 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!! Witman Lab undergraduate students Maya Greenhill and Calvin Munson receive UTRA research grants!4/4/2018
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!  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.
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.  Participants of the workshop on climate change in the Galapagos pose for a picture, including Jon Witman (second from left, back row), Pelayo Salinas de Leon, Boris Worm, Daniel Pauly, and other members of the Charles Darwin Station, Galapagos National Park, visiting scientists, and the Ecuadorian navy.
One sign of stress was that massive and finger corals turned white (bleached) during a broad temperature regime ranging from 30 to 16 o C in 12 months as the cool nutrient rich La Nina period followed the warm phase. For example, chlorophyll a, a measure of planktonic food concentration increased 7-fold during La Nina. Thus the team speculated that the ecosystem bounces back a certain degree during La Ninas – rolling uphill on the coaster, demonstrating resilience. A surprisingly consistent response seen during all 3 La Nina events was that barnacles settled and grew all over the rocky bottom and on the stressed corals down to 20 m depth. This represents a boost to the food chain as many species of fish and snails feed on the barnacles. It appears that the La Nina- increased barnacles may be slowly displacing corals. While corals did not bleach as much as previous El Ninos during the strong 2015-2016 El Nino, we observed a diverse range of ecological impacts from skin disease in reef fish to intense sea urchin grazing and a bloom of cyanobacteria at some oceanic sites. Our work underscores the importance of sustained ecological monitoring to detect the impact of climate oscillations in the ocean.  Fiona poses with her poster at the Ivy League undergraduate research symposium Fiona Beltram traveled to the University of Pennsylvania for the inaugural Ivy League Undergraduate Research Symposium (ILURS). The symposium consisted of 200 undergraduate students from Ivy League schools who were involved in independent research at their respective schools. Most students presented posters, while others gave short talks. Guest lectures by University of Pennsylvania and visiting faculty were also arranged throughout the three-day conference. Research topics ranged from art history and public health to astronomy and cancer research. Fiona gave a poster presentation detailing the results of her current work, which will serve as the first two chapters of her thesis for honors in the Biology degree. She is studying the appearance of cyanobacterial mats on the Galapagos reefs, the potential for a temperature-mediated introduction mechanism that is closely tied to El Niño extremes, and the ecological effects of the species’ continued presence on the reef.
 Robbie lamb represented the Witman Lab at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America, August 6-11 at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland, Oregon. It was a terrific conference with some of the top ecologists in the country tackling some of our field's most pressing issues. A memorial session for Bob Paine brought together some of Dr Paine's former students including Jane Lubchenco, Bruce Menge, Peter Kareiva, and Jim Estes. Each gave talks highlighting Bob's legacy and teachings.
Robbie presented on his thesis research studying how wave turbulence filters the the community of subtidal herbivores in the Galapagos based on how quickly they can navigate the periodic stress of continually crashing waves. It was a real treat to elaborate on this research with Robbie's former advisor in the room, Bruce Menge of Oregon State University, who developed the environmental stress hypothesis over 30 years ago, the original inspiration for Robbie's work on flow and feeding. Witman Lab covered in National Geographic feature article on climate change in the Galapagos Islands6/2/2017  A scalloped hammerhead shark (Sphyrna lewini) with lesions caused by the disease we are studying that was sparked by warm waters during El Niño One of our lab's primary research efforts is focused on studying the impacts of the El Niño - La Niña cycle on marine communities in the Galapagos Islands. This month, National Geographic featured an article on the work the Witman Lab and others are doing to study the myriad effects of climate perturbations on the iconic wildlife of the archipelago. You can read the article and check out special online content here, or see the print issue featuring the article titled "Life in the Balance" by Chris Solomon, photos by Thomas P. Peschak.
New publication from the Witman Lab highlights trophic cascades in the Galapagos Marine Reserve5/2/2017  We are proud to share the new publication from the Witman Lab, titled "Experimental demonstration of a trophic cascade in the Galápagos rocky subtidal: Effects of consumer identity and behavior". In it, Professor Witman and colleagues Franz Smith and Mark Novak show observational and experimental evidence as well as behavioral interaction modeling of a 4-tier trophic cascade involving top predators (sea lions and sharks), meso-predators (triggerfish), herbivores (urchins), and primary producers (algae). This pathway is further complicated by interference competition by hogfish, which harass and steal the urchin prey from triggerfish. You can read the Brown University press release here, and the article is open access and free to read at:
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0175705 |
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