Which populations are replenished primarily by immigrants (open) and which by local production (closed) remains an important question for management with implications for response to exploitation, protection, and disturbance. However, we lack methods for predicting population openness. Here, we develop a model for openness and show that considering habitat isolation explains the existence of su...

Land is not the only barrier to dispersal encountered by marine organisms. For sedentary shallow water species, there is an additional, marine barrier, 5000 km of uninterrupted deep-water stretch between the central and the eastern Pacific. This expanse of water, known as the ‘Eastern Pacific Barrier’, has been separating faunas of the two oceanic regions since the beginning of the Cenozoic. Sp...

The importance and strength of density dependence continues to engender debate because of its central importance to population dynamics and regulation. Here, we show how confounding effects of site quality can mask strong effects of density dependence. In particular, we explore spatio-temporal variation and covariation among (1) densities of newly settled coral reef fish (Thalassoma hardwicke),...

It is a well-known fact that diseases affect health, survival and recruitment of any individual susceptible for diseases. As a consequence of disease, harvests from natural resources and, in particular, those from aquaculture dwindle quite severely. While an appreciable volume of information on variety of mycotic diseases in the marine organisms is available on global scale, studies from Indian...

Mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs) support diverse communities of marine organisms with changes in community structure occurring along a depth gradient. In recent years, MCEs have gained attention due to their depths that provide protection from natural and anthropogenic stressors and their relative stability over evolutionary time periods, yet ecological structures of fish assemblages in MCEs ...

1 Center for Genomics and Systems Biology, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2 Ecological Marine Services, Millbank, QLD, Australia, 3 Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, 4 NOAA/NESDIS/STAR Coral Reef Watch, College Park, MD, United States, 5 Marine Geophysical Laboratory, Physics Department, College of Science and Engi...

The study of coral diseases, coral pathogens, and the effects of diseases on tropical and subtropical coral reefs are all current, high-profile research areas. This interest has grown steadily since the first report of a coral disease in 1973. The author of this report was Arnfried Antonius and the publication was an abstract in the proceedings of a scientific meeting of the Association of Mari...

R reports have raised serious concerns about the rapid declines of historically productive marine fishery resources and the degradation of essential fish habitats. This global crisis has spurred development of innovative management strategies to rebuild depleted fisheries and marine ecosystems. One highly touted strategy involves the design and creation of marine reserves (areas off limits to e...

Coral reefs are in severe decline. Infections by the human pathogen Serratia marcescens have contributed to precipitous losses in the common Caribbean elkhorn coral, Acropora palmata, culminating in its listing under the United States Endangered Species Act. During a 2003 outbreak of this coral disease, called acroporid serratiosis (APS), a unique strain of the pathogen, Serratia marcescens str...

Recent application of mutation accumulation techniques combined with whole-genome sequencing (MA/WGS) has greatly promoted studies of spontaneous mutation. However, such explorations have rarely been conducted on marine organisms, and it is unclear how marine habitats have influenced genome stability. This report resolves the mutation rate and spectrum of the coral reef pathogen Vibrio shilonii...