a multitude of biological rhythms synchronized with the interactions of the sun-, earth-, and moon cycles. However, the biological rhythms in bivalves remain poorly studied. This study focuses on the native European flat oyster (Ostrea edulis), an endangered species of coastal ecosystems and a key organism in restoring of biogenic reef habitats.