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In Florida’s Oceans, It’s DNA vs. Disease

Tuesday, April 14th, 2020
Patch of mostly brown branching corals underwater, with one infected yellow and white coral

Staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) with white band disease. (Credit: Sarah Gignoux-Wolfsohn)

by Kristen Minogue

Parasitic slime nets attacking seagrasses. A disease that melts coral tissue down to the skeleton, whose exact cause remains unknown. If these aren’t the first places you’d look for optimism, you’re not alone.

Katrina Lohan heads SERC’s Marine Disease Ecology Lab. She and postdoc Sarah Gignoux-Wolfsohn studied both ailments in Florida. They look for hope in the microscopic realm of DNA. Click to continue »

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Do We Live in the Plasticene? 12 Words to Know for the Age of Plastics.

Wednesday, January 15th, 2020

by Kristen Minogue

Welcome to the Plasticene. If you’re under age 70, it’s possible you’ve lived in the Plasticene for your entire life. It’s a new geologic age some scientists have proposed to mark the near-universal spread of plastic around Earth. Since the 1950s, researchers say, we’ve been living in the Age of Plastics.

You may have heard of another relatively new time period—the Anthropocene, or Epoch of Humans. (Yes, we live in confusing times.) However, the Age of Plastics isn’t meant to replace that. Instead, the Age of Plastics is a smaller piece of the Epoch of Humans that started in the mid-20th century. Scientists contend it deserves special recognition because, unlike many things we leave behind, plastics can leave a distinct mark in the fossil record.

Many strange things have begun appearing in the Age of Plastics, especially in our oceans and along our shores. Some are so new, scientists are just finding words for them. What do you call an animal that makes its home on plastic? How about one that accidentally swallows a bottle cap? For that reason, a team led by Linsey Haram from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Williams College-Mystic Seaport and Hawai’i’s International Pacific Research Center put together a list of terms poised to become more common in the future. Here are 12 words that describe the new age:

The report, “A Plasticene Lexicon,” appeared in the January 2020 issue of Marine Pollution Bulletin. It’s available for download here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.110714

To read about the discovery of plasticrusts by Ignacio Gestoso and the team at Portugal’s Marine and Environmental Science’s Centre, check out this CNN article or find the journal article here.

Learn more:

Video with Linsey Haram: Can animals live in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

Web Article: Tsunami Enabled Hundreds of Species to Raft Across the Pacific

Web Article: These Creatures Crossed the Pacific on Plastic Tsunami Debris. Now, A New Struggle for Survival.

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Eight Ways We Can Save the Ocean’s Oxygen

Tuesday, December 10th, 2019

by Kristen Minogue

School of beige and blue fish swimming over a reef

Brown Chromis fish in Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. (Credit: Emma Hickerson/NOAA)

The ocean is losing its breath. Two years ago, an international team of scientists known as GO2NE (the Global Ocean Oxygen Network) published a report in Science with a stark picture of oxygen loss in Earth’s waters: In the open ocean, the amount of water with zero oxygen has spiked fourfold since the mid-20th century. In coastal water bodies, places with dangerously low oxygen (2 milligrams per liter or less) have increased more than 10-fold. It’s a problem not just for animals, but for people and economies—especially those that rely on tourism or subsistence fishing.

On Dec. 7, a new report emerged from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. The ocean could lose 3-4% of its total oxygen by the end of the century if nothing changes, with losses even higher in the top, biodiversity-rich 1,000 meters. Large fish like tuna, sharks and marlin are among the most vulnerable. In the closing chapter, led by Denise Breitburg of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, they created a massive blueprint for resuscitating the ocean.

We’ve pulled out the highlights below, but the key lies in cracking two global conundrums—nutrient pollution and climate change. Nutrient pollution happens when chemicals like nitrogen and phosphorus stream into the water and fertilize massive growths of algae, which suck oxygen out of the water. Climate change’s role is more subtle, but just as powerful: Warmer water can’t hold as much dissolved oxygen. Warm water also doesn’t mix as well, so oxygen from the atmosphere that’s abundant near the ocean surface doesn’t reach everywhere that needs it.

Fortunately, these two problems are linked. Cleaning up nutrient pollution can help solve climate change, and vice-versa—and the ocean will breathe easier for it. Here are eight highlights from the new report: Click to continue »

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Sarah Donelan: How Parents Prep Offspring for Tough Lives Before Birth

Friday, November 22nd, 2019

by Kristen Minogue

Sarah Donelan in red hoodie on sandy beach

Sarah Donelan in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.
(Credit: Patricia Donelan)

Every parent wants to give their children the best shot at life. But sometimes, this means more than protecting newborns after birth. Some species can prepare offspring for tough conditions before they enter the world. It’s called transgenerational plasticity. Sarah Donelan, a Smithsonian Environmental Research Center postdoc, has spent years piecing together how it works. This November she published a new article highlighting how humans could be changing this age-old parental strategy. Discover more in the Q&A here.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Click to continue »

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What’s the Perfect Temperature
to Bake Your Soil?

Friday, November 15th, 2019

by Kristen Minogue

Woman and man standing in marsh; man holds up long soil core.
SERC postdoc Genevieve Noyce (left) and senior scientist Pat Megonigal hold up a soil core from SERC’s Global Change Research Wetland. (Credit: Sairah Malkin/Horn Point Laboratory)

Soils don’t get much credit for their work powering the environment. Even among scientists, they’re routinely overshadowed by their flashier plant neighbors. But as the planet heats up, hidden soil microbes are on the verge of giving plant growth a serious boost.

However, there’s a hiccup in the system. In a new global warming study, ecologist Genevieve Noyce discovered soils and plants are just a couple degrees out of synch.

It boils down to one crucial ingredient: nitrogen. Plants need nitrogen to grow, so it’s a major component of most fertilizers. In the absence of fertilizer, plants get their nitrogen from soil microbes. But they’re at the mercy of supply and demand. In most environments on land today, soil microbes can’t produce nitrogen fast enough to meet plant demand.

In a futuristic experiment, Noyce and her colleagues baked patches of wetland soil to see if that would change in a warmer world.

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Female Blue Crabs Are Running Low On Sperm—Unless They Die Young

Friday, October 25th, 2019

by Kristen Minogue

Blue crab with orange sponge on abdomen

A female blue crab can produce sponges like this three times a year, each with millions of eggs. But if male crabs are in short supply, she may not have enough sperm to fertilize all her eggs.
(Credit: SERC)

If you want to save a fishery, protect the females. That’s been the operating logic for decades among fishery managers, and with good reason: Females carry the next generation. Throw one mature female back, and she could produce thousands or millions more offspring. But for female blue crabs, the story isn’t always so simple.

In a study published Oct. 24, scientists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) confirmed that a potential snag is in fact happening in Chesapeake Bay. Without enough male blue crabs to go around, some females aren’t getting enough sperm to reach their full reproductive potential. If they survive past their first year of spawning, they risk running dry. Click to continue »

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High Carbon Dioxide Can Create “Shrinking Stems” in Marshes

Wednesday, September 25th, 2019

Marshes Grow Shorter, Denser Stems Under High Carbon Dioxide, Which Can Help Them Resist Sea Level Rise

by Kristen Minogue

Man in sunglasses and green T-shirt sitting in a marsh holding a measuring stick

Ecologist Meng Lu measures green blades of sedge in SERC’s Global Change Research Wetland in Maryland. Lu led a discovery that under higher carbon dioxide, sedges like these grow shorter and thinner stems. (Credit: Maria Sharova/SERC)

For most plants, carbon dioxide acts like a steroid: The more they can take in, the bigger they get. But in a new study published Sept. 25, scientists with the Smithsonian discovered something strange happening in marshes. Under higher levels of carbon dioxide, instead of producing bigger stems, marsh plants produced more stems that were noticeably smaller.

“I don’t think anybody expected this,” said Meng Lu, lead author of the new study in the journal Nature Climate Change. For years, scientists had known that carbon dioxide was bulking up the total biomass of marsh plants, so it seemed natural to think individual plants were getting bigger too. “Everyone thought, okay, [plants] increased, biomass increased, so the height, width, all should increase. But that’s not the case in a marsh,” he said.

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Global Change is Triggering an Identity Switch in Grasslands

Monday, August 19th, 2019

Landscape view of grasslands under blue, cloudy sky

Konza Prairie Biological Station in northeast Kansas. (Credit: Kim Komatsu/SERC)

Scientists Discover Species Turnover in Study of More Than 100 Grassland Experiments

by Kristen Minogue

Since the first Homo sapiens emerged in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago, grasslands have sustained humanity and thousands of other species. But today, those grasslands are shifting beneath our feet. Global change—which includes climate change, pollution and other widespread environmental alterations—is transforming the plant species growing in them, and not always in the ways scientists expected, a new study published Monday revealed.

Grasslands make up more than 40 percent of the world’s ice-free land. In addition to providing food for human-raised cattle and sheep, grasslands are home to animals found nowhere else in the wild, such as the bison of North America’s prairies or the zebras and giraffes of the African savannas. Grasslands also can hold up to 30 percent of the world’s carbon, making them critical allies in the fight against climate change. However, changes in the plants that comprise grasslands could put those benefits at risk.

“Is it good rangeland for cattle, or is it good at storing carbon?” said lead author Kim Komatsu, a grassland ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. “It really matters what the identities of the individual species are….You might have a really invaded weedy system that would not be as beneficial for these services that humans depend on.” Click to continue »

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The Scientists’ Time Machine—Otherwise Known as Ginkgos

Monday, July 22nd, 2019

by Quinn Burkhart

When the word fossil comes to mind, the first thing many people think of are dinosaurs. Of course, dinosaurs are long extinct. Yet, as crazy as it sounds, we can find ourselves walking under the shade of a special fossil that grew in the age of the dinosaurs too. We call this “fossil” a ginkgo tree–an ancient plant giving us a glimpse into the future. Click to continue »

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The Invisible Flood: When We Can’t Tell We’re Drowning

Tuesday, June 18th, 2019

by Quinn Burkhart

Most people need to visit the ocean to get their sea water fix. But beneath their feet, those waters may already be closer than they think. “Saltwater intrusion,” which occurs when the sea level rises and pushes large amounts of saltwater onto the coast, is one of the most prominent—and least talked about—effects of climate change. Its influence on the Chesapeake Bay, one of the lowest regions in the United States, is gaining traction.

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