With $750,000 in funding from the National Science Foundation, we’re excited to be starting a new partnership with The Nature Conservancy, University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts, the Responsible Offshore Science Alliance (ROSA), University of Wisconsin, Rutgers Equal Opportunity Fund, the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration! The focus is on climate impacts ot fisheries, wind energy development, and conservation. More details here https://sebsnjaesnews.rutgers.edu/2021/09/national-science-foundation-awards-rutgers-a-750000-convergence-accelerator-grant/
McLean et al. study on shifts in thermal affinity of marine communities is available in the November 8 issue of Current Biology.
Matthew McLean collaborated with nine other researchers across Europe and North America, including Malin Pinsky, to coauthor this study on community change in marine environments. Their report appears in the November 8 issue of Current Biology. Although past studies have documented extensive shifts in community temperature index (CTI), this study uniquely decomposes CTI into four underlying processes at a multi-continental scale (tropicalization—increasing abundance of warm-affinity species; deborealization—decreasing abundance of cold-affinity speciesd; borealization—increasing abundance of cold-affinity species; detropicalization—decreasing abundance of warm-affinity species). Using long-term monitoring of marine fishes across the Northern Hemisphere, McLean et al. show that one-third of increases in mean thermal affinity were primarily due to decreases in cold-affinity species. Cold-affinity decreases were stronger closer to human population centers; warm-affinity increases were stronger in warmer areas. These findings will help in anticipating future changes in biodiversity under climate change and implementing adapted management strategies.
Temporal Genomics Twitter Symposium on July 8th!
The Temporal Genomics Working Group, a collaboration between five universities including members of the Pinsky Lab, is presenting a Twitter Symposium as part of the Research Coordinated Network for Evolution in Changing Seas.
Members of the RCN for Evolution in Changing Seas and the ecology & evolution community at large are invited to participate in a Twitter conference during the first full week in July 2021. This Twitter conference is aimed specifically at researchers interested in, or currently utilizing, temporal genomics methods and practices.
This Twitter conference will provide:
- An opportunity for scientists (particularly those early in their career) to share their work with a broader community in an informal setting.
- An opportunity for presenters and attendees to network and interact with the public and other researchers.
- Increased visibility for the field of temporal genomics.
Presentation style:
- Participants in the Temporal Genomics Twitter Conference are invited to condense their current research into a ~5-7 tweet thread (1,400-1,960 characters).
- Each presenter will be given thirty minutes (15 minutes for presentation tweets and a 15 minute “live” Q&A session).
Unsure what a Twitter conference is? Check out this guide from the #ASEH2018 Twitter conference for more information on the general structure and types of presentations, or tweets, involved.
If you have questions about the Temporal Genomics Twitter Conference, please contact René Clark: rene.clark[at]rutgers.edu (@rene_delight on Twitter), or John Whalen: jwhal002[at]odu.edu (@WhaleTalez on Twitter).
For more info. visit: https://tempgenomics-rcn.github.io/website/conference.html
Use the hashtag #TempGen2021Tweets
Clark et al. paper on spatially divergent selection in clownfish out in Proc. R. Soc. B!
René Clark (Ph.D. candidate) and co-authors from the Pinsky Lab, Montclair State University, Columbia University, UCLA, Shiga University (Japan), and Visayas State University (Philippines) published a paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B investigating the relationship between selection, gene flow and genetic drift across the species range of Amphiprion clarkii (the yellowtail clownfish). Using RNAseq data from populations near the range center (Indonesia & the Philippines) and the northern range margin (Japan), they found signs of local adaptation to cold temperatures at the range edge, despite strong genetic drift and gene flow from lower latitudes. Many of the targets of selection were found in genes involved in acclimation to cold stress, including protein turnover, metabolism, cell structure, and cell death, and may point to an important link between plastic and evolutionary responses involved in thermal adaptation.
Zoë Kitchel and Doug Zemeckis publish climate change and NJ fisheries bulletin!
Pinsky Lab PhD candidate, Zoë Kitchel, and Rutgers Cooperative Extension Agent, Doug Zemeckis, authored a bulletin in Rutgers’ Cooperative Extension Bulletin on the impacts of climate change on New Jersey’s marine fisheries. The bulletin breaks down this issue for a general audience and packs the information into ~3 pages. With a quick read, you will become acquainted with climate change, its causes, effects on the ocean, and its impacts on marine life and fisheries.
Overfishing of Atlantic Cod Likely Did Not Cause Genetic Changes: Pinsky et al. paper out in PNAS
This article was adapted from Todd Bates’ press release.
shipwrecks. Photo: NOAA
Overfishing likely did not cause the Atlantic cod, an iconic species, to evolve genetically and mature earlier, according to a study led by Drs. Malin Pinsky and Bastiaan Star.
“Evolution has been used in part as an excuse for why cod and other species have not recovered from overfishing,” said Malin. “Our findings suggest instead that more attention to reducing fishing and addressing other environmental changes, including climate change, will be important for allowing recovery. We can’t use evolution as a scapegoat for avoiding the hard work that would allow cod to recover.”
The study, which focuses on Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) off Newfoundland in Canada and off Norway, appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Many debates over the last few decades have centered on whether cod have evolved in response to fisheries, a phenomenon known as fisheries-induced evolution. Cod now mature at a much earlier age, for example. The concern has been that if the fish have evolved, they may not be able to recover even if fishing is reduced, according to Pinsky.
Cod populations with late-maturing individuals can produce more offspring and more effectively avoid predators, he said. They are also better protected against climate variability.
Both theory and experiments suggest that fishing can lead to an earlier maturation age. But prior to the new study, no one had tried to sequence whole genomes from before intensive fishing to determine whether evolution had occurred. So, this team sequenced cod earbones and scales from 1907 in Norway, 1940 in Canada and modern cod from the same populations. The northern Canadian population of cod collapsed from overfishing in the early 1990s, while the northeast Arctic population near Norway faced high fishing rates but smaller declines.
The team found no major losses in genetic diversity and no major changes that suggested intensive fishing induced evolution, suggesting that we focus on managing for more direct threats (e.g., overfishing, environmental change) than for evolution.
This study prompts future investigations to see if other species, especially those with shorter lifespans (in contrast to cod), do or don’t show signs of evolution.
Scientists at the University of Oslo, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Institute of Marine Research (Norway), University of Basel and University of Zurich contributed to the study.
Pinsky Lab reviews “Ocean Recovery: A Sustainable Future for Global Fisheries?” by Ray & Ulrike Hilborn
Zoë Kitchel, PhD Candidate, led a group of Pinsky Lab members (Jeewantha Bandara, Jaelyn Bos, René Clark, Dan Forrest, and Malin Pinsky) in reviewing Ocean Recovery: a Sustainable Future for Global Fisheries? by Ray and Ulrike Hilborn, available online early in Fisheries. The review mentions that the book serves as a needed contrast to the many doom-and-gloom stories and headlines of impending fisheries collapse by highlighting where fisheries are working well, but doesn’t fully expound the challenges to achieving and maintaining sustainable fisheries (e.g., climate change).
Read the full review here in Fisheries!
Deadly White-Nose Syndrome Changed Genes in Surviving Bats: Gignoux-Wolfsohn et al. paper out in Molecular Ecology
This post is adapted from Todd Bates‘ article in Rutgers Today.
Former Pinsky Lab Post-doc, Dr. Sarah Gignoux-Wolfsohn led a study in Molecular Ecology which uncovered the genetic differences between bats killed by white-nose syndrome and bats that survived. She was supported by a team of co-authors from Rutgers (Dr. Malin Pinsky, Dr. Kathleen Kerwin, and Dr. Brooke Maslo), the NY Department of Environmental Conservation, the NJ Department of Enviornmental Protection, the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, and the University of Tennessee. Their results suggest that survivors pass on traits for resistance to the fungal disease causing rapid evolution in exposed bat populations.
White-nose syndrome has killed millions of bats in North America since 2006, following its introduction from Europe. The syndrome, caused by the fungal pathogen Pseudogymnoascus destructans, is arguably the most catastrophic wildlife disease in history. It has led to unprecedented declines in many North American bat species, including the little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus).
“Our finding that little brown bat populations have evolved, which could be why they survived, has large implications for management of bat populations going forward,” said lead author Sarah Gignoux-Wolfsohn, a former postdoctoral associate at Rutgers University–New Brunswick now at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland. “Management decisions, such as whether to treat for white-nose syndrome or protect populations from other detrimental factors, can be informed by knowing which bats are genetically resistant to the disease.”
“The deployment of vaccines or treatments for the fungus may be most needed in populations with few disease-resistant individuals,” said Gignoux-Wolfsohn, who led the study – published in the journal Molecular Ecology – while at Rutgers. “Our study also has implications for other diseases that cause mass mortality. While rapid evolution in response to these diseases is often difficult to detect, our study suggests it may be more common than previously thought.”
The team sequenced bat genomes from three hibernating colonies in abandoned mines in New York, New Jersey and Vermont to determine whether little brown bats evolved as a result of the disease. They compared the genomes of bats killed by white-nose syndrome to survivors in recovering populations to identify genetic differences that may be responsible for survival.
The bats’ evolution appears to have particularly affected genes associated with weight gain before hibernation and behavior during hibernation. Rapid evolution may have allowed the remaining bats to keep hibernating and survive infection that killed off millions of other bats.
“Evolution is often thought of as a process that happened long ago,” Gignoux-Wolfsohn said. “We have found that it has also been happening right in our backyards and barns over the last decade.”
This group is now conducting a similar study in Indiana bats (Myotis sodalis). While also affected by white-nose syndrome, this species has experienced lesser declines than little brown bats.
Read the article in Molecular Ecology.
Read additional news coverage in Rutgers Today and Yahoo! News.
Planning Ahead Protects Fish and Fisheries: Pinsky et al. paper out in Science Advances
Effective planning for climate change helps avoid conflicts over ocean uses
[From press release by Todd Bates]
Conservation of fish and other marine life migrating from warming ocean waters will be more effective and also protect commercial fisheries if plans are made now to cope with climate change, according to a study Malin led in the journal Science Advances in collaboration with Lauren Rogers (Alaska Fisheries Science Center), former postdoc Jim Morley (now East Carolina University), and Thomas Frölicher (University of Bern).
The project focused on costs and benefits of planning ahead for the impacts of climate change on marine species distributions. We simulated the ocean planning process in the United States and Canada for conservation zones, fishing zones and wind and wave energy development zones. We then looked at nearly 12,000 different projections for where 736 species around North America will move during the rest of this century. We also looked at potential tradeoffs between meeting conservation and sustainable fishing goals now versus in 80 years.
We were worried that planning ahead would require setting aside a lot more of the ocean for conservation or for fishing, but we found that was not the case. Instead, fishing and conservation areas can be set up like hopscotch boxes so fish and other animals can shift from one box into another as they respond to climate change. We found that simple changes to ocean plans can make them much more robust to future changes. In other words, planning ahead can help society avoid conflicts.
Take home message: while climate change will severely disrupt many human activities and complete climate-proofing is impossible, proactively planning for long-term ocean change across a wide range of sectors is likely to provide substantial benefits.
Read the paper here in Science Advances.
Working Group Awarded Funding from RCN-ECS on Genomic Analysis of Evolution!
A group of graduate students and post-docs led by René Clark were awarded $10,000 from the Research Coordinated Network for Evolution in Changing Seas (RCN-ECS) to start a new working group reviewing the literature on genomic analysis of past and present specimens to quantify evolution through time. The group includes members from five universities: Rutgers (René Clark, Katrina Catalano, Brendan Reid, Kyra Fitz, Malin Pinsky), Alabama (Anthony Snead), Old Dominion (Eric Garcia, John Whalen), Michigan State (Kyle Jaynes), and UC Santa Cruz (Allyson Salazar Sawkins).
The group will review the literature to understand and synthesize the effects of methodology on the ability to detect contemporary evolutionary changes across taxa and habitats. After evaluating the literature on temporal genomic methodology, the group will formulate a decision framework to help guide the design of future studies. They hope to accelerate the use of temporal genomics in understanding evolutionary response to change across systems, taxa, and time.