54 research outputs found

    Arctic coralline algae elevate surface pH and carbonate in the dark

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    Red coralline algae are projected to be sensitive to ocean acidification, particularly in polar oceans. As important ecosystem engineers, their potential sensitivity has broad implications, and understanding their carbon acquisition mechanisms is necessary for making reliable predictions. Therefore, we investigated the localized carbonate chemistry at the surface of Arctic coralline algae using microsensors. We report for the first time carbonate ion concentration and pH measurements ([CO ]) at and above the algal surface in the microenvironment. We show that surface pH and [CO ] are higher than the bulk seawater in the light, and even after hours of darkness. We further show that three species of Arctic coralline algae have efficient carbon concentrating mechanisms including direct bicarbonate uptake and indirect bicarbonate use via a carbonic anhydrase enzyme. Our results suggest that Arctic corallines have strong biological control over their surface chemistry, where active calcification occurs, and that net dissolution in the dark does not occur. We suggest that the elevated pH and [CO ] in the dark could be explained by a high rate of light independent carbon fixation that reduces respiratory CO release. This mechanism could provide a potential adaptation to ocean acidification in Arctic coralline algae, which has important implications for future Arctic marine ecosystems

    Seawater acidification more than warming presents a challenge for two Antarctic macroalgal-associated amphipods

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    Elevated atmospheric pCO2 concentrations are triggering seawater pH reductions and seawater temperature increases along the western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP). These factors in combination have the potential to influence organisms in an antagonistic, additive, or synergistic manner. The amphipods Gondogeneia antarctica and Paradexamine fissicauda represent prominent members of macroalgal-associated mesograzer assemblages of the WAP. Our primary objective was to investigate amphipod behavioral and physiological responses to reduced seawater pH and elevated temperature to evaluate potential cascading ecological impacts. For 90 d, amphipods were exposed to combinations of seawater conditions based on present ambient (pH 8.0, 1.5°C) and predicted end-of-century conditions (pH 7.6, 3.5°C). We recorded survival, molt frequency, and macroalgal consumption rates as well as change in wet mass and proximate body composition (protein and lipid). Survival for both species declined significantly at reduced pH and co-varied with molt frequency. Consumption rates in G. antarctica were significantly higher at reduced pH and there was an additive pH-temperature effect on consumption rates in P. fissicauda. Body mass was reduced for G. antarctica at elevated temperature, but there was no significant effect of pH or temperature on body mass in P. fissicauda. Exposure to the pH or temperature levels tested did not induce significant changes in whole body biochemical composition of G. antarctica, but exposure to elevated temperature resulted in a significant increase in whole body protein content of P. fissicauda. Our study indicates that while elevated temperature causes sub-lethal impacts on both species of amphipods, reduced pH causes significant mortality

    Editorial: Coralline algae: Past, present, and future perspectives

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    Following the success of the Frontiers in Marine Science Research Topic on “Coralline Algae: Globally Distributed Ecosystem Engineers,” the Research Topic on “Coralline Algae: Past, Present and Future Perspectives” was launched to extend the opportunity for publishing further knowledge about these diverse ecosystem engineers across a broader time scale. In this Research Topic, an additional nine original research articles have been published, strengthening our understanding of coralline algae past, present, and future, including their biology, physiology and ecology. From reconstructing coralline algal assemblages during the Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum, to understanding current trophodynamics and benthic-pelagic coupling in rhodolith beds, to assessing the adaptability of coralline algae to future warming, the original research articles in this Research Topic cover a time frame of 55.6 million years and span across an Atlantic biogeographical range from Brazil to the high Arctic.1521610info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Editorial: Coralline algae: Past, present, and future perspectives

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    Following the success of the Frontiers in Marine Science Research Topic on “Coralline Algae: Globally Distributed Ecosystem Engineers,” the Research Topic on “Coralline Algae: Past, Present and Future Perspectives” was launched to extend the opportunity for publishing further knowledge about these diverse ecosystem engineers across a broader time scale. In this Research Topic, an additional nine original research articles have been published, strengthening our understanding of coralline algae past, present, and future, including their biology, physiology and ecology. From reconstructing coralline algal assemblages during the Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum, to understanding current trophodynamics and benthic-pelagic coupling in rhodolith beds, to assessing the adaptability of coralline algae to future warming, the original research articles in this Research Topic cover a time frame of 55.6 million years and span across an Atlantic biogeographical range from Brazil to the high Arctic.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    The glacial geomorphology of upper GodthÄbsfjord (Nuup Kangerlua) in south-west Greenland

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    © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of Journal of Maps. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.The Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) is known to have experienced widespread retreat over the last century. Information on outlet glacier dynamics, prior to this, are limited due to both a lack of observations and a paucity of mapped or mappable deglacial evidence which restricts our understanding of centennial to millennial timescale dynamics of the GrIS. Here we present glacial geomorphological mapping, for upper GodthÄbsfjord, covering 5800 km 2 at a scale of 1:92,000, using a combination of ASTER GDEM V2, a medium-resolution DEM (error < 10 m horizontal and < 6 m vertical accuracy), panchromatic orthophotographs and ground truthing. This work provides a detailed geomorphological assessment for the area, compiled as a single map, comprising of moraines, meltwater channels, streamlined bedrock, sediment lineations, ice-dammed lakes, trimlines, terraces, gullied sediment and marine limits. Whilst some of the landforms have been previously identified, the new information presented here improves our understanding of ice margin behaviour and can be used for future numerical modelling and landform dating programmes. Data also form the basis for palaeoglaciological reconstructions and contribute towards understanding of the centennial to millennial timescale record of this sector of the GrIS.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

    Editorial: coralline algae: globally distributed ecosystem engineers

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    From the early days of phycology, coralline algae (CA) have been considered the most formidable and widely distributed algae (Woelkerling, 1988). They compose an abundant and highly diverse group, divided into geniculate (articulated) and non-geniculate species (crusts and rhodolith/maërl forms). CA are present in almost every coastal ecosystem around the world, from the intertidal to mesophotic zones (Johansen et al., 1981; Steneck, 1986; Foster, 2001). They are important ecosystem engineers that provide hard, three-dimensional substrates for a highly diverse fauna and flora (Nelson, 2009), building habitats like the globally distributed rhodolith (or maërl) beds (Foster, 2001), and the large algal bioconstructions that abound in the Mediterranean (coralligenous assemblages, intertidal rims; Ingrosso et al., 2018). In addition, the CaCO3 precipitation within cell walls leads to a high fossilization potential of CA, which are considered the best fossil record among macrobenthic autotrophs since they first appeared in the Lower Cretaceous (Aguirre et al., 2000). It also makes CA major carbonate producers (van der Heijden and Kamenos, 2015), which, considering their abundance and wide distribution, gives them an important role in oceanic carbon cycling and reef building (Adey, 1998; Chisholm, 2003; Martin et al., 2006; Perry et al., 2008) and makes them a group of significant economic interest (Coletti and Frixa, 2017). Like many other marine ecosystems, CA habitats will be negatively affected by future climate change, e.g., due to reduced CA calcification/growth (Martin andHall-Spencer, 2017; Cornwall et al., 2019) that may eventually lead to ecosystem degradation and reduction of habitat complexity and biodiversity.FCT: UID/Multi/04326/2019; European Union (EU): 844703 and 2018-W-MS-35; FINEP/Rede CLIMA 01.13.0353-00; National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) 426215/2016; National Science Foundation Ocean Sciences International Postdoctoral Research Fellow program 1521610 nvironmental Protection Agency in Ireland .info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    Greenland tidewater glacier advanced rapidly during era of Norse Settlement

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    ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources for providing logistical support in Nuuk. Martin Blicher, Thomas Juul-Pedersen, and Johanne Vad are thanked for their research and field assistance. We acknowledge the support of the National Museum of Greenland for permission to undertake excavations near Norse ruin sites (permit 2015/03). Project funding was provided by the Leverhulme Trust Research Project grant 2014-093, and J.M. Lea was supported by funding from the Quaternary Research Association, British Society for Geomorphology, and a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Future Leaders Fellowship (MR/S017232/1). We thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor for constructive comments, which helped to substantially improve this paper. D.M. Pearce would like to dedicate this paper to her father Richard M. Pearce.Peer reviewedPostprin

    Greenland tidewater glacier advanced rapidly during era of Norse settlement

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    Our ability to improve prognostic modeling of the Greenland Ice Sheet relies on understanding the long-term relationships between climate and mass flux (via iceberg calving) from marine-terminating tidewater glaciers (TWGs). Observations of recent TWG behavior are widely available, but long-term records of TWG advance are currently lacking. We present glacial geomorphological, sedimentological, archaeological, and modeling data to reconstruct the ~20 km advance of Kangiata Nunaata Sermia (KNS; the largest tidewater glacier in southwest Greenland) during the first half of the past millennium. The data show that KNS advanced ~15 km during the 12th and 13th centuries CE at a rate of ~115 m a–1, contemporaneous with regional climate cooling toward the Little Ice Age and comparable to rates of TWG retreat witnessed over the past ~200 years. Presence of Norse farmsteads proximal to KNS demonstrates their resilience to climate change, manifest as a rapidly advancing TWG in a cooling climate. The results place limits on the magnitude of ice-margin advance and demonstrate TWG sensitivity to climate cooling as well as warming. These data combined with our grounding-line stability analysis provide a long-term record that validates approaches to numerical modeling aiming to link calving to climate

    Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

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    A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

    Pushing the limits: palynological investigations at the margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet in the Norse Western Settlement

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    This paper presents two high-resolution pollen records dating to ~AD 1000-1400 that reveal the impacts of Norse colonists on vegetation and landscape around a remote farmstead in the Western Settlement of Greenland. The study is centred upon a ‘centralised farm’ (ruin group V53d) in Austmannadalen, near the margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet (64Âș13’ N, 49Âș49’W). The climate is low arctic and considered marginal in terms of its suitability for the type of pastoral agriculture that the Norse settlers introduced. The data reveal that at a short distance (~500 m) from the farm buildings, the palynological ‘footprint’ for settlement becomes extremely indistinct, the only clear palaeoenvironmental evidence for a human presence being elevated levels of microscopic charcoal. This contrasts with the Eastern Settlement, where a strong palynological signature for Norse landnĂĄm is evident, from the local (individual farm) through to the regional (landscape) scale. The palynological data from Austmannadalen, and the Western Settlement more generally, imply that farming occurred at very low intensity. This aligns with ideas that promote the importance of hunting, and trade in valuable Arctic commodities (e.g. walrus ivory), ahead of a search for new pasture as the dominant motivation driving the Norse settlement of this region
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