Bob Steneck is professor of marine biology, oceanography and marine policy in University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences. He is a marine ecologist whose ‘laboratories’ include coral reefs in the Caribbean and Indopacific oceans and kelp forests of the North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans. He has published over 150 scientific papers on topics including lobsters, sea urchins, fish, corals...

Biodiversity patterns across the marine tropics have intrigued evolutionary biologists and ecologists alike. Tropical coral reefs host 1/3 of all marine species of fish on 0.1% of the ocean's surface. Yet our understanding of how mechanistic processes have underpinned the generation of this diversity is limited. However, it has become clear that the biogeographic history of the marine tropics h...

Human impacts to terrestrial and marine communities are widespread and typically begin with the local extirpation of large-bodied animals. In the marine environment, few pristine areas relatively free of human impact remain to provide baselines of ecosystem function and goals for restoration efforts. Recent comparisons of remote and/or protected coral reefs versus impacted sites suggest remote ...

Costa Rica has coral communities and reefs on the Caribbean coast and on the Pacific along the coast and off-shore islands. The Southern section of the Caribbean coast has fringing and patch reefs, carbonate banks, and an incipient algal ridge. The Pacific coast has coral communities, reefs and isolated coral colonies. Coral reefs have been seriously impacted in the last 30 years, mainly by sed...

Coral reef ecosystems are under a variety of threats from global change and anthropogenic disturbances that are reducing the number and type of coral species on reefs. Coral reefs support upwards of one third of all marine species of fish, so the loss of coral habitat may have substantial consequences to local fish diversity. We posit that the effects of habitat degradation will be most severe ...

Marine invertebrates including sponges, soft coral, tunicates, mollusks and bryozoan have proved to be a prolific source of bioactive natural products. Among marine-derived metabolites, terpenoids have provided a vast array of molecular architectures. These isoprenoid-derived metabolites also exhibit highly specialized biological activities ranging from nerve regeneration to blood-sugar regulat...

A revised estimate of daily ration in the tiger shark with implication for assessing ecosystem impacts of apex predators Neil Hammerschlag*, Austin J. Gallagher and John K. Carlson Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, University of Miami, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, Florida 33149, USA; Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy, University of Miami, P...

by side. Conservation measures must thus work to ensure that on balance growth outpaces destruction, and that the natural ability of reefs to recover from disturbance ('resilience') is maintained. To date, marine protected areas have been the focus of most attention. Conspicuous successes include placing about one third of the Great Barrier Reef in no-take zones, and protection of the Northwest...

For benthic marine organisms with complex life cycles, conditions experienced by pelagic larvae can influence juvenile survival. Trait-specific selective mortality has been documented in the laboratory and field, yet our knowledge of the factors contributing to the existence, strength, and consistency of natural selective mortality is limited. We compiled previously published and unpublished da...

S OF PAPERS Fifteenth Annual Albert L. Tester Memorial Symposium 5-6 April 1990 The Albert L. Tester Memorial Symposium is held in honor of Professor Albert Tester, who, at the time of his death in 1974, was senior professor of zoology at the University of Hawaii. The faculty and students of the Department of Zoology proposed an annual symposium of student research papers as a means of honoring...