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marine ecology

Butcher, baker, and brewer. This image illustrates the strikingly simple but powerful analogy between man-made and natural systems. By looking at the functional structure of coral reef fish communities through a human eye, we find butchers, bakers, and brewers, but also diligent, cranky farmerfish, visually pleasing but ecologically negligible aesthetes, or worthless aristocrats. Using this approach, we can begin to answer some of the most pressing questions in coral reef biology. What are the origins and future trajectories of coral reefs and their fishy inhabitants? How do humans affect this perfectly balanced market? And do more brewers really make a happier system? Simon J. Brandl.

Butcher, baker, brewer-fish

We asked science café aspirants for creativity and Simon Brandl brought it with his analogy of division of labor in a coral reef community, where butcher-sharks course among the brewers, bakers, and aristocrats of the reef. Brandl shares the 2014 ESA Science Café Prize with co-winner Madhusudan Katti. He is a PhD candidate at the ARC Centre of Excellence for…

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The dense urban life of Queens surrounds Jamaica Bay, NY, where Timothy Hoellein and Chester Zarnoch measured the effect of oysters on the nitrogen cycle. Oysters once clustered thickly in Hudson River estuaries, but disappeared in the twentieth century under the combined effects of harvesting, habitat loss, and pollution, especially sewage. Public interest in oyster restoration and ecosystem services has opened many research questions. Hoellein and Zarnoch fixed cages of oysters below the low-tide line (top left) and returned twice a month to sample carbon and nitrogen in the sediment. A natural-gas-burning power plant flanked the moderately nutrient-loaded study site at Mott’s Basin (right panel). Credit, Timothy Hoellein and Chester Zarnoch.

Oysters of New York

Denitrification heroes?
The dense urban life of Queens surrounds Jamaica Bay, NY, where Timothy Hoellein and Chester Zarnoch measured the effect of oysters on the nitrogen cycle. Can oysters help remove an excess of the nutrient from the bay?

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purple marsh crab cliping cordgrass

Depression-era drainage ditches emerge as sleeping threat to Cape Cod salt marshes

Contemporary recreational fishing combines with old WPA project to hasten marsh die-off By Liza Lester, ESA communications officer   CAPE Cod, Massachusetts has a problem. The iconic salt marshes of the famous summer retreat are melting away at the edges, dying back from the most popular recreational areas. The erosion is a consequence of an unexpected synergy between recreational over-fishing…

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The Last Reef

Advocacy film delivers “Cities beneath the Sea” in 3D IMAX, bringing you nudibranchs as you’ve never seen them before and activism that you have. By Liza Lester, ESA communications officer. La Evolución Silenciosa (The Silent Evolution), an installation of 400 life-size figures 9 meters under the sea off Cancun / Isla Mujeres, Mexico, is featured in the new IMAX film…

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