Acropora palmata, a branching coral abundant on shallow reef environments throughout the Caribbean, is susceptible to physical disturbance caused by storms. Accordingly, the survivorship and propagation of this species are tied to its capability to recover after fragmentation. Fragments of A. palmata comprised 40% of ramets within populations that had experienced recent storms. While the surviv...

Corallivorous snail feeding is a common source of tissue loss for the threatened coral, Acropora palmata, accounting for roughly one-quarter of tissue loss in monitored study plots over seven years. In contrast with larger threats such as bleaching, disease, or storms, corallivory by Coralliophila abbreviata is one of the few direct sources of partial mortality that may be locally managed. We c...

Ficus is a exible replication facility with optimistic concurrency control designed to span a wide range of scales and network environments. Support for partitioned operation is fundamental to the Ficus design but was not widely exercised in early Ficus use. This position paper reports recent experiences using Ficus in settings where some replicas are only occasionally connected to a network, a...

The broken, dead stands of the Caribbean elkhorn coral Acropora palmata, which suffered massive mortalities from disease and bleaching during the early 1980s, are now widely covered by Cliona tenuis, an encrusting and excavating brown sponge (Hadromerida, Clionaidae). This sponge displaces live coral tissue by undermining the polypal skeletal support. On the windward fringing reef of Islas del ...

Coral surface mucus layer (SML) microbiota are critical components of the coral holobiont and play important roles in nutrient cycling and defense against pathogens. We sequenced 16S rRNA amplicons to examine the structure of the SML microbiome within and between colonies of the threatened Caribbean reef-building coral Acropora palmata in the Florida Keys. Samples were taken from three spatiall...

Ficus is a exible replication facility with optimistic concurrency control designed to span a wide range of scales and network environments. Support for partitioned operation is fundamental to the Ficus design but was not widely exercised in early Ficus use. This position paper reports recent experiences using Ficus in settings where some replicas are only occasionally connected to a network, a...

Projected elevation of seawater temperatures poses a threat to the reproductive success of Caribbean reef-building corals that have planktonic development during the warmest months of the year. This study examined the transcriptomic changes that occurred during embryonic and larval development of the elkhorn coral, Acropora palmata, at a non-stressful temperature (28°C) and further assessed the...

Ficus bengalensis (commonly known as a Banyan tree) is an evergreen tree and belongs to the family Moraceae. Ficus benghalensis is an important medicinal plant that has a number of bioactive compounds. The whole plant of Ficus bengalensis (leaves, fruits and bark) are used as anti-oxidant, anti-cancer, anti-microbial properties and also used in the treatment of several diseases. The present rev...