Swimming Kinematics of Cyprids of the Barnacle Balanus glandula.

Larvae of barnacles typically pass through naupliar and cyprid planktonic stages before settlement and metamorphosis. As the final larval stage, cyprids swim much faster than nauplii and in turbulent fluid environments with high shears as they seek habitat. Cyprids swim with six pairs of reciprocating thoracic appendages and use two anterior antennules during settlement.

Host-specific symbioses and the microbial prey of a pelagic tunicate (Pyrosoma atlanticum).

Pyrosomes are widely distributed pelagic tunicates that have the potential to reshape marine food webs when they bloom. However, their grazing preferences and interactions with the background microbial community are poorly understood. This is the first study of the marine microorganisms associated with pyrosomes undertaken to improve the understanding of pyrosome biology, the impact of pyrosome blooms on marine microbial systems, and microbial symbioses with marine animals.

The most efficient metazoan swimmer creates a 'virtual wall' to enhance performance.

It has been well documented that animals (and machines) swimming or flying near a solid boundary get a boost in performance. This ground effect is often modelled as an interaction between a mirrored pair of vortices represented by a true vortex and an opposite sign 'virtual vortex' on the other side of the wall. However, most animals do not swim near solid surfaces and thus near body vortex-vortex interactions in open-water swimmers have been poorly investigated.

Mate competition during pseudocopulation in shipworms.

Shipworms are predominantly wood-eating bivalves that play fundamental roles in biodegradation, niche creation and nutrient cycling across a range of marine ecosystems. Shipworms remain confined to the wood they colonize as larvae; however, continual feeding and rapid growth to large sizes degrade both food source and habitat. This unique lifestyle has led to the evolution of a stunning diversity of reproductive strategies, from broadcast spawning to spermcasting, larval brooding and extreme sexual size dimorphism with male dwarfism.

Climate drives the geography of marine consumption by changing predator communities.

The global distribution of primary production and consumption by humans (fisheries) is well-documented, but we have no map linking the central ecological process of consumption within food webs to temperature and other ecological drivers. Using standardized assays that span 105° of latitude on four continents, we show that rates of bait consumption by generalist predators in shallow marine ecosystems are tightly linked to both temperature and the composition of consumer assemblages. Unexpectedly, rates of consumption peaked at midlatitudes (25 to 35°) in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres across both seagrass and unvegetated sediment habitats.

The Hydrodynamics of Jellyfish Swimming.

Jellyfish have provided insight into important components of animal propulsion, such as suction thrust, passive energy recapture, vortex wall effects, and the rotational mechanics of turning. These traits are critically important to jellyfish because they must propel themselves despite severe limitations on force production imposed by rudimentary cnidarian muscular structures. Consequently, jellyfish swimming can occur only by careful orchestration of fluid interactions.

Juvenile Dungeness crabs () selectively integrate and modify the fatty acids of their experimental diets.

Dungeness crabs () are ecologically and economically important in the coastal Northeast Pacific, yet relatively little is currently known about their feeding behaviour in the wild or their natural diet. Trophic biomarkers, such as fatty acids (FA), can be used to reveal trophic interactions. We used two feeding experiments to assess differences in FA composition of juvenile crabs fed different known foods to evaluate how they modify and integrate dietary FA into their own tissues and determine whether crab FA reflect diet changes over a six-week period.

The critical importance of experimentation in biomarker-based trophic ecology.

Fatty acids are commonly used as biomarkers for making inferences about trophic relationships in aquatic and soil food webs. However, researchers are often unaware of the physiological constraints within organisms on the trophic transfer and modification of dietary biomarkers in consumers. Fatty acids are bioactive molecules, which have diverse structures and functions that both complicate and enhance their value as trophic tracers.

Unlocking the power of fatty acids as dietary tracers and metabolic signals in fishes and aquatic invertebrates.

Determining the transfer and transformation of organic matter in food webs is a fundamental challenge that has implications for sustainable management of ecosystems. Fatty acids (FA) offer a potential approach for resolving complex diet mixtures of organisms because they provide a suite of molecular tracers. Yet, uncertainties in the degree of their biochemical modification by consumers, due to selective retention or metabolism, have limited their application.

Increases and decreases in marine disease reports in an era of global change.

Outbreaks of marine infectious diseases have caused widespread mass mortalities, but the lack of baseline data has precluded evaluating whether disease is increasing or decreasing in the ocean. We use an established literature proxy method from Ward and Lafferty (Ward and Lafferty 2004 , e120 (doi:10.1371/journal.

Maneuvering Performance in the Colonial Siphonophore, .

The colonial cnidarian, , is highly proficient at moving in three-dimensional space through forward swimming, reverse swimming and turning. We used high speed videography, particle tracking, and particle image velocimetry (PIV) with frame rates up to 6400 s to study the kinematics and fluid mechanics of during turning and reversing. achieved turns with high maneuverability (mean length-specific turning radius, R/L = 0.

Eelgrass pathogen Labyrinthula zosterae synthesizes essential fatty acids.

Negative consequences of parasites and disease on hosts are usually better understood than their multifaceted ecosystem effects. The pathogen Labyrinthula zosterae (Lz) causes eelgrass wasting disease but has relatives that produce large quantities of nutritionally valuable long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFA) such as docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Here we quantify the fatty acids (FA) of Lz cultured on artificial media, eelgrass-based media, and eelgrass segments to investigate whether Lz may similarly produce LCPUFA.

A ctenophore (comb jelly) employs vortex rebound dynamics and outperforms other gelatinous swimmers.

Gelatinous zooplankton exhibit a wide range of propulsive swimming modes. One of the most energetically efficient is the rowing behaviour exhibited by many species of schyphomedusae, which employ vortex interactions to achieve this result. Ctenophores (comb jellies) typically use a slow swimming, cilia-based mode of propulsion.

Propulsive design principles in a multi-jet siphonophore.

Coordination of multiple propulsors can provide performance benefits in swimming organisms. Siphonophores are marine colonial organisms that orchestrate the motion of multiple swimming zooids for effective swimming. However, the kinematics at the level of individual swimming zooids (nectophores) have not been examined in detail.

Microinjection of oocytes and embryos with synthetic mRNA encoding molecular probes.

We describe methods and techniques for introduction of molecular probes in the form of synthetic mRNA by rapid repetitive microinjection into oocytes or early embryos of echinoderms and various invertebrates. Construct assembly is followed by standard kit-based in vitro mRNA synthesis, with slight modifications to optimize expression and clean-up. Variations of a basic microinjection procedures are detailed for echinoderms: starfish oocytes (Patiria miniata or other species), purple urchin (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus) and sand dollar (Dendraster excentricus) zygotes, with notes included for other invertebrate eggs and embryos as well.

The Purple Sea Urchin Demonstrates a Compartmentalization of Gut Bacterial Microbiota, Predictive Functional Attributes, and Taxonomic Co-Occurrence.

The sea urchin (order Camarodonta, family Strongylocentrotidae) can be found dominating low intertidal pool biomass on the southern coast of Oregon, USA. In this case study, three adult sea urchins were collected from their shared intertidal pool, and the bacteriome of their pharynx, gut tissue, and gut digesta, including their tide pool water and algae, was determined using targeted high-throughput sequencing (HTS) of the 16S rRNA genes and bioinformatics tools. Overall, the gut tissue demonstrated and (Epsilonproteobacteria) to be abundant, whereas the gut digesta was dominated by (Gammaproteobacteria), (Fusobacteria), and Flavobacteriales (Bacteroidetes).

Surf-zone hydrodynamics alter phytoplankton subsidies affecting reproductive output and growth of tidal filter feeders.

Surf zones, classified from reflective to dissipative, separate the ocean from shore and subsidies from the coastal ocean must pass through surf zones to reach the shore. We have observed that variations in phytoplankton concentrations in the water over the intertidal zone varied with surf-zone hydrodynamics and we hypothesized that this variation would alter growth rates, population structure, and reproductive output of Mytilus californianus and Balanus glandula. From May 2016 to April 2017, along 7 km of Cape Arago, Oregon, USA surf-zone phytoplankton concentrations were determined weekly at nine sites with varying surf-zone hydrodynamics as indicated by surf-zone widths.

A biting commentary: Integrating tooth characters with molecular data doubles known species diversity in a lineage of sea slugs that consume "killer algae".

Predicting biotic resistance to highly invasive strains of "killer algae" (Caulerpa spp.) requires understanding the diversity and feeding preferences of native consumers, including sea slugs in family Oxynoidae. Past studies reported low algal host specificity for Oxynoe (6 spp.

The trochoblasts in the pilidium larva break an ancient spiralian constraint to enable continuous larval growth and maximally indirect development.

Background: Nemertean embryos undergo equal spiral cleavage, and prior fate-mapping studies showed that some also exhibit key aspects of spiralian lineage-based fate specification, including specification of the primary trochoblasts, which differentiate early as the core of the prototroch of the spiralian trochophore larva. Yet it remains unclear how the nemertean pilidium larva, a long-lived planktotroph that grows substantially as it builds a juvenile body from isolated rudiments, develops within the constraints of spiral cleavage.

Results: We marked single cells in embryos of the pilidiophoran to show that primary, secondary, and accessory trochoblasts, cells that would make the prototroch in conventional spiralian trochophores (1q, 1q, and some descendants of 2q), fully account for the pilidium's primary ciliary band, but without undergoing early cleavage arrest.

Author Correction: Surface properties of SAR11 bacteria facilitate grazing avoidance.

In the version of this Letter originally published, the authors incorrectly stated that primers 28F-519R were reported in ref. 54 to underestimate the abundance of SAR11 in the ocean. This statement has now been amended in all versions of the Letter.

Surface properties of SAR11 bacteria facilitate grazing avoidance.

Oceanic ecosystems are dominated by minute microorganisms that play a major role in food webs and biogeochemical cycles . Many microorganisms thrive in the dilute environment due to their capacity to locate, attach to, and use patches of nutrients and organic matter . We propose that some free-living planktonic bacteria have traded their ability to stick to nutrient-rich organic particles for a non-stick cell surface that helps them evade predation by mucous filter feeders.

Tsunami-driven rafting: Transoceanic species dispersal and implications for marine biogeography.

The 2011 East Japan earthquake generated a massive tsunami that launched an extraordinary transoceanic biological rafting event with no known historical precedent. We document 289 living Japanese coastal marine species from 16 phyla transported over 6 years on objects that traveled thousands of kilometers across the Pacific Ocean to the shores of North America and Hawai'i. Most of this dispersal occurred on nonbiodegradable objects, resulting in the longest documented transoceanic survival and dispersal of coastal species by rafting.