Understanding the connectivity of reef organisms is important to assist in the conservation of biological diversity and to facilitate sustainable fisheries in these ecosystems. Common methods to assess reef connectivity include both population genetics and biophysical modelling. Individually, these techniques ...

Resolving the genetic connectivity of coral reef taxa is necessary to understand the community dynamics of these increasingly threatened ecosystems. Herein, we assess the fine scale genetic connectivity of six populations of the Atlantic giant barrel sponge, Xestospongia muta (Schmidt, ...

Despite the devastating impact of the lionfish (Pterois volitans) invasion on NW Atlantic ecosystems, little genetic information about the invasion process is available. We applied Genotyping by Sequencing techniques to identify 1,220 single nucleotide polymorphic sites (SNPs) from 162 lionfish ...

The Benthic Organisms of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary geodatabase is a collection of information on the distribution of benthic organisms within the sanctuary compiled from multiple sources. It contains information on the distribution of benthic habitats from the ...

This dataset is a point shapefile showing the distribution of species richness, Shannon's Diversity (H), and Shannon's Evennes (J) along the Florida Keys (Key Biscayne to Key West based on data collected from 1980 through 2010. Point estimates of species ...

The deep reef refugia hypothesis proposes that deep reefs can act as local recruitment sources for shallow reefs following disturbance. To test this hypothesis, nine polymorphic DNA microsatellite loci were developed and used to assess vertical connectivity in 583 coral ...

The upper insular slope of southwest Puerto Rico is defined as extending from the shelf break at ~20 m water depth down to a depth of ~160 m where there is a pronounced change in geomorphic character and the basal ...

Global habitat decline may displace organisms from optimal environments, increasing reliance on ecosystems with lower habitat suitability and availability. For coral reef fishes, potentially marginal mesophotic coral ecosystems (~30–150 m) may be buffered from anthropogenic stressors; however, variation in habitat ...

There is growing awareness that fluctuations in larval flux (connectivity) depress the long-run growth of marine metapopulations, but by how much is unclear. Here, we explore how reproductive schedule and larval behavior affect how much connectivity fluctuations depress growth. We ...

Mesophotic hard corals (MHC) are increasingly threatened by a growing number of anthropogenic stressors, including impacts from fishing, land-based sources of pollution, and ocean acidification. However, little is known about their geographic distributions (particularly around the Pacific islands) because it ...