New Publications

[Media] WSHU public radio covers Project Oceanology story

Posted on April 4, 2019April 4, 2019 by Hannes Baumann

4 April 2019. Following the publication of our study on the Project Oceanology time-series in Marine Environmental Research and the subsequent article about it in TheConversation, today the story was featured by WSHU public radio, in Ron Ropiak’s show “The Full Story“.

Have a listen, how Hannes describes both the findings and the significance of the Project Oceanology time series.

[Publication] The Project Oceanology time-series has been published!

Posted on March 28, 2019November 5, 2019 by Hannes Baumann

21 March 2019. We are happy to announce that Marine Environmental Research just published our most recent paper about long-term ecological change in eastern Long Island Sound based on data collected by Project Oceanology!For his Master’s thesis, Jacob Snyder painstakingly retrieved and digitized more than 40 years of environmental observations from Project Oceanology. This non-profit ocean literacy organization has educated middle and high school students on boat trips to nearby estuarine sites for decades. For the first time, his work allowed a quantitative evaluation of these data and glimpses into the abiotic and biotic changes in nearshore waters of Eastern Long Island Sound.

Highlights

Citizen-science observations revealed rapid warming, acidification, and dissolved oxygen loss over the past 40 years in eastern Long Island Sound
Otter trawl catches showed significant decreases in overall species diversity and richness
Cold-water adapted species (American lobster, winter flounder) decreased, but warm-water adapted species (spider crabs) increased since 1997

Citation

Snyder, J.T., Whitney, M.M., Dam, H.G., Jacobs, M.W., and Baumann, H. (2019). Citizen science observations reveal rapid, multi-decadal ecosystem changes in eastern Long Island Sound. Marine Environmental Research 146: 80-88

Public outreach

The publication of this work is also featured in an article for the online magazine TheConversation.com titled
“Citizen science shows that climate change is rapidly reshaping Long Island Sound“

News coverage: UConn Today | New Haven Register | The Hour | NonProfit Quarterly | WSHU Public Radio

Fig_2-abiotic-conditions_new — Long-term changes in temperature, pH, and oxygen in the Thames River Mouth (eastern Long Island Sound)

Fig_6-CPUEs_4-species — Catch indices of four major species in Project Oceanology trawls over the past two decades

[Research News] F1000 Prime recommends Biology Letters article

Posted on December 13, 2018December 13, 2018 by Hannes Baumann

Dear Dr Baumann,

Congratulations!

Your article: Robust quantification of fish early life CO2 sensitivities via serial experimentation, Biology Letters, 2018 (DOI: 10.3410/f.734523360.793553721), has been recommended in F1000Prime as being of special significance in its field by F1000 Faculty Member Philip Munday.

You can read Dr Munday’s recommendation here

Munday P: F1000Prime Recommendation of [Baumann H et al., Biol Lett 2018 14(11)]. In F1000Prime, 11 Dec 2018; 10.3410/f.734523360.793553721

Thank you, Phil!

[Publication] Meta-analysis of silverside CO2 experiments published!

Posted on November 28, 2018November 28, 2018 by Hannes Baumann

28 November 2018. Hannes, Emma, and Chris are happy to announce that Biology Letters just published our latest study, a meta-analysis of 20 standard CO₂ exposure experiments conducted on Atlantic silverside offspring between 2012-2017. All these years of sustained experimental work resulted in the most robustly constrained estimates of overall CO₂ effect sizes for a marine organism to date.
The study demonstrated:

A general tolerance of Atlantic silverside early life stages to pCO₂ levels of ~2,000 µatm
A significant overall CO₂ induced reduction of embryo and overall survival by -9% and -13%, respectively
The seasonal change in early life CO₂ sensitivity in this species
The value of serial experimentation to detect and robustly estimate CO₂ effects in marine organisms

Baumann, H., Cross, E.L., and Murray, C.S. Robust quantification of fish early life CO₂ sensitivities via serial experimentation. Biology Letters 14:20180408

Baumann-etal-BiolLett2018---Fig01 — This figure shows the summary of early life responses to high CO₂ conditions in Atlantic silversides across all experiments conducted between 2012-2017. Effect size was estimated using the log-transformed response ratio (A-D). Error bars are 95% confidence intervals. The responses are considered significant if the confidence interval does not include zero. Panels E-F: seasonal decomposition of response ratios, showing that silverside early life stages are most sensitive to high CO₂ at the beginning and end of their spawning season.

[New publication] Complex CO2 x temperature effects in Menidia offspring

Posted on July 20, 2018January 4, 2022 by Hannes Baumann

20 July 2018. We are happy to announce that Diversity just published Chris Murray’s paper on complex CO₂ x temperature effects in Atlantic silverside offspring. The paper synthesizes 5 large multistressor experiments conducted since 2014, finding evidence for the large CO₂ tolerance in this species across a large temperature range.

Congrats, Chris, to the second chapter published!

Murray, C.S. and Baumann, H. You better repeat it: complex temperature × CO₂ effects in Atlantic silverside offspring revealed by serial experimentation. Diversity 10:69

MurrayBaumann-Fig1 — *M. menidia*. Offspring responses to control (blue), high (red), and extreme (green) CO₂ conditions at four temperatures across five CO₂ × temperature factorial experiments. Traits include embryo survival (A–E), hatch length (F–I), larval survival (J–N) and larval growth rate (O–R). Individual replicates are represented by small faded circles. Treatment means (±SD) are depicted by large, bold circles and connected by dotted lines. Note: different scales used for hatch length measurements due to differences in sample timing; panels F and G use 1dph length Y axis (left) while panels H and I use hatch length Y axis (right).

[New publication] No CO2 effects on silverside starvation

Posted on April 1, 2018April 1, 2018 by Hannes Baumann

31 March 2018. We’re happy to announce that Marine Biology just published our latest study examining the starvation tolerance of silverside larvae and juveniles at contrasting CO₂ conditions. We compiled observations from five separate experiments spanning different years, laboratories, temperatures, life stages, and CO₂ levels. Contrary to expectation, we found that starvation rates were largely independent of the CO₂ environment in this fish species.

One major set of data was produced by Elle Parks as part of her Research Experience for Undergraduates (NSF-REU) in summer 2017. Well done, everybody!

Baumann, H., Parks, E.M.*, and Murray, C.S.* (2018)

Starvation rates in larval and juvenile Atlantic silversides (Menidia menidia) are unaffected by high CO₂ conditions.
Marine Biology 165:75-83

BaumannLab170609b285s — Hannes shows Elle Parks (REU 2017), how individual screen with enumerated embryos are suspended into the replicate rearing containers. (Photo: Peter Morenus, UConn)

BaumannLab170609b046s — On 9 June, Elle and Julie strip-spawn Atlantic silverside females into spawning dishes covered in window screen for eggs to attach. (Photo: Peter Morenus, UConn)

Starvation-figure-MABI2018 — M. menidia. (A) Relative cumulative starvation mortalities of early juveniles reared under ambient (grey line, diamonds) vs. high CO₂ conditions (black line, circles). Symbols depict individual replicates, lines represent treatment means. (B) Total length of juveniles perishing during the experiment at ambient (grey diamonds) vs. high CO₂ conditions (black circles). Lines represent the median(solid lines), 5th and 95th percentiles (dashed lines) of TL estimated with locally weighted, non-parametric density estimators. The initial TL distribution at the beginning of the experiment is depicted on day 0 as the median (white circle), 5th/95th percentiles (whiskers) and the minimum and maximum (white stars).

[New publication] Brachiopods resilient to global change

Posted on March 14, 2018March 15, 2018 by Hannes Baumann

Congratulations to Emma Cross to her new publication in Global Change Biology today!

Callorica-inconspicua — The common brachiopod *Calloria inconspicua* (pink shells) in their natural environment in New Zealand. Photo credit: Dr Liz Harper.

Her study that was part of her PhD-research concludes that the brachiopod Calloria inconspicua, a common seafloor dwelling marine invertebrate from New Zealand, is more resilient to environmental change than expected.

Read the full press release by the British Antarctic Survey

Cross et al. 2018. A 120-year record of resilience to environmental change in brachiopods.
Global Change Biology published online 14 March 2018

[Research feature] Our multistressor NSF project in the spotlight

Posted on February 21, 2018February 21, 2018 by Hannes Baumann

This research feature makes the case for multistressor research to a broad general audience and introduces our NSF project and its participants. Download the feature by clicking on the pictures or the link below.

Download the Research feature

[New publication] Mothers matter for the CO2 sensitivity of fish offspring

Posted on November 30, 2017January 26, 2018 by Hannes Baumann

28 November 2017. The Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology just published the latest study by our group looking at differences in the CO₂ sensitivity of Atlantic silverside offspring stemming from different mothers. Congratulations to Jacob Snyder for his first peer-reviewed publication.

Among the highlights of the study:

Offspring produced by different females varied in their sensitivity to high CO₂ conditions.
Specific fatty acids in eggs were correlated to the log-transformed CO₂ response ratio of embryo survival and hatch length.
Maternal provisioning might be an additional determinant of CO₂ sensitivity in fish early life stages.

Citation:

Snyder, J.T.*, Murray, C.S.*, and Baumann, H. (2018)
Potential for maternal effects on offspring CO₂ sensitivities in the Atlantic silverside (Menidia menidia).
Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 499:1-8

Fig2 - dancing men — *M. menidia*. Responses to high CO₂ conditions among replicates within and among females: (A) embryo and larval survival; (B) overall survival; (C) SL at hatch; and (D) final SL (16 dph). Patterns of larval growth were nearly identical to panel D and are therefore omitted. Ambient and high CO2 treatments are denoted by red and blue colors, respectively. Small symbols depict replicate survival (A,B) or replicate average size (C,D), while large symbols depict CO₂ treatment averages for each female. Black lines connect average response for each female. Asterisks represent significant differences (P < 0.05) between CO₂ levels within offspring of each female (Bonferroni adjusted t-test). Letters denote to females A to E.

[New publication] Nearshore pH and DO fluctuations across 16 US estuaries!

Posted on October 2, 2017January 27, 2018 by Hannes Baumann

October, 2nd, 2017: Happy to announce that Estuaries and Coasts just published (online) our article that looked at unifying principles of pH and DO fluctuations across many US nearshore habitats. The datasets belongs to the US Nearshore Estuaries Research Reserves System (NERRS) and is one of the most extensive monitoring datasets in coastal aquatic habitats. In this case, we used 15 years of continuous monitoring data (> 5 million data points) from 16 different reserves across the US Atlantic, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and Pacific coasts and analyzed short- to long-term variability in pH and DO fluctuations. Among the highlights:

Our analyses confirmed that large, metabolically driven fluctuations of pH and DO are a unifying feature of nearshore habitats. Even more so, we were able to show that across habitats, one can predict mean pH or mean diel pH fluctuations simply based on salinity and oxygen levels/fluctuations. This provided strong empirical evidence that common metabolic principles drive diel to seasonal pH/DO variations within as well as across a diversity of estuarine environments.

As expected, there were no interannual, monotonic trends in nearshore pH conditions; instead interannual fluctuations were of similar magnitude than the pH decrease predicted for the average surface ocean over the next three centuries.

By correlating weekly anomalies of pH, oxygen, and temperature, we found strong empirical support for the notion that coastal acidification — in addition to being driven by eutrophication and atmospheric CO₂ increases — is exacerbated simply by warming, likely via increasing community respiration.

Citation and link:
Baumann, H. and Smith, E. (2017) Quantifying metabolically-driven pH and oxygen fluctuations in US nearshore habitats at diel to interannual time-scales Estuaries & Coasts (published online 2 Oct 2017)