Coral reefs resemble islands of productive habitats where fishes aggregate, forage, and spawn. Although it has been suggested that some reef fishes use biogenic chemicals as aggregation cues, specific chemicals have not been identified. Dimethylsulfoniopropionate (DMSP), a secondary metabolite of many marine algal species, is released during foraging by higher-order consumers. DMSP has been stu...

1 Department of Marine Biology, College of Marine and Environmental Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, Australia, 2 Department of Ocean Microbiology, Plant Functional Biology and Climate Change Cluster, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 3 Marine Biology Section, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Helsingor, Denmark, 4 ARC Centre of Excellence ...

The coral reefs at the northernmost tip of Sabah, Borneo will be established under a marine protected area: the Tun Mustapha Park (TMP) by the end of 2015. This area is a passage where the Sulu Sea meets the South China Sea and it is situated at the border of the area of maximum marine biodiversity, the Coral Triangle. The TMP includes fringing and patch reefs established on a relatively shallo...

Based on the boron isotopic composition of coral from the southwestern Pacific, Pelejero et al. (Reports, 30 September 2005, p. 2204) suggested that natural variations in pH can modulate the impact of ocean acidification on coral reef ecosystems. We show that this claim cannot be reconciled with other marine carbon chemistry constraints and highlight problems with the authors' interpretation of...

Coral Reefs ecosystems have been impacted by natural and anthropogenic effects resulting in a decline of coral communities worldwide. This decline in coral reefs has an ecological and an economical impact in tourist areas and marine ecosystems due to beach activities, scuba diving, and fishing. Monitoring of coral reefs is made by marine biologists using traditionally diving techniques. The mai...

The CFMC summarized in the Coral Fishery Management Plan (FMP) the information available regarding types and frequency distribution of marine bottoms (Coral FMP 1995; CFMC 1984). The distribution by coast and depth varies. For example, at depths less than 10 fathoms, the north coast includes gravel, hard and rocky bottoms. The East Coast includes reefs, corals, and hard bottoms. Reefs, hard and...

Although coral reefs support the largest concentrations of marine biodiversity worldwide, the extent to which the global system of marine-protected areas (MPAs) represents individual species and the breadth of evolutionary history across the Tree of Life has never been quantified. Here we show that only 5.7% of scleractinian coral species and 21.7% of labrid fish species reach the minimum prote...

Three species of yeasts are taxonomically described for strains isolated from marine environments. Candida spencermartinsiae sp. nov. (type strain CBS 10894T =NRRL Y-48663T) and Candida taylorii sp. nov. (type strain CBS 8508T =NRRL Y-27213T) are anamorphic ascomycetous yeasts in a phylogenetic cluster of marine yeasts in the Debaryomyces/Lodderomyces clade of the Saccharomycetales. The two spe...

Infections associated with marine activities, particularly work or recreation in salt water, present unique diagnostic challenges for the infectious disease practitioner. Those caused by halophilic, non-cholera Vibrio species are increasingly being recognized in clinical practice. They typically follow saltwater injuries, especially those associated with coral. Because these infections can be b...

Recent advances in deep-sea exploration technology coupled with an increase in worldwide biotic surveys, biological research, and underwater photography in shallow water marine regions such as coral reefs, has allowed for a relatively rapid expansion of our knowledge in the global diversity of many groups of marine organisms. This paper is part of the PLoS ONE review collection of WoRMS (the Wo...