Indirect Effects of Ocean Warming and Acidification on the Realized Recruitment of Agaricia agaricites

Over the past few decades, coral cover has declined worldwide due to overfishing, disease, and storms, and these effects have been exacerbated by ocean warming and acidification. Corals are extremely susceptible to these changes because they are already living close to their thermal and aragonite saturation thresholds. Ocean warming and acidification (OAW) may also impact coral survival and growth by impacting their settlement cues. Coral larvae use crustose coralline algae (CCA) and their associated biofilms as cues for settlement, i.e., habitat selection. Settlement cues can also be negatively affected by increased water temperature and acidity. It was hypothesized that the impacts of OAW on settlement substrate can further threaten coral persistence by altering/inhibiting larval settlement and potentially decreasing the post-settlement survival and growth of coral recruits. In this study, we 1) assessed the effect of substrate quality (substrate conditioned in ambient or OAW conditions) on settlement of A. agaricites larvae, 2) determined the effect of substrate quality on post-settlement survival and growth of A. agaricites recruits, and 3) determined the effect of ocean warming and acidification on the post-settlement survival and growth of A. agaricites recruits. Aragonite settlement tiles were placed offshore for one month to accrue CCA and associated biofilms, and were then conditioned in either ambient (29°C, 8.2 pH) or predicted future oceanic conditions (31°C, 7.9 pH) conditions for 7 – 10 days. Agaricia agaricites larvae were then introduced to the settlement tiles, and their settlement percentage was calculated. Once a week for 12 weeks after larval settlement, the size, survival, and pigmentation of A. agaricites recruits was recorded. Larvae settled marginally more on optimally conditioned tiles than on tiles previously exposed to OAW conditions (p=0.053). The survival of coral recruits in OAW conditions was greatly reduced, their growth was very limited, and they became paler over time. When reared in ambient conditions, recruits on OAW treated substrate initially displayed higher survival rates than recruits on ambient treated substrate. After 3 weeks in ambient conditions, however, survival rates were similar for recruits on ambient and OAW treated substrate; their growth curves were very similar, and coral recruits became more pigmented over time. Ocean warming and acidification conditions not only directly impacted the growth, survival, and pigmentation of A. agaricites recruits, but it also indirectly affected larval 5 settlement by likely altering microbial composition in bacterial biofilms on the settlement tiles. These results indicate that future conditions of ocean warming and acidification can be deleterious for A. agaricites, particularly after settlement. If the early life stages of scleractinian corals are negatively affected by OAW conditions, successful recruitment throughout the Caribbean and Florida Reef Tract could decrease. As a result, recovery from disturbances could be hindered, thus compromising the sustainability of many coral species and other marine ecosystems that depend on coral reefs for protection, habitat, and food

Body size variation of and multiple blood feeding by Culiseta melanura (Coquillett) in southeastern Massachusetts.

Thesis (M.S.

Distribution List Maker Program with Inter-User Capabilities between Universities and Colleges in the Tennessee Board of Regents School System.

E-mail is an important tool for faculty and staff at the university, college, department, and instructor levels. E-mail is a useful medium in the academic setting for corresponding at all levels. Instructors e-mail students about assignments, lectures, and urgent information: for example, postponed classes and changes in the schedule. In addition e-mail is used to let potential students know about job opportunities. Other routine uses for e-mail include group communications within academic committees and groups of students collaborating on projects. Most users of e-mail who send messages to multiple recipients enter each recipients e-mail address into the TO: field individually or enter the name and e-mail address into a distribution list individually. Both methods are time consuming. This thesis describes a tool for facilitating the use of e-mail for classroom management. This tool, List Maker converts class roll listings to e-mail distribution lists for five common e-mail clients: Pegasus Mail, Eudora Lite, Netscape Messenger, Microsoft Outlook Express, and Microsoft Outlook 97/98. List Maker also converts address books and distribution lists from one e-mail client to another. The List Maker program has been adopted for use in selected departments within ETSU. A survey of the programÆs users indicates that List Maker made it easier for users to create distribution list from class rolls. Efforts to distribute List Maker to other Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) colleges, unfortunately, have not yet succeeded due to a lack of uniform computing platforms and e-mail policies in the TBR

Outside the Circle: A Case Study ofVolunteer Activities of AdultsWith Low Literacy Skills

This study of volunteer activities among 21 adults with low literacy skills in a social assistance program in Nova Scotia revealed attitudes and motivations relating to volunteerism among program recipients, as well as the six employment support workers who counselled them. Findings indicated that the definitions and understandings of “volunteerism” do not include “informal” volunteerism and client’s non-traditional volunteerism was ultimately discouraged by the counsellors, leading clients to slowly disengage from their community over time

Care and Weeding of International Agricultural Communications

Eight years ago a gleam in the eye of an Oregon State University agronomist found life when the University established the International Plant Protection Center (IPPC)

Volatility Prediction using Financial Disclosures Sentiments with Word Embedding-based IR Models

Volatility prediction--an essential concept in financial markets--has recently been addressed using sentiment analysis methods. We investigate the sentiment of annual disclosures of companies in stock markets to forecast volatility. We specifically explore the use of recent Information Retrieval (IR) term weighting models that are effectively extended by related terms using word embeddings. In parallel to textual information, factual market data have been widely used as the mainstream approach to forecast market risk. We therefore study different fusion methods to combine text and market data resources. Our word embedding-based approach significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods. In addition, we investigate the characteristics of the reports of the companies in different financial sectors