[Coral-List] Cryptic species of giant barrel sponge is taking over Florida's reefs

Pawlik, Joseph pawlikj at uncw.edu
Mon May 28 17:07:04 EDT 2018


Hi Mark,


Agreed, Tobago has amazing cover of X. muta, and they are often weirdly shaped because of the strong flow there -- I did a video that shows some of them:


https://youtu.be/Z2jazdDeZk4


I believe that sponges are doing particularly well off Tobago because of the high levels of dissolved organic carbon that flow from the Orinoco and Amazon rivers into the Caribbean Sea there.  This is part of the "vicious circle" hypothesis -- which you can read more about here:


Pawlik, J.R., Burkepile, D.E., Vega Thurber, R. 2016.<http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/2016BioSciencePawlik.pdf> A vicious circle? Altered carbon and nutrient cycling may explain the low resilience of Caribbean coral reefs. BioScience, 66: 470-476 doi:10.1093/biosci/biw047.


Thanks,

Joe



**************************************************************

Joseph R. Pawlik

Frank Hawkins Kenan Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology

Dept. of Biology and Marine Biology

UNCW Center for Marine Science

5600 Marvin K Moss Lane

Wilmington, NC  28409

Office:(910)962-2377; Cell:(910)232-3579

Website: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/index.html

PDFs: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/pubs2.html

Video Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/skndiver011

**************************************************************




________________________________
From: Mark Tupper <Mark.Tupper at utt.edu.tt>
Sent: Monday, May 28, 2018 4:24 PM
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov; porifera at jiscmail.ac.uk; Pawlik, Joseph
Subject: Re: [Coral-List] Cryptic species of giant barrel sponge is taking over Florida's reefs

Hi Joe,

Interesting. Tobago's reefs always had a lot of giant barrel sponges but now barrel sponges  absolutely dominate the reefs. There's been a noticeable change just since 2010. Other sponge species seem to be proliferating also.

Cheers,

Mark Tupper
Programme Professor
Centre for Maritime and Ocean Studies
Chaguaramas Campus
The University of Trinidad and Tobago

From: Pawlik, Joseph
Sent: Monday, May 28, 2:53 PM
Subject: [Coral-List] Cryptic species of giant barrel sponge is taking overFlorida's reefs
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov, porifera at jiscmail.ac.uk


Hello, Colleagues, My collaborators and I have a paper just released in Marine Biology that reports a cryptic species of the giant barrel sponge, Xestospongia muta, is responsible for most of the rapid increase in abundance of this species on Florida's reef track. Deignan, L.K, Pawlik, J.R., López-Legentil, S. 2018. Evidence for shifting genetic structure among Caribbean giant barrel sponges in the Florida Keys. Marine Biology 165:106 DOI: 10.1007/s00227-018-3355-6 We had previously determined that X. muta had increased in abundance by 122% during the period 2000-2012: McMurray, S.E., Finelli, C.M. and Pawlik, J.R. 2015. Population dynamics of giant barrel sponges on Florida coral reefs. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 473: 73-80 DOI: 10.1016/j.jembe.2015.08.007 Much of that increase was due to the enhanced recruitment or reproduction of one of two cryptic species of X. muta, and that highly successful cryptic species is NOT the one that had previously been dominant! Our results suggest that the ongoing changes to Florida's reefs have altered the relative success of the co-occurring cryptic species of giant barrel sponges living there. Regards, Joe ************************************************************** Joseph R. Pawlik Frank Hawkins Kenan Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology Dept. of Biology and Marine Biology UNCW Center for Marine Science 5600 Marvin K Moss Lane Wilmington, NC 28409 Office:(910)962-2377; Cell:(910)232-3579 Website: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/index.html PDFs: http://people.uncw.edu/pawlikj/pubs2.html Video Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/skndiver011 ************************************************************** _______________________________________________ Coral-List mailing list Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa..gov http://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list

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