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NY Times front page: "As seas warm, Galapagos Islands face a giant evolutionary test" featuring Witman Lab researchers!

12/19/2018

New York Times writer Nicholas Casey interviews Robert Lamb en route to dive at Rocas Beagle, at the moment Robbie's article on El Niño - driven fish disease in the Galapagos was published

Check out the feature article on the front page of the New York Times! Written by Nicholas Casey and with stunning images and video from land, air and sea by Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist Josh Haner, this is a multi-media multi-story project that highlights our work on corals and fish as part of the suite of organisms affected by El Niño. Also featured are our friends at the Charles Darwin Station and Galapagos National Park including Dr. Heinke Jager. It paints a compelling picture of sweeping environmental effects of climate change being felt in the Galapagos Islands.

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New blog post on the Witman Lab's research with Galapagos Conservancy

10/22/2018

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Featured in the recent GC blog post, members of the Witman Lab survey the reef at Pinzon Island as a school of endemic striped salema (Xenocys jessiae) swim overhead. Photo credit: Alejandro Perez-Matus.

Research efforts by the Witman Lab to characterize the response of Galapagos marine ecosystems to climate change and El Niño are currently funded by the Galapagos Conservancy. This is the only US non-profit dedicated to conserving the wildlife of the Galapagos Islands. Read a recent blog post about our work with GC over the past year!

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Witman Lab featured on the cover of 41 North

9/5/2018

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Jon Witman was featured on the cover of 41 North, Rhode Island's coastal and ocean magazine this month. You can read the entire issue here, or download the story on the Witman Lab here.

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The Witman Lab gives a research update seminar in Galapagos

8/29/2018

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Undergraduates Calvin Munson ('19) and Maya Greenhill ('20) gave their first talks on their thesis research projects at the Charles Darwin Foundation. These talks presented preliminary research from the past two months of field work examining local to regional controls on sea floor productivity. At the regional scale, Calvin's work examines how the abundance of algae and invertebrates changes along gradients of upwelling in the Galápagos subtidal, in addition to how the diversity of herbivorous fishes affects ecosystem functioning in the form of resource utilization. At local scales, Maya's research is on damselfish territories as a major source of algal productivity on the rocky reef, focusing on species-specific differences in agal composition, depth zonation, and defense capacity that indicate complementarity in providing this important ecosystem function. Professor Jon Witman put these studies into context, summarizing and updating on how repeated El Niño/ La Niña cycles are shaping marine communities of benthic invertebrates and reef fish over 20 years of long term monitoring.

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New publication co-authored by Robert Lamb of the Witman Lab on fish communities from tropical oceanic islands

8/22/2018

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Surgeonfish and parrotfish school over the rocky reefs of Galapagos. The archipelago stood out among all others for its uniquely high biomass of herbivores and planktivores, evidence of its pristine state and productive waters. Photo: Maximillian Hirschfeld

Robbie recently co-authored a paper on the biogeographic, energetic, and anthropogenic determinants of fish communities on tropical oceanic islands, believed to be some of the most pristine marine ecosystems left in the world. Below is the press release from Ecography.

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Happy International Oceans Day!

6/7/2018

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CBS documentary featuring the Witman Lab set to air Sunday evening!

5/18/2018

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A documentary called "Adapt or Die", about climate change impacts in the Galapagos Marine Reserve will be shown this Sunday, May 20, at 8pm - on CBS.

The documentary resulted from a CBS TV crew coming on our January research cruise, which they filmed along with several other researchers working in the region.

It's CBS' streaming service (think netflix) so Sunday at 8 will be the full show, and after that the doc itself will be available online and in streaming (on any smart TV.)

Disclaimer: we haven't seen it yet either!!

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Witman Lab undergraduate students Maya Greenhill and Calvin Munson receive UTRA research grants!

4/4/2018

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Maya's study, "Evaluating the ecological role of Damselfish species in the Galapagos Marine Reserve", will test the territory defense capacities of different damselfish species in a comparative analysis, and evaluate the importance of damselfish territories as a microhabitat and food resource. Calvin's study "Effects of grazer diversity and upwelling strength on ecosystem functioning in the Galapagos subtidal ecosystem" asks how variation in the richness and abundance of herbivores interacts with the upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface (increasing primary productivity) to determine the richness, biomass, and resource utilization of benthic algae.

Congratulations to Maya and Calvin!

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Jon Witman interviewed on "Our Daily Planet"

3/9/2018

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The Witman Lab's work describing the unique marine communities on Cashes Ledge in the Gulf of Maine was highlighted in "Our Daily Planet", a daily blog on the environmental, sustainability, and conservation. Read the article here, and check out the paper by Witman & Lamb that recently came out in Plos One.

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New paper by the Witman Lab on Gulf of Maine kelp forest communities

1/4/2018

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We are excited to share our latest publication (Witman & Lamb 2018), "Persistent differences between coastal and offshore kelp forest communities in a warming Gulf of Maine", published in the journal Plos One. The article highlights the unique biomass and diversity of the Cashes Ledge kelp forest 145 km east of the New Hampshire coast. Cashes Ledge is home to the greatest density and biomass of Saccharina latissima kelp at this depth in the Western North Atlantic, and supports a biomass of fish 305 times greater than coastal sites. The shallow kelp forest communities offshore on Cashes Ledge represent an oasis of unusually high kelp and fish abundance in the region that is functionally significant for sustained biological productivity in the Gulf of Maine.

A. view of common macroalgae at the coastal site of Mingo Rock dominated by Agarum kelp and the invasiive Dasysiphonia japonica. B. Saccharina latissima kelp forest on Cashes Ledge. C. View of S. latissima, a foundation species, at Cashes Ledge. D. Patch of Saccharina digitata kelp at Cashes Ledge. E. Photo of a deteriorating assemblage of S. latissima kelp covered with white colonies of the invasive bryozoan Membranipora membranacea during the warm summer of 2012. Fish in the foreground are cunner (Tautogolabrus adspersus). Photo credits: A, B and D by Brett Seymour, C and E by Brian Skerry.

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NY Times front page: "As seas warm, Galapagos Islands face a giant evolutionary test" featuring Witman Lab researchers!

New blog post on the Witman Lab's research with Galapagos Conservancy

Witman Lab featured on the cover of 41 North

The Witman Lab gives a research update seminar in Galapagos

New publication co-authored by Robert Lamb of the Witman Lab on fish communities from tropical oceanic islands

Happy International Oceans Day!

CBS documentary featuring the Witman Lab set to air Sunday evening!

Witman Lab undergraduate students Maya Greenhill and Calvin Munson receive UTRA research grants!

Jon Witman interviewed on "Our Daily Planet"

New paper by the Witman Lab on Gulf of Maine kelp forest communities

IN THE FIELD

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