Diversity and biogeography of deep-ocean sea anemones (Cnidaria: Anthozoa: Actiniaria)

The National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program has provided funding that made this project possible.The College of Biological Science’s Dean’s Undergraduate Research Fund also extended generous support.The Pressey Honors Endowment Grant afforded funding for travel to the Evolution 2008 Meeting to present this research in July 2008.The deep sea and its fauna have been surveyed for over a century, but the ecosystems within had not been explored until the recent advent of maneuverable submersible vessels capable of deep diving. Historically, deep sea animals were blindly collected, poorly preserved, and under-described, leaving modern scientists little information on their attributes or ecology. We wanted to examine the relationship between deep ocean sea anemones and sites of hydrothermal activity. Specifically, we sought to identify taxa as potential vent fauna based on their geographic location, especially those collected without knowledge of their benthic environment. Using modern information on benthic topography and geology, we identify eight confirmed vent species and seven potential vent species from among forty-seven species of sea anemones in the deep Pacific Ocean. All of the confirmed vent species are known from a single vent or vent system, and all belong to different genera. Given this striking degree of endemicity, exploration of the vents and vent systems from which sea anemone diversity is undocumented is likely to be fruitful in terms of the discovery of new species and genera of Actiniaria. Alvinactis reu gen., sp. nov is a sea anemone which exemplifies the wealth of deep-ocean species to be discovered. We describe this novel genus and species from recent collections that targeted the diversity of fauna at the deep sea hydrothermal vents of the eastern North Pacific Ocean. The combination of characters in Alvinactis reu is unique among currently known genera of Mesomyaria; most notable among its external features is a belt of verrucae and cinclides in the distal column. We assess the placement of Alvinactis and evaluate taxonomic features used to distinguish groups within Actinostolidae Carlgren, 1893 and Actinoscyphiidae Stephenson, 1920 with a cladistic analysis of morphological characters. Phylogenetic analysis reveals that Alvinactis and several genera previously ascribed to Actinostolidae belong in Actinoscyphiidae. Morphological evidence fails to support monophyly of Actinostolidae, but does support monophyly of the previously proposed subfamily Actinostolinae.The National Science FoundationAssembling the Tree of Life: CnidariaA three-year embargo was granted for this item

Analysis of Environmental Factors Affecting Fruit Quality for the 2007 Growing Season in a California Vineyard

Wine grape quality is heavily influenced by a combination of soil properties and site topography. We used anthocyanin content and yield data from Vitis vinifera L. cv. Cabernet Sauvignon from a vineyard near Madera, California collected during the 2007 growing season. We compared sets of hypotheses regarding the anthocyanin content of winegrapes and vineyard yields as a function of vineyard soil and topographic properties. Each hypothesis was expressed as a regression model predicting a response variable (yield or anthocyanin content) from one or more predictor variables. We used a multiple working hypotheses approach to compare these models using information theoretic criteria (AIC). There was substantial evidence that soil properties affected both anthocyanin content and yield. The top four anthocyanin models received 94% support while the top yield model received 68% support of all models considered. The null models received no support (AICw = 0.00). The predictive 2 power of both the model-averaged anthocyanin content and yield was relatively small (R2 = 2 0.04, R2 = 0.07, respectively). It is likely that greater predictive power could be achieved through the use of more finely-detailed spatial maps and data from additional vineyards

comparative life cycle assessment of low pressure rtm compression rtm and high pressure rtm manufacturing processes to produce cfrp car hoods

Abstract Advanced composite materials, especially those based on carbon fibers, have been attracting the interest of industrial companies for producing light and high-performance components. Resin Transfer Molding (RTM) and its variants have been recognized as the most promising processes to manufacture CFRP (Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer) products in a cost-effective way. However, recent research studies highlighted environmental concerns regarding the use of CFRP parts due to the high environmental load related to their production. In this context, the main scope of the present paper is to investigate and compare the environmental impacts of three alternative manufacturing processes for producing CFRP car hoods: RTM, High-Pressure RTM and Compression-RTM. This analysis has been carried out through the standard Life Cycle Assessment methodology. The system boundaries include all the flows related to manufacturing of the hood and an end of life. Results calculated by using the ReCiPe mid-point/end-point method suggest that the eco-friendliest variant is the Compression-RTM

Life Cycle Assessment of Home Smart Objects: Kitchen Hood Cases

Abstract Promoting a more sustainable and energy-saving economy is one of the main goal of the European Community. In this context, home appliance manufacturers are researching and developing more efficient and sustainable products. Home automation and smart objects, by implementing specific energy management strategies, can significantly reduce energy waste. This paper aims to investigate the benefits offered, in terms of environmental impacts, by a smart system for kitchen air treatment. The system is composed by two inter-connected smart devices: a kitchen hood and an additional aspiration system able to assure a constant indoor comfort minimizing energy consumption and heat losses. Three different configurations were analyzed and compared: conventional extractor kitchen hood, smart extractor kitchen hood, and smart filtrating kitchen hood with smart additional aspiration system. Results show that in comparison with a traditional hood, products equipped with smart devices present lower environmental impact, due to the optimization of their energy consumptions

Disturbance and nutrients synchronise kelp forests across scales through interacting Moran effects

Spatial synchrony is a ubiquitous and important feature of population dynamics, but many aspects of this phenomenon are not well understood. In particular, it is largely unknown how multiple environmental drivers interact to determine synchrony via Moran effects, and how these impacts vary across spatial and temporal scales. Using new wavelet statistical techniques, we characterised synchrony in populations of giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera, a widely distributed marine foundation species, and related synchrony to variation in oceanographic conditions across 33 years (1987–2019) and >900 km of coastline in California, USA. We discovered that disturbance (storm-driven waves) and resources (seawater nutrients)—underpinned by climatic variability—act individually and interactively to produce synchrony in giant kelp across geography and timescales. Our findings demonstrate that understanding and predicting synchrony, and thus the regional stability of populations, relies on resolving the synergistic and antagonistic Moran effects of multiple environmental drivers acting on different timescales

ecocomDP: A flexible data design pattern for ecological community survey data

The idea of harmonizing data is not new. Decades of amassing data in databases according to community standards - both locally and globally - have been more successful for some research domains than others. It is particularly difficult to harmonize data across studies where sampling protocols vary greatly and complex environmental conditions need to be understood to apply analytical methods correctly. However, a body of longterm ecological community observations is increasingly becoming publicly available and has been used in important studies. Here, we discuss an approach to preparing harmonized community survey data by an environmental data repository, in collaboration with a national observatory. The workflow framework and repository infrastructure are used to create a decentralized, asynchronous model to reformat data without altering original data through cleaning or aggregation, while retaining metadata about sampling methods and provenance, and enabling programmatic data access. This approach does not create another data ‘silo’ but will allow the repository to contribute subsets of available data to a variety of different analysis-ready data preparation efforts. With certain limitations (e.g., changes to the sampling protocol over time), data updates and downstream processing may be completely automated. In addition to supporting reuse of community observation data by synthesis science, a goal for this harmonization and workflow effort is to contribute these datasets to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) to increase the data’s discovery and use

Tail-dependent spatial synchrony arises from nonlinear driver–response relationships

Spatial synchrony may be tail-dependent, that is, stronger when populations are abundant than scarce, or vice-versa. Here, ‘tail-dependent’ follows from distributions having a lower tail consisting of relatively low values and an upper tail of relatively high values. We present a general theory of how the distribution and correlation structure of an environmental driver translates into tail-dependent spatial synchrony through a non-linear response, and examine empirical evidence for theoretical predictions in giant kelp along the California coastline. In sheltered areas, kelp declines synchronously (lower-tail dependence) when waves are relatively intense, because waves below a certain height do little damage to kelp. Conversely, in exposed areas, kelp is synchronised primarily by periods of calmness that cause shared recovery (upper-tail dependence). We find evidence for geographies of tail dependence in synchrony, which helps structure regional population resilience: areas where population declines are asynchronous may be more resilient to disturbance because remnant populations facilitate reestablishment

How environmental drivers of spatial synchrony interact

Spatial synchrony, the tendency for populations across space to show correlated fluctuations, is a fundamental feature of population dynamics, linked to central topics of ecology such as population cycling, extinction risk, and ecosystem stability. A common mechanism of spatial synchrony is the Moran effect, whereby spatially synchronized environmental signals drive population dynamics and hence induce population synchrony. After reviewing recent progress in understanding Moran effects, we here elaborate a general theory of how Moran effects of different environmental drivers acting on the same populations can interact, either synergistically or destructively, to produce either substantially more or markedly less population synchrony than would otherwise occur. We provide intuition for how this newly recognized mechanism works through theoretical case studies and application of our theory to California populations of giant kelp. We argue that Moran interactions should be common. Our theory and analysis explain an important new aspect of a fundamental feature of spatiotemporal population dynamics

Asymmetric Dimethylarginine in Obese Youth: Relationship with 24-hour Ambulatory Blood Pressure

The incidence of amputation worldwide is 1.5 per 1000 habitants and the total number of amputees is about 10 million..

Tail dependent spatial synchrony arises from nonlinear driver response relationships

Spatial synchrony may be tail-dependent, that is, stronger when populations are abundant than scarce, or vice-versa. Here, ‘tail-dependent’ follows from distributions having a lower tail consisting of relatively low values and an upper tail of relatively high values. We present a general theory of how the distribution and correlation structure of an environmental driver translates into tail-dependent spatial synchrony through a non-linear response, and examine empirical evidence for theoretical predictions in giant kelp along the California coastline. In sheltered areas, kelp declines synchronously (lower-tail dependence) when waves are relatively intense, because waves below a certain height do little damage to kelp. Conversely, in exposed areas, kelp is synchronised primarily by periods of calmness that cause shared recovery (upper-tail dependence). We find evidence for geographies of tail dependence in synchrony, which helps structure regional population resilience: areas where population declines are asynchronous may be more resilient to disturbance because remnant populations facilitate reestablishment