Impacts of climate change on mangrove subsistence fisheries: a global review.

Unlabelled: Climate change will impact coastal ecosystems, threatening subsistence fisheries including those in mangrove forests. Despite their global contributions and roles in nutrition and cultural identity, mangrove subsistence fisheries are poorly studied. Here, we offer a foundation for improving the management of mangrove subsistence fisheries to deal with the impending effects of climate change.

"Surface Browsing" May Allow "Filter-Feeding" Protozoa to Exert Top-Down Control on Colony-Forming Toxic Cyanobacterial Blooms.

Blooms of the cyanobacterium threaten aquatic ecosystems. Protozoa grazing can control unicellular populations; however, blooms are composed of multicellular colonies that are thought to prevent grazing. We show that this is not so: the model ciliate has an impact on populations through grazing, even when large colonies occur, and this leads to a corresponding decrease in toxic microcystins.

Partitioning the Apparent Temperature Sensitivity into Within- and Across-Taxa Responses: Revisiting the Difference between Autotrophic and Heterotrophic Protists.

AbstractConventional analyses suggest that the metabolism of heterotrophs is thermally more sensitive than that of autotrophs, implying that warming leads to pronounced trophodynamic imbalances. However, these analyses inappropriately combine within- and across-taxa trends. Our new analysis separates these, revealing that 92% of the difference in the apparent thermal sensitivity between autotrophic and heterotrophic protists does indeed arise from within-taxa responses.

Ecology of planktonic ciliates in a changing world: Concepts, methods, and challenges.

Plankton ecologists ultimately focus on forecasting, both applied and environmental outcomes. We review how appreciating planktonic ciliates has become central to these predictions. We explore the 350-year-old canon on planktonic ciliates and examine its steady progression, which has been punctuated by conceptual insights and technological breakthroughs.

Finding your scientific story by writing backwards.

To succeed, a scientist must write well. Substantial guidance exists on writing papers that follow the classic Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRaD) structure. Here, we fill a critical gap in this pedagogical canon.

Microbial Grazers May Aid in Controlling Infections Caused by the Aquatic Zoosporic Fungus .

Free-living eukaryotic microbes may reduce animal diseases. We evaluated the dynamics by which micrograzers (primarily protozoa) apply top-down control on the chytrid () a devastating, panzootic pathogen of amphibians. Although micrograzers consumed zoospores (∼3 μm), the dispersal stage of chytrids, not all species grew monoxenically on zoospores.

False Exclusion: A Case to Embed Predator Performance in Classical Population Models.

We argue that predator-prey dynamics, a cornerstone of ecology, can be driven by insufficiently explored aspects of predator performance that are inherently prey dependent: that is, these have been falsely excluded. Classical (Lotka-Volterra-based) models tend to consider only prey-dependent ingestion rate. We highlight three other prey-dependent responses and provide empirically derived functions to describe them.

Did Gause Have a Yeast Infection?

We planned to develop predator-prey models using Paramecium and yeast, but they have not been empirically examined since work by Gause in the 1930s. Therefore, we evaluated if Paramecium aurelia ingests and grows on eight yeasts. Recognising that it ingested yeasts but could not grow, we assessed if it might grow on other yeasts, by empirically parameterising a predator-prey model that relies on ingestion, not growth.

Functional ecology of aquatic phagotrophic protists - Concepts, limitations, and perspectives.

Functional ecology is a subdiscipline that aims to enable a mechanistic understanding of patterns and processes from the organismic to the ecosystem level. This paper addresses some main aspects of the process-oriented current knowledge on phagotrophic, i.e.

An evidence-based framework for predicting the impact of differing autotroph-heterotroph thermal sensitivities on consumer-prey dynamics.

Increased temperature accelerates vital rates, influencing microbial population and wider ecosystem dynamics, for example, the predicted increases in cyanobacterial blooms associated with global warming. However, heterotrophic and mixotrophic protists, which are dominant grazers of microalgae, may be more thermally sensitive than autotrophs, and thus prey could be suppressed as temperature rises. Theoretical and meta-analyses have begun to address this issue, but an appropriate framework linking experimental data with theory is lacking.

Restructuring fundamental predator-prey models by recognising prey-dependent conversion efficiency and mortality rates.

Incorporating protozoa into population models (from simple predator-prey explorations to complex food web simulations) is of conceptual, ecological, and economic importance. From theoretical and empirical perspectives, we expose unappreciated complexity in the traditional predator-prey model structure and provide a parsimonious solution, especially for protistologists. We focus on how prey abundance alters two key components of models: predator conversion efficiency (e, the proportion of prey converted to predator, before mortality loss) and predator mortality (δ, the portion of the population lost though death).

Reconsidering the importance of the past in predator-prey models: both numerical and functional responses depend on delayed prey densities.

We propose that delayed predator-prey models may provide superficially acceptable predictions for spurious reasons. Through experimentation and modelling, we offer a new approach: using a model experimental predator-prey system (the ciliates Didinium and Paramecium), we determine the influence of past-prey abundance at a fixed delay (approx. one generation) on both functional and numerical responses (i.

A legacy of contrasting spatial genetic structure on either side of the Atlantic-Mediterranean transition zone in a marine protist.

The mechanisms that underpin the varied spatial genetic structures exhibited by free-living marine microorganisms remain controversial, with most studies emphasizing a high dispersal capability that should redistribute genetic diversity in contrast to most macroorganisms whose populations often retain a genetic signature of demographic response to historic climate fluctuations. We quantified the European phylogeographic structure of the marine flagellate Oxyrrhis marina and found a marked difference in spatial genetic structure, population demography, and genetic diversity between the northwest Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea that reflects the persistent separation of these regions as well as context-dependent population responses to contrasting environments. We found similar geographic variation in the level of genetic diversity in the sister species Oxyrrhis maritima.

Strain-specific functional and numerical responses are required to evaluate impacts on predator-prey dynamics.

We use strains recently collected from the field to establish cultures; then, through laboratory studies we investigate how among strain variation in protozoan ingestion and growth rates influences population dynamics and intraspecific competition. We focused on the impact of changing temperature because of its well-established effects on protozoan rates and its ecological relevance, from daily fluctuations to climate change. We show, first, that there is considerable inter-strain variability in thermal sensitivity of maximum growth rate, revealing distinct differences among multiple strains of our model species Oxyrrhis marina.

Intermediate fragmentation per se provides stable predator-prey metapopulation dynamics.

The extent to which a landscape is fragmented affects persistence of predator-prey dynamics. Increasing fragmentation concomitantly imposes conditions that stabilise and destabilise metapopulations. For the first time, we explicitly assessed the hypothesis that intermediate levels provide optimal conditions for stability.

Combined effects of ammonia and microcystin on survival, growth, antioxidant responses, and lipid peroxidation of bighead carp Hypophthalmythys nobilis larvae.

Hazardous materials, such as ammonia and microcystin, are released into lakes during cyanobacterial bloom degradation and may severely impact aquatic organisms. To assess the combined effects of ammonia and microcystin on survival, growth, and oxidative stress of larval fish, 14-day-old larvae of bighead carp Hypophthalmythys nobilis were exposed to solutions with different combined concentrations of ammonia (0, 0.06, 0.

The interactive effects of ammonia and microcystin on life-history traits of the cladoceran Daphnia magna: synergistic or antagonistic?

The occurrence of Microcystis blooms is a worldwide concern that has caused numerous adverse effects on water quality and lake ecology. Elevated ammonia and microcystin concentrations co-occur during the degradation of Microcystis blooms and are toxic to aquatic organisms; we studied the relative and combined effects of these on the life history of the model organism Daphnia magna. Ammonia and microcystin-LR treatments were: 0, 0.

The transcriptome of the novel dinoflagellate Oxyrrhis marina (Alveolata: Dinophyceae): response to salinity examined by 454 sequencing.

Background: The heterotrophic dinoflagellate Oxyrrhis marina is increasingly studied in experimental, ecological and evolutionary contexts. Its basal phylogenetic position within the dinoflagellates make O. marina useful for understanding the origin of numerous unusual features of the dinoflagellate lineage; its broad distribution has lent O.

The interactive effects of microcystin and nitrite on life-history parameters of the cladoceran Daphnia obtusa.

Elevated nitrite and microcystin concentrations co-occur during degradation of Microcystis blooms and are toxic to aquatic organisms. We studied the relative and combined effects of these on Daphnia obtusa life-history. Nitrite and microcystin-LR treatments were: 0, 1, 3 mg L(-1) and 0, 10, 100, 300 μg L(-1), respectively.

Prey-dependent mortality rate: a critical parameter in microbial models.

Protozoa are key components of a wide range of ecosystems, but ecological models that incorporate these microbes often suffer from poor parameterisation, specifically of top-level predator loss rates. We (1) suggest that top-level predator mortality is prey-dependent, (2) provide a novel approach to assess this response, and (3) illustrate the ecological relevance of these findings. Ciliates, Paramecium caudatum (prey) and Didinium nasutum (predator), were used to evaluate predator mortality at varying prey levels.

Porpostoma guamensis n. sp., a philasterine scuticociliate associated with brown-band disease of corals.

Brown band disease of coral is caused by a ciliate that consumes the tissue of the corals in the genus Acropora. We describe the ciliate associated with this disease on Guam, based on: general morphology, division stages, and ciliature observed on live and protargol-stained specimens; modification of the oral structures between divisional stages, observed on protargol-stained specimens; and some aspects of behavior in field and laboratory studies. Porpostoma guamensis n.

High genetic diversity and fine-scale spatial structure in the marine flagellate Oxyrrhis marina (Dinophyceae) uncovered by microsatellite loci.

Free-living marine protists are often assumed to be broadly distributed and genetically homogeneous on large spatial scales. However, an increasing application of highly polymorphic genetic markers (e.g.

Temperature shifts induce intraspecific variation in microalgal production and biochemical composition.

Three Isochrysis galbana strains, one I. galbana "substrain", and one Nannochloropsis sp. strain were grown in nutrient replete conditions at 15, 20, 25, and 30°C.