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After nearly 8 years and thousands of hours of work, our passion side project was published today in the journal eLife. Woo hoo!! Those of us that worked on it (all originally based at James Cook University, in Townsville, Australia) are now spread across three countries and four institutions. In this paper, our goal was to better understand how organisms respond in the short term to thermal challenges, which became even more ecologically relevant with the onset of the marine heatwave in 2016 that spurred a massive coral bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef and around the globe. Even more immediately pressing than future climate change is the increasing frequency and severity of these extreme underwater heatwaves that we are already seeing around the world today, and this paper shows that not all organisms can deal with these rapid changes. We used the five-lined cardinalfish (Cheilodipterus quinquelineatus, left photo above, photo credit Dr. Jodie Rummer) and the red-belly yellowtail fusilier (Caesio cuning, right photo above, photo credit Dr. Victor Huertas), and found that the cardinalfish often exhibited high mortality in the face of rapid temperature increases. The fusilier, on the other hand, was quicker to make physiological adjustments to cope with this thermal challenge. “Our findings are immensely useful for scientists but also for managers, conservation planners, and policy makers charged with protecting important ecosystems, such as coral reefs, as well as communities who rely on coral reefs for food, culture, jobs, and their livelihoods. Collectively, we need to be able to predict which species are going to survive and which will be most vulnerable to climate change so we can take action, as the decisions we make today will determine what coral reefs look like tomorrow,” said my co-author Dr. Jodie Rummer (Associate Professor at James Cook University´s ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies).
Check out the article here: https://elifesciences.org/articles/59162
Our new paper came out this week in Functional Ecology showing that parasites begin having energetic impacts on their hosts long before infection takes hold. Using the California killifish and its brain infecting parasite Euhaplorchis californiensis, we observed major increases in metabolic rate and activity in killifish hosts in response to infectious parasites in the environment, highlighting that parasites can disrupt their host´s metabolism even before they start feeding on them.
Check out the paper here: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2435.13695?af=R And the press release from Scripps Institution of Oceanography here: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/new-study-finds-parasites-can-drain-energy-hosts-prior-infection After an exceptionally strange and field-less year, it was SOOO nice to get back out in the field again, even for the day. We headed up to Fort Pierce, FL (about 2 hours north of Dania Beach) to look for local killifish in the mangroves with Dr. Nancy Smith (Eckerd College). We caught lots of cool critters - but no killifish unfortunately! Next time!
In my new Outside JEB article, I look at an area of research that I have learned more about over the last couple of years - specifically, neurophysiology and neurotransmitter signaling in the brain. In Peng et al. 2020´s recent paper in Biology Letters, the author´s looked at the brain´s role in foraging in social animal groups. They investigated the role of octopamine in how stingless bee individuals and social groups find food and perceive its value. Octopamine supplementation increase individual foraging by 75% and reduced the time for social learning of foraging locations. Very cool work!
What do you do when you need to move from California to Florida in the middle of a pandemic? You buy and kit out a campervan and drive! My postdoc has wrapped up and I am heading to Florida to start a new position. Flying is out for the time being, and we had grand plans for a vacation abroad. But instead, we will be checking out all of the amazing sights that the US has to offer, starting with Route 66. Our van (a 1996 Chevy Express, named Hamish in honor of my Scottish husband) will be our sleeping quarters and moving truck for the foreseeable future. Looking forward to it! Taking social distancing to the next level. :)
It is so wonderful to be back in San Diego, at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, thanks to the NMBU Postdoc International Travel Grant, to wrap up some of my research here in San Diego with my PI, Prof Ryan Hechinger. We will be working on analyzing data and writing papers for the next two months.
I had a fantastic time presenting at the Gordon Research Conference on Predator-Prey Interactions this week in Ventura, CA, USA. The "Outcomes of Parasitism and Predation" session made an ideal outlet to present some of my preliminary work on the effect of the trematode parasite Euhaplorchis californiensis on predator-prey interactions in natural systems, specifically between piscivorous marsh birds (the parasite´s final host) and the California killifish (the parasite´s second intermediate host). What an amazing group of researchers to be apart of and get feedback from!
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