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• 14. Life underwater close

Quarterly sampling campaigns were carried out during year 2019 to study the effects of organic pollution on the diversity and abundance of meiofauna from a polluted coastal system in north-western Mexico. Amongst harpacticoids, the family Miraciidae Dana 1846 was by far the most abundant and diverse, and several new species and the proposal of some new genera of Stenheliinae Brady 1880 and Diosaccinae Sars 1906 will be published elsewhere. Amongst the Diosaccinae, the genus Robertgurneya Apostolov & Marinov 1988 was one of the most abundant. This genus was proposed and diagnosed by Lang (1944, 1948) but after a complex taxonomical history, was made available by Apostolov & Marinov (1988) who proposed an amended diagnosis and designated R. similis similis (Scott A. 1896) as the type species of the genus. Here I propose a new species, Robertgurneya mexicana sp. nov., and give a fully illustrated record of the widely distributed R. rostrata (Gurney 1927). The relationships amongst the species of Robertgurneya are not clear, but the new Mexican species shares with R. falklandiensis (Lang 1936) the elongated inner dimorphic spine on the basis of the male P1. Additionally, a new amended diagnosis for the genus Robertgurneya, as well as the reallocation of R. soyeri (Apostolov 1974) into Typhlamphiascus Lang 1944, and the creation of a new genus, Robertgurneyella gen. nov., for R. spinulosa (Sars 1911) are proposed. 

Summary Past climatic fluctuations have played a major role in shaping the current plant biodiversity. Although harbouring an exceptional biota, oceanic islands have received little attention in studies on species demographic history and past vegetation patterns. We investigated the impact of past climatic changes on the effective population size of a tree (Coffea mauritiana) that is endemic to Reunion Island, located in the south‐western Indian Ocean (SWIO). Demographic changes were inferred using summary statistics calculated from genomic data. Using ecological niche modelling and the current distribution of genetic diversity, the paleodistribution of the species was also assessed. A reduction in the effective population size of C. mauritiana during the last glaciation maximum was inferred. The distribution of the species was reduced on the western side of the island, due to low rainfall. It appeared that a major reduction in rainfall and a slight temperature decrease prevailed in the SWIO. Our findings indicated that analyses on the current patterns of intraspecific genetic variations can efficiently contribute to past climatic changes characterisation in remote islands. Identifying area with higher resilience in oceanic islands could provide guidance in forest management and conservation faced to the global climate change.

This dataset holds information on data and methods for the Melvin et al., 2016 publication entitled Climate change damages to Alaska public infrastructure and the economics of proactive adaptation. The abstract for this paper is as follows: Climate change in the circumpolar region is causing dramatic environmental change that is increasing the vulnerability of infrastructure. We quantified the economic impacts of climate change on Alaska public infrastructure under relatively high and low climate forcing scenarios [representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) and RCP4.5] using an infrastructure model modified to account for unique climate impacts at northern latitudes, including near-surface permafrost thaw. Additionally, we evaluated how proactive adaptation influenced economic impacts on select infrastructure types and developed first-order estimates of potential land losses associated with coastal erosion and lengthening of the coastal ice-free season for 12 communities. Cumulative estimated expenses from climate-related damage to infrastructure without adaptation measures (hereafter damages) from 2015 to 2099 totaled $5.5 billion (2015 dollars, 3% discount) for RCP8.5 and $4.2 billion for RCP4.5, suggesting that reducing greenhouse gas emissions could lessen damages by $1.3 billion this century. The distribution of damages varied across the state, with the largest damages projected for the interior and southcentral Alaska. The largest source of damages was road flooding caused by increased precipitation followed by damages to buildings associated with near-surface permafrost thaw. Smaller damages were observed for airports, railroads, and pipelines. Proactive adaptation reduced total projected cumulative expenditures to $2.9 billion for RCP8.5 and $2.3 billion for RCP4.5. For road flooding, adaptation provided an annual savings of 80–100% across four study eras. For nearly all infrastructure types and time periods evaluated, damages and adaptation costs were larger for RCP8.5 than RCP4.5. Estimated coastal erosion losses were also larger for RCP8.5.

Local tide and wave conditions were recorded with a RBRduo TDǀwave sensor (RBR Ltd., Ontario/Canada). The sensor was bottom mounted in a shallow tidal creek (0.78 m NHN) through a steel girder (buried 0.3m deep in the sediment) and was positioned 10 cm above sediment surface, as was determined by using a portable differential GPS. This resulted in the sensor falling dry during low tide. For accurate depth calculations, raw pressure data were manually corrected for atmospheric pressure derived from a locally installed weather station. The sensor was pre-calibrated by the manufacturer and the sampling rate was 3 Hz with 1024 samples per burst at a sample interval of 10 min. Recorded data were internally logged until the readout with the Ruskin (V1.13.13) software. Date and time is given in UTC.Data handling was performed according to Zielinski et al. (2018): Post-processing of collected data was done using MATLAB (R2018a). Quality control was performed by (a) erasing data covering maintenance activities, (b) removing outliers, and (c) visually checks. Low-tide data is not removed, but were easily identified through the manually calculated water depth data, where all depths < 0.05m represented low tide data.

Species distribution models (SDMs) are becoming an important tool for marine conservation and management. Yet while there is an increasing diversity and volume of marine biodiversity data for training SDMs, little practical guidance is available on how to leverage distinct data types to build robust models. We explored the effect of different data types on the fit, performance and predictive ability of SDMs by comparing models trained with four data types for a heavily exploited pelagic fish, the blue shark (Prionace glauca), in the Northwest Atlantic: two fishery-dependent (conventional mark-recapture tags, fisheries observer records) and two fishery-independent (satellite-linked electronic tags, pop-up archival tags). We found that all four data types can result in robust models, but differences among spatial predictions highlighted the need to consider ecological realism in model selection and interpretation regardless of data type. Differences among models were primarily attributed to biases in how each data type, and the associated representation of absences, sampled the environment and summarized the resulting species distributions. Outputs from model ensembles and a model trained on all pooled data both proved effective for combining inferences across data types and provided more ecologically realistic predictions than individual models. Our results provide valuable guidance for practitioners developing SDMs. With increasing access to diverse data sources, future work should further develop truly integrative modeling approaches that can explicitly leverage strengths of individual data types while statistically accounting for limitations, such as sampling biases.  Please see the README document ("README.md") and the accompanying published article: Braun, C. D., M. C. Arostegui, N. Farchadi, M. Alexander, P. Afonso, A. Allyn, S. J. Bograd, S. Brodie, D. P. Crear, E. F. Culhane, T. H. Curtis, E. L. Hazen, A. Kerney, N. Lezama-Ochoa, K. E. Mills, D. Pugh, N. Queiroz, J. D. Scott, G. B. Skomal, D. W. Sims, S. R. Thorrold, H. Welch, R. Young-Morse, R. Lewison. In press. Building use-inspired species distribution models: using multiple data types to examine and improve model performance. Ecological Applications. Accepted. DOI: < article DOI will be added when it is assigned >

Assessment of fishing grounds Restoration after a Change of bottom trawling Otter boards (ARCO). The main objective of the ARCO project is to study the current sedimentary processes related with trawling activity in the Palamós submarine canyon after the change of trawl doors by the Palamós harbor fleet. The impacts of this type of fishing in deep-sea environments are considered very high due to their intensity and recurrence, and to the fact that sediment dynamics are less energetic and the benthonic ecosystems are more vulnerable and have less resilience than in neritic or shelf environments Oceanographic data acquired during the ARCO Cruise (29GD20230626) on board the Research Vessel García del Cid in 2023.

Preliminary ages were assigned to sample datasets by assigning seasonal trace element ratios minima and maxima in datasets to warmest and coolest months in satellite SST records and then linearly interpolating in-between

SST data was collected by loggers deployed at the reef sites (sampling rates of 1 per 15 - 30 mins). The data was then down sampled to monthly resolution to verify the precision and accuracy of satellite records that were collected from each of the reef sites.

Tritia reticulata (L.) is a neogastropod ubiquitous in the coastal communities of the NE Atlantic. Its life cycle relies on the swimming performance of planktonic early life stages, whose sensitivity to the climate conditions projected for the near future, namely of ocean acidification (OA) and warming (W), is, to our best knowledge, unknown. To examine the resilience of larval stages to future environmental conditions, this work investigates the effect of OA-W on the swimming performance of T. reticulata veligers under a range of experimental conditions, based on the end-of-century projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Veligers were exposed to six experimental scenarios for 14 days, employing a full factorial design with three temperatures (T°C: 18, 20 and 22 °C) and two pH levels (pHtarget: 8.1 and 7.8). Mortality was assessed throughout the trial, after which swimming behaviour – characterised by the activity, speed and the distance travelled by veligers – was analysed by automated video recordings in a Zebrabox device. Mortality increased with OA-W and, although more active, larvae travelled shorter distances revealing reduced swimming speed under acidic and warmer conditions, with the interaction of the tested stressors – pH and T°C – being highly significant. Results motivated the morpho-histological analysis of larvae preserved at the end of the trial, to check for the integrity of the organs involved in veligers' motion: statocysts, velum and foot. Statocyst and velar morpho-structure were conserved but histological damage of metapodial epithelia was evident under acidity, namely an apparent hypertrophy and protrusion of the secretory cells, with dispersed pigmented granules and, at 22 °C, less cilia, with potential functional implications. Negative consequences of the OA-W scenarios tested on veligers' competence are unveiled, pointing towards the eminent threat these phenomena constitute to T. reticulata perpetuation in case no mitigation measures are taken, and projections become effective. In order to allow full comparability with other ocean acidification data sets, the R package seacarb (Gattuso et al, 2019) was used to compute a complete and consistent set of carbonate system variables, as described by Nisumaa et al. (2010). In this dataset the original values were archived in addition with the recalculated parameters (see related PI). The date of carbonate chemistry calculation by seacarb is 2020-06-12.