Publications & Presentations

[Lab news] Baumann lab at OSM2018 and the OA-PI meeting

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OSM2018
OAPI-meeting-2018

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Members of the Baumann lab attended two back-to-back meetings in Portland, OR, in February. From 11-16 February, we participated in 2018 Ocean Sciences Meeting, while from 17-19 February we all took part in the 4th Ocean Acidification Principal Investigators meeting.
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Holding the fort at the Rankin lab were Julie and Charles, who did an excellent job. Thank you guys!
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At OSM, Hannes chaired a large session (OC51, OC52) titled “Multiple Stressors and Multiple Disciplines: Understanding the Consequences of Global Ocean Change for Marine Species” together with colleagues from Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS, Amy Maas), the Virgina Institute of Marine Sciences (VIMS, Emily Rivest), and the University of South Carolina (Catherine Davis). The line-up of speakers was impressive and included our very own Emma Cross (speaking on brachiopod resistance to CO2) and Hans Dam (presenting our findings of multigenerational CO2 effects on the copepod Acartia tonsa).

At the OA PI meeting, Hannes gave an summary talk of key advances in the field of experimental OA approaches, while all of us worked in small synthesis groups on synthesizing products and projects.

Portland, albeit rainy, was as usual a great city to come to.

OSM2018 sessions OC51, OC52 (Baumann, Maas, Rivest, Davis)
Multiple Stressors and Multiple Disciplines: Understanding the Consequences of Global Ocean Change for Marine Species

    Session 1

  • Zimmerman et al. Modeling the Impacts of Water Quality and Climate Change on Submerged Aquatic Vegetation in the Chesapeake Bay
  • Frieder et al. Advancements in Quantifying Energy Costs for Organisms to Respond to Ocean Change
  • Hofmann et al. Who’s Your Mommy? Transgenerational Effects in Purple Sea Urchins from Nearshore Kelp Forests in California
  • Waldbusser et al. Understanding the multi-stressor impacts of ocean acidification on marine calcifiers: What controls biocalcification? Saturation state or substrate inhibitor ratio
  • Silbiger et al. Nutrient addition disrupts dependence of calcification on aragonite saturation state
  • Cross et al. A 120-year record of resilience to environmental change in brachiopods
  • Dam et al. The copepod Acartia tonsa in a greenhouse world: Transgenerational plasticity of life history traits
  • McLaskey et al. Ocean Acidification Driven Changes to Food Quality are Transferred Unpredictably Across Trophic Levels
    Session 2

  • Palmer et al. Recent Fossil Record Provides Unique Insight into Impacts of Multiple Stressors on Community Ecology
  • Krumhardt et al. Coccolithophore growth and calcification under future oceanic conditions
  • Rivest et al. Multiple stressors elicit unique responses in animal and algal partners: the potential for physiological plasticity in symbiotic coral larvae under global ocean change
  • Cornwall et al. Impacts of pH Variability and Past pH History on Coral and Coralline Algal Calcification: a Mechanistic and Multi-generational Approach
  • Eagle et al. Combining microelectrode and geochemical approaches to study the impact of pCO2 and temperature changes on the internal pH and carbonate chemistry of corals and their relation to growth responses
  • Weinnig et al. Physiological Response of a Cold-Water Coral (Lophelia pertusa) to the Combined Stressors of Climate Change and Hydrocarbon Influence
  • Bednarsek et al. Interactive effects of temperature and acidification on pteropod distributions in the California Current Large Marine Ecosystem
  • Davis et al. Juvenile Rockfish Recruits Show Resilience to CO2-Acidification and Hypoxia across Biological Scales

[Research feature] Our multistressor NSF project in the spotlight

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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.

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

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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.

[Lab news] Baumann lab attends the CERF conference in Providence, RI

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FCERF2017
Ashley van Etten designed the beautiful official artwork representing this years CERF conference. Thanks Ashley for letting our lab feature your art here!
On 5-9 November 2017, the Baumann lab attended the 24th Biennial Conference of the Coastal and Estuarine Research Foundation (CERF) in Providence, RI. The conference is a unique blend of academic and conservation science and comprises an ideal venue for students to present their thesis research to a broad national and international audience. Best of all this year: the conference logo featured a beautiful piece of art depicting an underwater scene with our most beloved, famous fish, the Atlantic silverside. Big shout out to Ashley van Etten and her inspiring artwork!

Together with Steve Litvin (Monterey Bay Aquarium) Hannes convened a theme session titled “Physiological ecology in the Anthropocene: linking the laboratory and field” and talked about our recently published paper on pH and oxygen fluctuations in nearshore coastal environments. Jake presented his Master thesis research on the newly digitized long-term time series of Project Oceanology, and Julie talked about the first aspect of her ongoing research on silverside otoliths and inferred patterns of growth and temperature-dependent sex determination. Well done, all!

  • Baumann H. and Smith, E.M. 2017. Quantifying the covariance of pH and oxygen conditions across the diversity of US nearshore habitats.
  • Pringle, J.W. and Baumann H. 2017. Sex-specific growth and mortality patterns in juvenile Atlantic silversides (Menidia menidia) from Connecticut waters.
  • DeMayo, J.A., Park, G., Norton, L., Huffman, W., Finiguerra, M., Baumann H., and Dam, H.G. 2017. Combined effects of warming and acidification on life-history traits of the calanoid copepod Acartia tonsa.
  • Snyder, J.T. and Baumann H. 2017. A newly digitized 45-year dataset of environmental and biological observations from Long Island Sound.

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

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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)

Baumann-&-Smith-ESCO_Fig6
Among many other aspects, the paper analyzed interannual trends in temperature (red bars), dissolved oxygen (%, blue bars), and pH (green bars) at 16 US Nearshore Ecological Research Reserves (NERRS), shown as yearly anomalies derived from averaging monthly anomalies for each variable, site, and year. Black trend lines were derived by LOESS smoothing.

[Lab news] Chris and Hannes attend ICES Annual Science conference

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ASC 2017 poster

On 19-21 September 2017, Chris Murray and Hannes Baumann traveled to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to attend the ICES (International Council for the Exploration of the Sea) Annual Science Conference in order to present our ongoing NSF and NOAA funded research on potential ocean acidification effects in Atlantic Silversides and Northern Sand lance. Due to Hurricane Irma, which had impacted all of Florida just a week earlier, it was a great relief that the conference could actually be successfully held.

Together with Chris Chambers (NOAA), Ian Bradbury (DFO, Canada), and Richard McBride (NOAA), Hannes convened a theme session titled “Patterns, sources, and consequences of intraspecific variation in responses of marine fauna to environmental stressors“.

Chris gave a talk and a poster during this session, which was well received and thus a worthwhile exposure for Chris and our lab’s research.

  • Murray, C. S. and Baumann H. 2017. Growth costs of high CO2 environments in a marine fish: importance of feeding methodology. Talk.
  • Murray, C. S., Wiley, D., and Baumann H. 2017. A preliminary study testing the effects of high CO2 on the early life stages of the northern sand lance Ammodytes dubius. Poster.

[Lab news] Baumann & Nye lab attend 41st Larval Fish Conference

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From 11-16 July, Hannes, Chris, Jake (Baumann lab, UConn) and Teresa (Nye lab, Stony Brook) were presenting research from our common NSF project at the 41st Larval Fish Conference, organized by the Early Life History Section of the American Fisheries Society in Austin, TX.

Hannes Baumann
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Jacob-Snyder
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Holding the fort and maintaining experiments at Avery Point were James, Julie, and Elle. Thank you for helping out.

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Julie-Pringle
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We gave four talks in two sessions:

  • Baumann H., Snyder, J.T., and Murray, C.S. 2017. Quantifying offspring CO2-sensitivity in a fish: a meta-analysis.
  • Snyder, J.T., Murray, C.S., and Baumann H. 2017.
    Potential for maternal effects on offspring CO2 sensitivity in a coastal marine fish
  • Murray, C.S., Snyder, J.T., and Baumann H. 2017. A multi-factorial evaluation of temperature-dependent CO2-effects in a coastal forage fish.
  • Schwemmer, T., Baumann H., and Nye, J. 2017.
    Physiological effects of increased temperature and carbon dioxide on Atlantic silverside early life stages     <

Here is how Jake rates his first international conference experience:

Jacob-Snyder
Austin Texas, July 2017. “Attending the Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists was my first visit to Austin Texas and my first large-conference presentation. My presentation was part of the Larval Fish Conference, a sub-section of the larger meeting, and I quickly learned how welcoming the larval fish group of researchers, scientists, professionals, and students were. Having not been to a “destination” conference like this before, I had little expectations, but I had a lot of fun networking, discussing research, and socializing. I think the coolest non-conference related event was seeing the Mexican Free-Tailed bats that live in the Congress Street Bridge, as every night around sunset they leave to go feed. Seeing hundreds of thousands of bats stream out of the bridge was incredible, and something I’d highly recommend. The city of Austin was great, and I spent much of the first day (pre-conference) exploring the city in the scorching heat. Overall the Baumann Lab had an excellent time at the conference, and can’t wait for the next one!”

Jacob Snyder “Austin 2017” photoblog. RedSkiesPhotography

[New publication] Long-term growth consequences of acidification in Atlantic silversides

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October 10th 2016 was a special day for our still young lab here at the University of Connecticut, Today, the ICES Journal of Marine Science published the paper of Chris Murray et al., which is the first of hopefully many publications of our experimental findings originating out of our new laboratory facility here at UConn Avery Point.
Chris and his co-authors report on a large-scale, quantitative rearing experiment on Atlantic silversides eggs, larvae and juveniles under contrasting CO2 conditions that took place between May – September 2015. This novel experiment was designed to address three critical issues lacking in previous ocean acidification research on fish. First, the study spanned several ontogenetic stages. Second, it used very large numbers of individuals to robustly characterize not just potential shifts in mean responses, but also changes in the distribution of length, weight, and condition factor. Third, it provided food at standardized, non-excess levels to prevent that potential metabolic costs of high CO2 exposure could be compensated by survivors simply by eating more food.
Overall the study demonstrated seemingly small but significant growth reductions due to high CO2 and identified a small number of fatty acids that were of significantly different concentrations in high vs. control juveniles.

murray-etal-ijms2016_fig3
Distributions of condition factor per 2mm TL interval for juvenile M.menidia reared for 122dph at control (a) and high CO2 conditions (b). Thick and thin black lines correspond to the 10th/90th and 25th/75th percentiles, respectively, while the red line depicts the median. Data below the 10th and above the 90th percentiles are depicted by black dots. Underlying grey bars show relative frequencies for each 2 mm TL class. Black and grey numbers correspond to numbers of individuals measured for both TL and wW, or for TL only, respectively.
murray-etal-ijms2016_fig4
Cumulative frequency distributions of (a) total length (TL) and (b) wet weight (wW), in juvenile M. menidia reared for 122 dph at control and high CO2 conditions.

Murray, C.S.*, Fuiman, L., and Baumann, H. (2016)
Consequences of elevated CO2 exposure across multiple life stages in a coastal forage fish.
ICES Journal of Marine Science (published online 10 Oct 2016)

[Conference] Chris and Hannes present at the 40th Larval Fish Conference

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CBL

The 40th Larval Fish Conference of the American Fisheries Society‘s (AFS) Early life history section (ELHS) was held from 19 – 23 June 2016 at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, MD.

This small conference brought together approximately 150 international scientists to talk about larval fish growth, survival, maternal effects, dispersal, systematics to name just a few. It was held in special honor of Edward Houde, who over his long career has inspired generations of marine scientists.

While Chris was presenting last years data about growth consequences of high CO2 exposure across life stages in our model species, the Atlantic Silverside, Hannes participated in the Early Career workshop and gave a talk about how to approach the writing of a scientific manuscript (PDF).

http://media.befel.marinesciences.uconn.edu/public_html/docs/Baumann-LFC-Writing_workshop_web.pdf

Thanks to all the colleagues and friends for the great time and conversations. See you next year in Austin (TX)!

LFC2016_group
All participants of the 2016 Larval Fish Conference in Solomons, MD
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Thunderous clouds over Chesapeake Bay, view from CBL
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Generations of scientists were inspired by the work of Ed Houde (middle, right: Catriona Clemessen)
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Chris standing on the tip of Cove Point (Chesapeake Bay)
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Hannes trying to convey to early career scientist at the LFC that writing a scientific manuscript can be approached by breaking up the process into pieces …

[Talk] Chris & Jake present at the Feng Graduate Research Colloquium

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On 12 May 2016, the Department of Marine Science hosted it’s 11th Biennial Feng Graduate Research Colloquium, during which graduate students of the department traditionally present findings of their thesis research and/or give a preview of their future plans.

This year, Chris presented the results of last years study on long-term changes in growth distributions in Atlantic silversides exposed to high CO2 conditions, whereas Jake presented a poster outlining his thesis research on long-term environmental and biological data collected by Project Oceanology.

In addition, Jake took his poster ‘on the road’ already and presented it at the 16th Long Island Sound Research Conference (13 May, Bridgeport, CT), while Chris will give his talk again at the 40th Larval Fish Conference in June 2016 (17-23 June, Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, Solomons MD).

Murray et al Feng LFC talk

Jake poster