The ASLO journal editors convene this invitation-only special session to recognize authors who published highly cited or highly downloaded articles in 2022-2023 in one of the ASLO family of journals: Limnology and Oceanography, Limnology and Oceanography: Methods, Limnology and Oceanography: Letters, and Limnology and Oceanography: Bulletin. Authors publish their finest work in ASLO journals, making them a success. We therefore greatly appreciate authors’ contributions to our science and the ASLO community. This session is an opportunity to celebrate authors and their work, highlighting some of the most influential research advances and trends in recent years. We invite the lead author (or any co-author) to present updates to the selected article, describe their evolving research directions, or present a review of the state of the art in their field. Author Spotlight presentations showcase both the breadth of the aquatic sciences and cutting-edge research currently underway. Articles are selected based on their average monthly rate of downloads and/or citations, both of which serve as indicators of reader interest.
Lead Organizer: Erin Peck, University of Rhode Island, Graduate School of Oceanography (erin.peck@uri.edu)
Co-organizers:
James Cloern, ASLO, Limnology & Oceanography Letters (loletters-eic@aslo.org)
Laura Falkenberg, ASLO, Limnology & Oceanography Bulletin (lobulletin-editor@aslo.org)
K. David Hambright, ASLO, Limnology & Oceanography (dhambright@aslo.org)
Krista Longnecker, ASLO, Limnology & Oceanography: Methods (lom-editor@aslo.org)
Presentations
04:30 PM
The global contribution of seasonally migrating copepods to the biological carbon pump (8712)
Primary Presenter: Jerome Pinti, Gulf of Maine Research Institute (pintijerome@gmail.com)
Every year, large numbers of zooplankton migrate from the surface ocean to depths of 500–2000 m to hibernate. Through this migration, they actively transport organic carbon to the deep ocean, where it is used to fuel metabolic needs. This active transport of carbon is thought to be highly efficient, as carbon metabolized by copepods is directly injected deep into the ocean’s interior. The significance of this process in view of global carbon cycling remains an open question. Here, we focus on five representative, diapausing copepod species (Calanus finmarchicus, Calanus hyperboreus, Calanoides acutus, Calanoides natalis, and Neocalanus tonsus) distributed in the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, and Southern Oceans. For each species, we compute both carbon injection (how much carbon is transported below the euphotic zone during zooplankton migration and left there as dissolved inorganic carbon) and carbon sequestration (the amount of carbon stored in the ocean’s interior following diapausing zooplankton-mediated injection). In total, the five species considered here contribute 0.4–0.8% of total biological carbon export, and 0.8–3.3% of total carbon sequestration mediated by the biological pump (assuming a total carbon export of ~ 10 PgC yr-1 and sequestration of ~ 1300 PgC). Including other species in this inventory would increase the contribution of diapausing copepods to the biological carbon pump, but requires more precise estimates of copepods’ distribution, abundance, and metabolic requirements.
04:45 PM
Machine learning techniques to characterize functional traits of plankton from image data - Perspectives and recent work (8889)
Primary Presenter: Heidi Sosik, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (hsosik@whoi.edu)
Plankton imaging systems supported by automated classification and analysis have improved ecologists' ability to observe aquatic ecosystems. Today, we are on the cusp of reliably tracking plankton populations with a suite of lab-based and in situ tools, collecting imaging data at unprecedentedly fine spatial and temporal scales. But these data have potential well beyond examining the abundances of different taxa; the individual images themselves contain a wealth of information on functional traits. In this talk, we outline traits that could be measured from image data, suggest machine learning and computer vision approaches to extract functional trait information from the images, and discuss promising avenues for novel studies. We also provide a few examples of very recent work using machine learning to quantify functional traits from plankton images.
05:00 PM
Lake salinization drives consistent losses of zooplankton abundance and diversity across coordinated mesocosm experiments (8744)
Primary Presenter: Celia Symons, University of California, Irvine (csymons@uci.edu)
Human-induced salinization increasingly threatens inland waters; yet we know little about the multifaceted response of lake communities to salt contamination. By conducting a coordinated mesocosm experiment of lake salinization across 16 sites in North America and Europe, we quantified the response of zooplankton abundance and (taxonomic and functional) community structure to a broad gradient of environmentally relevant chloride concentrations, ranging from 4 to ca. 1400 mg Cl− L−1. We found that crustaceans were distinctly more sensitive to elevated chloride than rotifers; yet, rotifers did not show compensatory abundance increases in response to crustacean declines. For crustaceans, our among-site comparisons indicate: (1) highly consistent decreases in abundance and taxon richness with salinity; (2) widespread chloride sensitivity across major taxonomic groups (Cladocera, Cyclopoida, and Calanoida); and (3) weaker loss of functional than taxonomic diversity. Overall, our study demonstrates that aggregate properties of zooplankton communities can be adversely affected at chloride concentrations relevant to anthropogenic salinization in lakes.
05:15 PM
The Coral Bleaching Automated Stress System (CBASS): A low-cost, portable system for standardized empirical assessments of coral thermal limits (8739)
Primary Presenter: Katherine Parker, Old Dominion University (kpark049@odu.edu)
Ocean warming is increasingly affecting marine ecosystems across the globe. Reef-building corals are particularly affected by warming, with mass bleaching events increasing in frequency and leading to widespread coral mortality. Yet, some corals can resist or recover from bleaching better than others. Such variability in thermal resilience could be critical to reef persistence; however, the scientific community lacks standardized diagnostic approaches to rapidly and comparatively assess coral thermal vulnerability prior to bleaching events. We present the Coral Bleaching Automated Stress System (CBASS) as a low-cost, open-source, field-portable experimental system for rapid empirical assessment of coral thermal thresholds using standardized temperature stress profiles and diagnostics. The CBASS consists of four or eight flow-through experimental aquaria with independent water masses, lighting, and individual automated temperature controls capable of delivering custom modulating thermal profiles. The CBASS is used to conduct daily thermal stress exposures that typically include 3-h temperature ramps to multiple target temperatures, a 3-h hold period at the target temperatures, and a 1-h ramp back down to ambient temperature, followed by an overnight recovery period. This mimics shallow water temperature profiles observed in coral reefs and prompts a rapid acute heat stress response that can serve as a diagnostic tool to identify putative thermotolerant corals for in-depth assessments of adaptation mechanisms, targeted conservation, and possible use in restoration efforts. The CBASS is deployable within hours and can assay up to 40 coral fragments/aquaria/day, enabling high-throughput, rapid determination of thermal thresholds for individual genotypes, populations, species, and sites using a standardized experimental framework.
05:30 PM
EFFECTS OF ELEVATED TEMPERATURE AND MICROPLASTIC EXPOSURE ON GROWTH AND PREDATORY PERFORMANCE OF A FRESHWATER FISH (8842)
Primary Presenter: Genevieve D'Avignon, McGill University (genevieve.davignon@usherbrooke.ca)
Freshwater ecosystems are increasingly exposed to co-occurring anthropogenic stressors that can alter food web interactions and organismal life histories. We examined the individual and combined effects of climate warming and microplastic pollution on the growth rate and predatory performance of an invasive freshwater fish, the round goby (Neogobius melanostomus). In temperature-controlled chambers, we exposed 160 juvenile gobies to one of six scenarios over 37 d, combining three environmentally relevant concentrations of microplastics (63–75 micron polyethylene microbeads) with two temperature regimes representing contemporary (18°C) and projected mean summer maxima (26°C) in their current range in the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River basin. Exposure to elevated temperature reduced the growth and predatory performance of round gobies. Their decline in predatory performance was greatest at the highest microplastic concentration, regardless of temperature. The effects of environmentally relevant microplastic concentrations on the growth and performance of gobies were weaker than the effects of thermal stress. Given that the round goby is an abundant and widely distributed bottom-dwelling fish in nearshore areas of the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River basin, its responses to these co-occurring stressors could have cascading effects on food webs.
05:45 PM
Redefining North Atlantic right whale habitat-use patterns under climate change (8729)
Primary Presenter: Erin Meyer-Gutbrod, University of South Carolina (emgutbrod@seoe.sc.edu)
Changes in the physical oceanography of the Northwest Atlantic stemming from both natural and anthropogenic climate change impact the foraging ecology and distribution of endangered North Atlantic right whales. In this study, right whale sightings from 1990 to 2018 were analyzed to examine decadal patterns in monthly habitat use in 12 high-use areas. Depth-integrated abundances of late-stage Calanus finmarchicus and Calanus hyperboreus were also analyzed for decadal variations in the right whale foraging habitats. There were significant differences in the occurrence, seasonal timing, and persistence of foraging habitats across these three decades. In the decades of the 1990s and the 2010s, prey was less abundant than in the 2000s, corresponding to reduced use of the Southeast US calving grounds in the winter, increased use of Cape Cod Bay in winter and spring, and reduced use of Roseway Basin in the fall. In the 2010s, right whale sightings increased in Southern New England and the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the spring and summer, respectively. Summertime declines in the 2010s in late-stage copepod abundances in the Gulf of Maine and surrounding regions, as well as in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, indicate that recent increased use of the Gulf of St. Lawrence is driven by a decline in prey in traditional foraging habitats rather than by an increase in prey in the new foraging habitat. This analysis of decadal-scale differences in right whale sightings and prey abundance is critical for redefining right whale distribution patterns for the most recent (post-2010) decade.
SPOTC - Author Spotlight: Recent high-impact publications from the ASLO journals
Description
Time: 4:30 PM
Date: 28/3/2025
Room: W207AB