Research Group
Lab members recently took advantage of the wonderful fall weather (and peak fall foliage) and organized a four-day writing retreat at the beautiful Lacawac Sanctuary in Pennsylvania. They spent the week getting in some much needed writing time, relaxing, socializing, and enjoying the beautiful scenery. They were joined by Jem Baldisimo, a collaborator from Old Dominion University on the NSF PIRE project studying genomic change over the last century in the Philippines.
Recently, lab members were treated to a two-week visit by Jason Toy, a PhD student in Dr. Kristy Kroeker’s lab at University of California Santa Cruz. Jason spent time with lab members Brendan Reid, Rene Clark and others to discuss and learn computational approaches to population genetics (e.g., “momi2”). Later in the week, he presented his own research to the lab and got to participate in an engaging discussion (arranged by Brendan) with several NOAA scientists discussing their work via Zoom. Jason’s talk was titled “Adaptive capacity of surfperches to rapid environmental change: Illuminating the roles of local adaptation and range shifts in population resilience”. Not least, Jason got to participate in several social outings with EENR grad students and faculty. Safe travels, Jason. We really enjoyed your visit!
After a 2-year hiatus, the Pinsky lab finally made it back to the Philippines! Brendan, René, Kyra, Marial & Allison recently returned from a trip to Dumaguete, Negros Oriental where they engaged in research and education endeavors as part of an NSF-funded PIRE project investigating Centennial Genetic and Species Transformations in the Epicenter of Marine Biodiversity. While there, the team helped with fieldwork to assess changes in species diversity, and participated in a 5-day bioinformatics and genomics workshop hosted at Silliman University.
Lab members also participated in excursions to explore the culture and natural beauty of the Philippines. Excursions included snorkeling and scuba diving at Apo Island and exploring waterfalls and hot springs. They also met with Filipino collaborators and visited local markets and restaurants.
We are very excited to announce the launch of our project website: futureblue.net. FutureBlue is an online database and mapping platform designed to make projections of future ocean conditions (species distributions, wind speed, oceanography, etc.) available and useful for the broadest array of stakeholders possible. The project is led by Rutgers, UCONN, and The Nature Conservancy, along with a large interdisciplinary team from academic, governmental, and non-profit organizations, including world experts in climate science, social science, oceanography, marine ecology and management, and online data portal development. FutureBlue originated as part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator program in 2021, and we are currently in the process of securing funding for Phase II to expand and improve the tool.
Two new papers from the lab discuss how best to understand, and to mitigate, the effects of climate change by applying ecoevolutionary theory.
The first, published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution (doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2022.04.011) proposes that dominant ecoevolutionary processes for coping with climate change differ among terrestrial, freshwater, and marine taxa, but that a unified framework, spanning realms, is needed to fully understand them. The review was authored by Malin and coauthors Lise Comte (Illinois State U.) and Dov Sax (Brown U.).
The second, published in Ecological Applications (doi: 10.1002/eap.2650), investigated the merits of two restoration strategies for corals in a changing ocean: ‘demographic restoration’, in which coral is grown elsewhere and transplanted to a site; and ‘assisted evolution’, in which tolerant genotypes are transplanted. This paper, led by Lukas DeFilippo (NOAA) and coauthored by several current and former Pinsky lab members, used an ecoevolutionary simulation model to tackle the question. The model revealed that realistic levels of ‘demographic restoration’ offered little benefit, while transplanting thermally resistant corals helped, but only if maintained for a century. The study concluded that restoration approaches focused on building genetic variation would likely work better by allowing corals to naturally adapt to warming temperatures over time.
Malin has coauthored two new perspective pieces in Science.
The first, with Nina Therkildsen of Cornell, highlights the underappreciated effects of fishing on evolutionary dynamics within (and among) exploited species. The second, with Alexa Fredston, discusses the stark choice we face between runaway climate change and a likely marine mass extinction on the one hand, and a much less consequential 2 degree rise in global temperatures on the other.
The second article was picked by the Washington Post, Inside Climate News, and National Geographic.
Malin will be joining the board of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics, part of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in fall 2022. He’s looking forward to helping to guide the institute and finding common ground between ecology and economics.
A new paper by lab members suggests that predator-prey interactions will complicate species’ ability to track their climate niches poleward in warming oceans. The upshot could be less productive fisheries in a warmer world.
Former postdoc Ed Tekwa, along with James Watson (Oregon State) and Malin Pinsky, developed a spatial food-web model that considers species’ size, metabolism, preferred temperatures, and other factors. Trophic interactions (considerations of “who eats who”) are expected to hamper species’ ability to shift in response to warming temperatures. One interesting prediction of the model is that the trailing edges of top predator ranges are expected to shift slower than the ranges of their smaller prey.
The work was recently published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It was also picked up by the BBC World Service (story at time: 26:30 – 29:50), WHYY, and was the subject of a Rutgers press release.
After multiple years of Zoom meetings, postdoc Alexa Fredston, grad student Zoë Kitchel, and Malin met in person with the FishGlob consortium this past week. The working group, funded by the Centre for the Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity (CESAB), aims to bring together data from bottom trawl surveys to ask questions about the intersections among climate, fishing, and fish biodiversity at the global scale. Researchers from Colombia, Canada, the US, and France descended upon Montpellier, France to discuss how to effectively unify and standardize datasets, how to identify and understand changes (or not!) in biodiversity across ecosystems through time, and how to most effectively share data and results with a wide audience. Malin shared details about the future of Ocean Adapt, which currently allows users to see visual representations of bottom trawl data for the US and Canada. Alexa showed that marine heatwaves do not seem to have as large of an impact on biomass or community structure as we anticipated. Zoë revealed how both fishing pressure and temperature shape patterns in spatial beta-diversity of fish communities. Between meetings, the team found time for some delicious food and a group trip to the seaside fishing city of Sète where they dipped toes in the Mediterranean Sea, took a stroll along the fishing docks, and enjoyed some local oysters and sea urchins for lunch!
The Pinsky Lab is very excited to host Jem Baldisimo this week! Jem is a PhD student in Kent Carpenter’s lab at Old Dominion and part of the Phillipines PIRE project. She’s visiting as part of an RCN for Evolution in Changing Seas research exchange program. During her visit, Jem will interact with lab members and learn more about various population genomic analyses, particularly computational techniques for investigating population structure and genetic diversity. She hopes to apply those skills in her own research, which involves (among other things) looking at how the aquarium trade has impacted fish populations in the Philippines.
Pictured in the photo (left to right): Brendan, Jem, Kyra, Rene, & Marial.