Matthew Troia, a UT San Antonio assistant professor, was awareded the distinguished Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award by the National Science Foundation. The award will support his investigation on how climate change and urbanization are affecting freshwater ecosystems by enabling exotic tropical fish species to expand northward. During the next five years, Troia will integrate lab experiments, extensive field monitoring, and computer modeling to better understand the vulnerability of Texas waterways.

Did mantle plume or plate tectonics drive the continental breakup that formed the North Atlantic during the Eocene? University of Utah-led study leans toward tectonics in long debate to explain why so much magma surfaced off Norway.

Researchers have identified a new type of visual cell in deep-sea fish larvae that challenges a century of knowledge about vertebrate visual systems.

Human activity has lessened the resilience of modern coral reefs by restricting the energy flow that moves through the food chains – or webs – of these important ecosystems. Examining otoliths – fish ear stones that are preserved in marine sediments across millennia – the team applied a novel nitrogen isotope method to 7,000-year-old fossils in order to reconstruct ancient reef food webs directly for the first time and compare with modern reefs. This new approach allows for a clearer understanding of the threats now posed to these centers of marine biodiversity, an international team of researchers report today in the journal Nature.

Coral reefs are undoubtedly in crisis. Scientists have documented concerning coral bleaching events, dramatic declines in coral cover, fish and shark populations across the Caribbean over recent decades. But a critical question has remained unanswered: has the way energy flows through reef ecosystems also changed? A new study led by scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and published in Nature reveals that it has, profoundly. Food chains on modern Caribbean reefs are 60-70% shorter than they were 7,000 years ago, and individual fish have lost the dietary specialisation that once sustained a complex web of energy pathways. 

The tide has turned on the conservation success story of the southern right whale.

 

Once considered a global conservation success story, the species is now emerging as a warning signal of how climate change is impacting threatened marine life, according to new research led by scientists from Flinders University and Curtin University with international collaborators in the US and South Africa.

A new scientific study has confirmed the accidental capture of a juvenile white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) within the Spanish Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), providing rare evidence of the species' persistent presence in the Mediterranean. The findings, published in Acta Ichthyologica et Piscatoria, contextualize this 2023 encounter within 160 years of regional records and highlight the urgent need for conservation of this iconic species.

Rivers are the primary pathways of microplastics and mesoplastics (MMPs) input into the ocean. Most studies have examined MMP concentration in rivers during low-flows, overlooking high-flow or flooding situations, wherein large amounts of plastic can be transported. To address this gap, researchers investigated how MMP concentration changes during floods in four rivers in Japan, offering valuable new insights. The findings show that overlooking high-flow conditions can lead to severe underestimation of annual plastic load.

For the first time, an international team led by Smithsonian researchers estimated the extent of coral bleaching worldwide during a global marine heatwave, finding that half of the world’s reefs experienced significant damage between 2014 and 2017. Another heatwave began in 2023 and is ongoing.