Plastic litter is rapidly bioeroded in mangrove forests.

Due to their architectural and hydrodynamic properties, mangrove forests are emerging as global hotspots for plastic sequestration. Mangroves encroached by coastal cities contain up to two orders of magnitude more plastic than their non-urban counterparts. In urban mangroves, plastic substrata are often used as microhabitats, but the consequences of this interaction for the degradation process of plastics in the environment are unknown.

Is the threatened land crab conquering human-dominated systems?

Land use changes are heralded as a major driver of biodiversity loss. However, recent findings show that cities, perhaps the most radical habitat transformation, sustain increasing numbers of threatened species. This emerging trend has been mostly chronicled for vertebrates from landlocked cities, although loss of biodiversity and rates or urbanization are higher in coastal marine systems.

A bioengineer in the city -the Darwinian fitness of fiddler crabs inhabiting plastic pollution hotspots.

Mangrove forests have been widely recognized as effective traps for plastic litter, which tends to accumulate in landward areas. In mangrove forests surrounding cities, plastic litter may increase up to two orders of magnitude. Therefore, crabs that process sediments for feeding and burrowing in landward areas are likely to be impacted by marine litter and other disturbances.

Morphoanatomic variation in tissues of seedlings subjected to different saline regimes: cross-seeding experiment.

, one of the main neotropic mangrove species, has wide phenological variability associated with soil salinity. Since global warming is one of the main drivers of changes in salinity, understanding the influence of this variable at the species level would help improve the prediction of climate change in the ecological services provided by mangroves. To understand the physiological and/or anatomical responses to water stress generated by edaphic salinity and its relationship with phenological and structural diversity, we quantified the functional traits of leaf tissue subjected to a cross-seeding experiment between two forests with different ranges of natural salinity (0-18 PSU and 20 to 70 PSU).

Mercury concentrations and trophic relations in sharks of the Pacific Ocean of Colombia.

Sharks are fished for human consumption in Colombia, and fins are exported illegally to international markets. The goal was to identify differences in total mercury (THg) concentrations in fins and muscles of shark species seized in the Buenaventura port (Colombian Pacific), and to assess potential human health risks related to shark consumption. Seven species were considered in this study: Pelagic Thresher (Alopias pelagicus), Pacific Smalltail Shark (Carcharhinus cerdale), Brown Smoothhound (Mustelus henlei), Sicklefin Smoothhound (Mustelus lunulatus), Scalloped Bonnethead (Sphyrna corona), Scalloped Hammerhead (Sphyrna lewini), and Bonnethead Shark (Sphyrna tiburo), and THg was analyzed in shark tissues.

Ecological and reproductive characteristics of holothuroids Isostichopus badionotus and Isostichopus sp. in Colombia.

Isostichopus badionotus and Isostichopus sp. are two holothuroids exploited in the Caribbean region of Colombia. Until recently, they were considered a single species.

High diversity of Vibrio spp. associated with different ecological niches in a marine aquaria system and description of Vibrio aquimaris sp. nov.

The aim of the study was to characterise the diversity and niche-specific colonization of Vibrio spp. in a marine aquaria system by a cultivation-dependent approach. A total of 53 Vibrio spp.

Evolutionary and biogeographical implications of degraded LAGLIDADG endonuclease functionality and group I intron occurrence in stony corals (Scleractinia) and mushroom corals (Corallimorpharia).

Group I introns and homing endonuclease genes (HEGs) are mobile genetic elements, capable of invading target sequences in intron-less genomes. LAGLIDADG HEGs are the largest family of endonucleases, playing a key role in the mobility of group I introns in a process known as 'homing'. Group I introns and HEGs are rare in metazoans, and can be mainly found inserted in the COXI gene of some sponges and cnidarians, including stony corals (Scleractinia) and mushroom corals (Corallimorpharia).