With the announcement of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) 2022 Fellows, Dr. Malin Pinsky was honored for his significant contributions to the field of marine biology. The AAAS is widely regarded as a multidisciplinary scientific society focused on the advancement of scientific discoveries.
Further information discussing Dr. Malin Pinsky’s contributions predicting the impacts of climate change can be found here. As well, a comprehensive list of AAAS’s 2022 Fellows can be found here.
The FishGlob biodiversity synthesis group has created a database comprised of 26 public scientific bottom trawl surveys into a user interface. This is the first known database of this depth with special interest in demersal fish surveys. Collectively, the database includes over 230,000 hauls with more than 2,000 fish taxa from 1963 to 2020, from the North Atlantic and the Northwest Pacific continental shelves and slopes. The FishGlob pre-print can be found here.
The lab visits California for the ASN Asilomar 2023 Conference.
Members of the lab had the opportunity to attend and present at the American Society of Naturalists’ Asilomar 2023 Conference from January 6th to 9th at Pacific Grove, California. Strong storms were braved and massive swells were overcome to discuss ecology and evolution at such a beautiful location. Links to presentation descriptions and pictures from the conference can be found below:
The lab spent some time working and relaxing at Lacawac Sanctuary in Pennsylvania.
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.
Jason & lab members enjoy some sunshine (L2R: Malin, Jason, Mike, Brendan, Jaelyn, Alexa, Zoe, and Kyra)Jason & lab enjoy an engaging discussion with NOAA scientists (clockwise from L: Zoe, Jason, Mike, Alexa, Jaelyn, & Kyra. Rene & NOAA scientists Robert Logan, Sara Schaal, & Diana Baetscher on Zoom!)
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!
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.
A snippet of the second article, coauthored with Alexa Fredston. Crab photo: Pascal Kobeh/Minden Pictures.
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.
Screenshot from a press release on the paper (link below).
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.
After many Zoom meetings, members of the Pinsky Lab finally got to meet in person with the FishGlob group!
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!
