Relationship between Soil Sodium Concentration and Plant Height in Salicornia Virginica in the Ballona Wetlands in Los Angeles, California

Previous studies have shown a positive relationship between biomass of the common wetland halophyte, Salicornia virginica, and salinity. This study implements a new technique that is less invasive than measuring total plant biomass that involves uprooting the plant. Instead, plant height was used as an indicator of sodium content in surrounding soils. This technique is based on the hypothesis that plant height of S. virginica corresponds to soil sodium concentrations. There was a significant variation in plant height at higher soil sodium concentrations than at lower soil sodium concentrations. Furthermore, in areas of higher soil water content (%), sodium concentration was elevated

Habitat associations of the surgeonfish, yellow tang (Zebrasoma flavescens), from shallow to upper mesophotic coral reefs (3- 40 M) in west Hawaii

Understanding habitat utilization of coral reef fish at each life stage is critical for determining their vulnerability to changing ocean conditions and for successful reef fish management. The yellow tang (Zebrasoma flavescens) is a herbivorous surgeonfish and is heavily collected in the Hawaiian marine aquarium trade. Previous work suggests that recruits and juveniles utilize branching coral at mid depths (~12 m) and make an ontogenetic shift to shallow (~3 m) depths as adults. These studies, however, have not explored yellow tang abundances beyond ~18 m. Here, we analyze the distribution of yellow tang to deeper depths. Fish and benthic surveys were conducted on the west coast of the island of Hawaii (West Hawaii) along a depth gradient from shallow to upper mesophotic coral reefs (3- 40 m). The results confirmed previous research, however, adults were also found in low but consistent abundances from 21-40 m and juveniles were found to 30 m when branching coral habitat was present. Thus, the upper mesophotic zone is serving as additional juvenile and adult habitat for yellow tang in Hawaii

Linking human well-being and jellyfish: ecosystem services, impacts, and societal responses

Jellyfish are usually perceived as harmful to humans and are seen as “pests”. This negative perception has hindered knowledge regarding their value in terms of ecosystem services. As humans increasingly modify and interact with coastal ecosystems, it is important to evaluate the benefits and costs of jellyfish, given that jellyfish bloom size, frequency, duration, and extent are apparently increasing in some regions of the world. Here we explore those benefits and costs as categorized by regulating, supporting, cultural, and provisioning ecosystem services. A geographical perspective of human vulnerability to jellyfish over four categories of human well-being (health care, food, energy, and freshwater production) is also discussed in the context of thresholdsand trade-offs to enable social adaptation. Whereas beneficial services provided by jellyfish likely scale linearly with biomass (perhaps peaking at a saturation point), non-linear thresholds exist for negative impacts to ecosystem services. We suggest that costly adaptive strategies will outpace the beneficial services if jellyfish populations continue to increase in the future

JeDI: Jellyfish Database Initiative

Global records on gelatinous zooplankton for the past 200 years.The Jellyfish Database Initiative (JeDI) is a scientifically-coordinated global database dedicated to gelatinous zooplankton (members of the Cnidaria, Ctenophora and Thaliacea) and associated environmental data. The database holds 476,000 quantitative, categorical, presence-absence and presence only records of gelatinous zooplankton spanning the past four centuries (1790-2011) assembled from a variety of published and unpublished sources. Gelatinous zooplankton data are reported to species level, where identified, but taxonomic information on phylum, family and order are reported for all records. Other auxiliary metadata, such as physical, environmental and biometric information relating to the gelatinous zooplankton metadata, are included with each respective entry. JeDI has been developed and designed as an open access research tool for the scientific community to quantitatively define the global baseline of gelatinous zooplankton populations and to describe long-term and large-scale trends in gelatinous zooplankton populations and blooms. It has also been constructed as a future repository of datasets, thus allowing retrospective analyses of the baseline and trends in global gelatinous zooplankton populations to be conducted in the future.This project was funded by the National Science Foundation Award OCE-103014