Vulnerability of Eastern Tropical Pacific chondrichthyan fish to climate change.

Climate change is an environmental emergency threatening species and ecosystems globally. Oceans have absorbed about 90% of anthropogenic heat and 20%-30% of the carbon emissions, resulting in ocean warming, acidification, deoxygenation, changes in ocean stratification and nutrient availability, and more severe extreme events. Given predictions of further changes, there is a critical need to understand how marine species will be affected.

Repeat bleaching of a central Pacific coral reef over the past six decades (1960-2016).

The oceans are warming and coral reefs are bleaching with increased frequency and severity, fueling concerns for their survival through this century. Yet in the central equatorial Pacific, some of the world's most productive reefs regularly experience extreme heat associated with El Niño. Here we use skeletal signatures preserved in long-lived corals on Jarvis Island to evaluate the coral community response to multiple successive heatwaves since 1960.

Ecological leads for natural product discovery: Novel sesquiterpene hydroquinones from the red macroalga Peyssonnelia sp.

Pharmacologically-motivated marine natural product investigations have yielded a large variety of structurally unique compounds with interesting biomedical properties, but the natural roles of these molecules often remain unknown. While secondary metabolites may function as antimicrobial chemical defenses, few studies have examined this hypothesis. In the present investigation, chromatographic fractions from 69 collections of Fijian red macroalgae representing at least 43 species were evaluated for growth inhibition of three microbial pathogens and saprophytes of marine macrophytes.