This cruise was conducted at Pulley Ridge mesophotic reef in the Gulf of Mexico, from August 22 to September 4, 2015, in collaboration with the University of Miami, HBOI-CIOERT, NOAA Fisheries, and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW) ...
Read More

Symbiotic relationships are a common phenomenon among marine invertebrates, forming both obligatory and facultative dependencies with their host. Here, we investigate and compare the population structure of two crustacean species associated with both shallow and mesophotic ecosystems: an obligate symbiont ...
Read More

Like most benthic marine organisms, coral reef fishes produce larvae that traverse open ocean waters before settling and metamorphosing into juveniles. Where larvae are transported and how they survive is a central question in marine and fisheries ecology. While there ...
Read More

Given the global degradation of shallow-water coral reef ecosystems resulting from anthropogenic activities, mesophotic coral reef ecosystems (MCEs) are gaining attention because they are generally considered a de facto refuge for shallow-water species. Despite their inferred importance, MCEs remain one ...
Read More

Shallow-water ( ...
Read More

Using historical (1994–2017) satellite-tracked surface drifter trajectory data, we conduct a probabilistic Lagrangian circulation study which sheds light on the connectivity of Pulley Ridge with other locations in the Gulf of Mexico and adjacent areas. The analysis reveals that Pulley ...
Read More

The shedding sequence of the Loop Current (LC) inside the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) is strongly influenced by cyclonic frontal eddies around its edge. Along-track altimetry data, analyzed based on a wavelet decomposition to provide estimates of individual cyclones’ diameter, ...
Read More

As humans expand into natural environments, populations of wild organisms may become relegated to marginal habitats at the boundaries of their distributions. In the ocean, mesophotic coral ecosystems (30–150 m) at the depth limit of photosynthetic reefs are hypothesized to act ...
Read More

Corals at the lower limits of mesophotic habitats are likely to have unique photosynthetic adaptations that allow them to persist and dominate in these extreme low light ecosystems. We examined the host–symbiont relationships from the dominant coral genus Leptoseris in ...
Read More

Mesophotic reef corals remain largely unexplored in terms of the genetic adaptations and physiological mechanisms to acquire, allocate, and use energy for survival and reproduction. In the Hawaiian Archipelago, the Leptoseris species complex form the most spatially extensive mesophotic coral ...
Read More