Oil impairs ability of coral reef fish to find homes and evade predators

This is a damselfish of the Chromis species.

Just as one too many cocktails can lead a person to make bad choices, a few drops of oil can cause coral reef fish to make poor decisions, according to a paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. A team of fisheries biologists led by Jacob Johansen and Andrew Esbaugh of The University of Texas Marine Science Institute have discovered that oil impacts the higher-order thinking of coral reef fish in a way that could prove dangerous for them -- and for the coral reefs where they make their home.

Examining six different species of coral reef fish, Johansen and the team found that exposure to oil consistently affected behavior in ways that put the fish at risk.

During several weeks when coral reef fish go through their juvenile stages of development, they are especially vulnerable. Even in healthy populations of reef fish, typically less than 10 percent of embryos and larvae reach adulthood. Those who survive must learn to identify friend from foe and adopt protective behaviors, such as traveling in groups, minimizing movement in open waters and swimming away quickly from danger.

In experiments, the scientists found that juvenile fish exposed to oil struggled on all these counts.

"In several different experiments, the fish exposed to oil exhibited very risky behavior, even in the presence of a predator," said Esbaugh, an assistant professor of marine science.

The scientists also found that oil exposure negatively affected the fishes' growth, survival and settlement behaviors (their ability to find a suitable habitat).

Oil concentrations are found in oceans worldwide, but until now little has been known about the impact of oil exposure on coral reef fish. Earlier research that explored how oil affects the physiology of fishes has demonstrated developmental heart deformities and associated cardiac functions, but this is the first study to demonstrate that oil exposure affects behavior in a way that increases predation and reduces settlement success.

The finding could be bad news for reefs, as well, since many coral reefs depend on fish to remove algae that can restrict their growth and development. Coral reef ecosystems are the oceans' most diverse ecosystems -- and the most threatened. Hundreds of millions of people depend on coral reefs and their fish for income or food, but widespread coral bleaching and overfishing threaten this way of life. The new study indicates that limiting oil-based industrial activities near reefs may be critical for reef preservation.

"Over the past 35 years, almost one-fifth of the world's coral reefs have been lost and half of what's remaining is either expected to disappear or be under severe threat in the next few decades," Johansen, the lead researcher, reflected. "Still, many governments continue to allow industrial activities, including oil drilling and exploration, in sensitive reef habitats. If a spill were to occur, this study suggests there could be major consequences for the fish, for coral reefs and for people working in fisheries and tourism."

"We used oil concentrations that are already present in many industrialized regions worldwide -- concentrations that ranged from two to five parts per billion, the equivalent of a couple of drops in a swimming pool," Johansen said.

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New species of dinosaur named after Canadian icon

This is a life recreation of Albertavenator curriei.

Scientists from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the Philip J Currie Dinosaur Museum have identified and named a new species of dinosaur in honour of renowned Canadian palaeontologist Dr. Philip J. Currie. Albertavenator curriei, meaning "Currie's Alberta hunter." It stalked Alberta, Canada, about 71 million years ago in what is now the famous Red Deer River Valley. The find recognizes Currie for his decades of work on predatory dinosaurs of Alberta. Research on the new species is published July 17 in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.

Palaeontologists initially thought that the bones of Albertavenator belonged to its close relative Troodon, which lived around 76-million-years-ago -- five million years before Albertavenator. Both dinosaurs walked on two legs, were covered in feathers, and were about the size of a person. New comparisons of bones forming the top of the head reveal that Albertavenator had a distinctively shorter and more robust skull than Troodon, its famously brainy relative.

"The delicate bones of these small feathered dinosaurs are very rare. We were lucky to have a critical piece of the skull that allowed us to distinguish Albertaventaor as a new species." said Dr. David Evans, Temerty Chair and Senior Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, and leader of the project. "We hope to find a more complete skeleton of Albertavenator in the future, as this would tell us so much more about this fascinating animal."

Identifying new species from fragmentary fossils is a challenge. Complicating matters of this new find are the hundreds of isolated teeth that have been found in Alberta and previously attributed to Troodon. Teeth from a jaw that likely pertains to Albertavenator appears very similar to the teeth of Troodon, making them unusable for distinguishing between the two species.

"This discovery really highlights the importance of finding and examining skeletal material from these rare dinosaurs," concluded Derek Larson, co-author on the study and Assistant Curator of the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum."

The identification of a new species of troodontid in the Late Cretaceous of North America indicates that small dinosaur diversity in the latest Cretaceous of North America is likely underestimated due to the difficulty of identifying species from fragmentary fossils.

"It was only through our detailed anatomical and statistical comparisons of the skull bones that we were able to distinguish between Albertavenator and Troodon," said Thomas Cullen, a Ph.D. student of Evans at the University of Toronto and co-author of the study.

The bones of Albertavenator were found in the badlands surrounding the Royal Tyrrell Museum, which Dr. Currie played a key role in establishing in the early 1980s. The rocks around the museum are the same age as some of the most fossiliferous rocks in the area of the newly erected Philip J. Currie Museum, also named in Dr. Currie's honour. Although Dr. Currie has also had a several dinosaurs named after him, this is only the second one from Alberta, where he has made his biggest impact.

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Is this Gulf of Mexico tubeworm the longest living animal in the world?

The tubeworm species Escarpia laminata.

Large tubeworms living in the cold depths of the Gulf of Mexico may be among the longest living animals in the world. This is revealed in a study in Springer's journal The Science of Nature. According to lead author Alanna Durkin of Temple University in the US, members of the tubeworm species Escarpia laminata live around 100 to 200 years, while the longevity of some even stretches to the three century mark.

Escarpia laminata is a type of tubeworm that lives in cold seeps found between 1000 meters and 3300 meters deep on the ocean floor of the Gulf of Mexico. Hydrogen sulphide, methane and other hydrocarbon-rich fluids seep out of these vents.

Because so little is known about this species and its life history, Durkin and her colleagues set out to estimate its lifespan. The team also wanted to find out if it is as long-lived as other types of tubeworms living in cold seeps in shallower waters, such as Lamellibrachia luymesi and Seepiophila jonesi.

They collected and marked 356 tubeworms at different locations in the Gulf of Mexico and measured how much these grew over the course of one year. This method for modelling annual growth was first developed to calculate the age of Lamellibrachia luymesi, which is estimated to live up to 250 years. The average individual growth model was then extended to also include death rates and recruitment rates to construct a population-wide simulation. In the process, the age and growth rates of the individual tubeworms collected could be estimated.

The individual and population level approaches indicate that larger Escarpia laminata individuals live longer than 250 years. An Escarpia laminata tubeworm fifty centimeters in length is predicted to be 202 years old. This species therefore lives much longer than its relatives, Lamellibrachia luymesi and Seepiophila jonesi. This lifespan is also far beyond estimates based on universal scaling laws for Escarpia laminata's body size and ambient temperature.

According to Durkin, Escarpia laminata's extremely low death rate has helped it evolve a very long lifespan. The results support longevity theory, which states that in the absence of any external threats natural selection will select for individuals that show signs of ageing more slowly and can reproduce continually into their old age.

"At more than 250 years old, Escarpia laminata achieves a lifespan that exceeds other longevity records," says Durkin. "Given the uncertainty associated with estimating the ages of the longest individuals, there may be large Escarpia laminata tubeworms alive in nature that live even longer."

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Climate Change Could Cause More Flight Delays at the World's Busiest Airports

Imagine boarding a summertime flight at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, only to be told that the airline needs a dozen or so passengers to take a later flight because it’s too hot outside for the plane to take off fully loaded.

That could become a common scenario at 19 major airports worldwide as extreme heat caused by global warming disrupts an increasing number of flights departing during the hottest times of day, according to a new Columbia University study.

If human greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, global average temperatures are expected to rise by more than 4°C (7.2°F) by 2100. But high temperatures at the world’s busiest airports could rise even more — by up to 8°C (14.4°F), leading to more days each year that are hotter than average, especially at airports in the tropics, according to the study, published Thursday in the journal Climatic Change.

By 2065, LaGuardia Airport could see about 25 days each year that will be hotter than today’s average yearly high temperature, up from fewer than 10 days in 2025.

Extreme heat disrupted flights in Phoenix in June when American Airlines cancelled 50 flights aboard small commuter jets as temperatures soared above 120°F. Such summertime temperatures are likely to become more frequent as the climate changes. Air is less dense in extreme heat, preventing an airplane's wings from generating enough lift to take off unless the plane sheds weight.

“Higher temperatures are going to mean more people having to be removed from flights, more delays on the ground,” said study co-author Radley Horton, a climate scientist at Columbia University.

The amount of weight and number of passengers a flight would have to shed depend on the type of aircraft and the airport’s altitude and runway length. LaGuardia could be affected by the heat more than New York’s Kennedy International Airport because its runways are nearly half the length of Kennedy’s longest runway.

Between 10 and 30 percent of annual flights departing at the hottest hours of the day from 19 major airports will have to fly with weight restrictions, the study says. On average, flights will have to cut their weight by up to 4 percent in order to take off on the hottest days after 2050.

Some larger planes, especially those that fly long-haul international flights to mid-sized or small airports, could be affected more than smaller planes because they weigh more. However, the largest plane flying today, the double-decker Airbus A380, may not be affected as much by the heat because it can only fly to airports with the longest runways.

The study suggests that one way airlines could avoid heat-related flight disruptions is to schedule flights at night or in the morning when the air is cooler. But airplanes and airports may need to be designed differently in the future in order to deal with the heat as the globe warms.

“As it gets warmer, air expands,” said Lou McNally, an assistant professor of applied aviation sciences at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., who is unaffiliated with the study. “That means you need more of everything in order to get enough air molecules onto the wing and fly. It means more thrust — bigger or more engines — and more runway length for takeoff, or larger wings, or all of the above. And also more runway length and better braking because of higher landing speeds at the other end.”

Read more at Seeker

New limits to functional portion of human genome reported

The functional portion of the human genome probably falls between 10 percent and 15 percent, with an upper limit of 25 percent, suggests new research.

An evolutionary biologist at the University of Houston has published new calculations that indicate no more than 25 percent of the human genome is functional. That is in stark contrast to suggestions by scientists with the ENCODE project that as much as 80 percent of the genome is functional.

In work published online in Genome Biology and Evolution, Dan Graur reports the functional portion of the human genome probably falls between 10 percent and 15 percent, with an upper limit of 25 percent. The rest is so-called junk DNA, or useless but harmless DNA.

Graur, John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Biology and Biochemistry at UH, took a deceptively simple approach to determining how much of the genome is functional, using the deleterious mutation rate - that is, the rate at which harmful mutations occur - and the replacement fertility rate.

Both genome size and the rate of deleterious mutations in functional parts of the genome have previously been determined, and historical data documents human population levels. With that information, Graur developed a model to calculate the decrease in reproductive success induced by harmful mutations, known as the "mutational load," in relation to the portion of the genome that is functional.

The functional portion of the genome is described as that which has a selected-effect function, that is, a function that arose through and is maintained by natural selection. Protein-coding genes, RNA-specifying genes and DNA receptors are examples of selected-effect functions. In his model, only functional portions of the genome can be damaged by deleterious mutations; mutations in nonfunctional portions are neutral since functionless parts can be neither damaged nor improved.

Because of deleterious mutations, each couple in each generation must produce slightly more children than two to maintain a constant population size. Over the past 200,000 years, replacement-level fertility rates have ranged from 2.1 to 3.0 children per couple, he said, noting that global population remained remarkably stable until the beginning of the 19th century, when decreased mortality in newborns resulted in fertility rates exceeding replacement levels.

If 80 percent of the genome were functional, unrealistically high birth rates would be required to sustain the population even if the deleterious mutation rate were at the low end of estimates, Graur found.

"For 80 percent of the human genome to be functional, each couple in the world would have to beget on average 15 children and all but two would have to die or fail to reproduce," he wrote. "If we use the upper bound for the deleterious mutation rate (2 × 10?8 mutations per nucleotide per generation), then ... the number of children that each couple would have to have to maintain a constant population size would exceed the number of stars in the visible universe by ten orders of magnitude."

In 2012, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) announced that 80 percent of the genome had a biochemical function. Graur said this new study not only puts these claims to rest but hopefully will help to refocus the science of human genomics.

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Fossil site shows impact of early Jurassic's low oxygen oceans

Before the low oxygen period, bivalves were larger and more numerous.

Using a combination of fossils and chemical markers, scientists have tracked how a period of globally low ocean-oxygen turned an Early Jurassic marine ecosystem into a stressed community inhabited by only a few species.

The research was led by Rowan Martindale, an assistant professor at The University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences, and published in print in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoeconology on July 15. The study was co-authored by Martin Aberhan, a curator at the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science at the Natural History Museum in Berlin, Germany.

The study zeroes in on a recently discovered fossil site in Canada located at Ya Ha Tinda Ranch near Banff National Park in southwest Alberta. The site records fossils of organisms that lived about 183 million years ago during the Early Jurassic in a shallow sea that once covered the region.

The fossil site broadens the scientific record of the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event, a period of low oxygen in shallow ocean waters which is hypothesized to be triggered by massive volcanic eruptions. The Oceanic Anoxic Event was identified at this site by the geochemical record preserved in the rocks. These geochemical data were collected in a previous research project led by Benjamin Gill and Theodore Them of Virginia Tech. The oxygen level of the surrounding environment during the Early Jurassic influences the type and amount of carbon preserved in rocks, making the geochemical record an important method for tracking an anoxic event.

"We have this beautiful geochemical record that gives us a backbone for the timing of the Oceanic Anoxic Event," said Martindale, a researcher in the Jackson School's Department of Geological Sciences. "So with that framework we can look at the benthic community, the organisms that are living on the bottom of the ocean, and ask 'how did this community respond to the anoxic event?"

The fossils show that before the anoxic event, the Ya Ha Tinda marine community was diverse, and included fish, ichthyosaurs (extinct marine reptiles that looked like dolphins), sea lilies, lobsters, clams and oysters, ammonites, and coleoids (squid-like octopods). During the anoxic event the community collapsed, restructured, and the organisms living in it shrunk. The clams that were most abundant in the community before the anoxic event were completely wiped out and replaced by different species.

The clams that survived during and after the event were much smaller than the clams from before the event, suggesting that low oxygen levels limited their growth.

The sea life recorded at Ya Ha Tinda before and during the anoxic event is similar to fossils found at European sites. Crispin Little, a senior lecturer in paleontology at The University of Leeds who was not involved with the research, said that the similarity between the sites underscores the widespread nature of the anoxic event.

"This confirms previous work suggesting that the T-OAE (anoxic event) was genuinely a global event," Little said.

However, while other sites were recovering from the anoxic event, the environment at Ya Ha Tinda continued to face stress. Even for small, hardy bivalves, life was tough.

"One of the interesting things about the recovery [at Ya Ha Tinda] is that we actually see fewer individuals at a time when we're supposed to be seeing community recovery," Martindale said.

The fossils suggest that the environment was undergoing local stresses that kept oxygen low, Martindale said. More research is needed to untangle why life at Ya Ha Tinda didn't recover at the same rate as other places.

Since the oceanic anoxic event was a side-effect of climate change, looking back at ancient marine communities could be a window into the potential impacts of ongoing and future climate change, said co-author Martin Aberhan.

Read more at Science Daily

First laboratory generation of astrophysical shock waves created

Physicist Derek Schaeffer is pictured.

Throughout the universe, supersonic shock waves propel cosmic rays and supernova particles to velocities near the speed of light. The most high-energy of these astrophysical shocks occur too far outside the solar system to be studied in detail and have long puzzled astrophysicists. Shocks closer to Earth can be detected by spacecraft, but they fly by too quickly to probe a wave's formation.

Opening the door to new understanding

Now a team of scientists has generated the first high-energy shock waves in a laboratory setting, opening the door to new understanding of these mysterious processes. "We have for the first time developed a platform for studying highly energetic shocks with greater flexibility and control than is possible with spacecraft," said Derek Schaeffer, a physicist at Princeton University and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), and lead author of a July paper in Physical Review Letters that outlines the experiments.

Schaeffer and colleagues conducted their research on the Omega EP laser facility at the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics. Collaborating on the project was PPPL physicist Will Fox, who designed the experiment, and researchers from Rochester and the universities of Michigan and New Hampshire. "This lets you understand the evolution of the physical processes going on inside shock waves," Fox said of the platform.

To produce the wave, scientists used a laser to create a high-energy plasma -- a form of matter composed of atoms and charged atomic particles -- that expanded into a pre-existing magnetized plasma. The interaction created, within a few billionths of a second, a magnetized shock wave that expanded at a rate of more than 1 million miles per hour, congruent with shocks beyond the solar system. The rapid velocity represented a high "magnetosonic Mach number" and the wave was "collisionless," emulating shocks that occur in outer space where particles are too far apart to frequently collide.

Discovery by accident

Discovery of this method of generating shock waves actually came about by accident. The physicists had been studying magnetic reconnection, the process in which the magnetic field lines in plasma converge, separate and energetically reconnect. To investigate the flow of plasma in the experiment, researchers installed a new diagnostic on the Rochester laser facility. To their surprise, the diagnostic revealed a sharp steepening of the density of the plasma, which signaled the formation of a high Mach number shock wave.

To simulate the findings, the researchers ran a computer code called "PSC" on the Titan supercomputer, the most powerful U.S. computer, housed at the DOE's Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. The simulation utilized data derived from the experiments and results of the model agreed well with diagnostic images of the shock formation.

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Walking like ants gives spiders a chance

Jumping spider

Humans aren't the only actors on the planet. To avoid being eaten, some jumping spiders pretend to be ants, according to Cornell University research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Ants are aggressive at defending themselves: They are well-armed with bites, stings and formic acid. Ant-mimicking jumping spiders -- Myrmarachne formicaria -- in contrast, can't do much more than run on their eight legs when attacked. Not surprisingly, insect predators tend to prefer spiders over ants, so appearing to be an ant confers significant protection.

Protective mimicry is a remarkable example of adaptive evolution: Moths can be colored like butterflies and grasshoppers may look like tiger beetles. While most mimicry studies focus on traits like color and shape, the researchers used multiple high-speed cameras and behavioral experiments to pinpoint how the spider's movements mimic ants.

Ant-mimicking spiders walk using all eight legs but pause frequently to raise their forelegs to mimic ant antennae. When walking, they take winding trajectories of about five to 10 body lengths, which made them look like ants following pheromone trails. While the researchers could see what the spiders were doing thanks to high-speed cameras, many potential predators have slower visual systems, so that to them the mimics appear to be moving just like an ant would.

The researchers note that the findings "highlight the importance of dynamic behaviors and observer perception in mimicry."

From Science Daily

Mica provides clue to how water transports minerals

Researchers at Argonne looked at the dynamics of the transport of certain elements -- especially rubidium -- at the interface between water and mica, a flat transparent mineral pictured here.

In order to understand various environmental processes and learn to better address the effects of pollution, scientists have been interested in tracking the movement of elements through the environment, particularly at interfaces between water and minerals.

In a new study from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, in collaboration with the University of Illinois and Chicago and the University of Delaware, chemists have been able to look at the interface between water and muscovite mica, a flat mineral commonly found in granite, soils and many sediments. In particular, the researchers looked at the capture and release of rubidium -- a metal closely related to but more easily singled out than common elements like potassium and sodium.

Essentially, it's like looking for a goldfinch in a tree, and using a technique that only shows you where yellow things are."

In the experiment, the researchers flowed a rubidium-containing solution over the mica, which caused rubidium atoms to replace the potassium that occurs naturally near the surface of the mica. Then the rubidium solution was replaced for one containing sodium, which in turn replaced the rubidium atoms.

According to Argonne chemist Sang Soo Lee, who led the study, the dynamics of the ion transport were largely controlled by electrostatic properties at the interface between the mica and the water. Essentially, the rubidium atoms "clung" to the mica's surface similarly to how lint clings to clothing. The strength of the clinging behavior was determined mainly by how many water molecules were in between the mica's surface and the rubidium -- the fewer water molecules, the tighter the cling.

Lee and his Argonne colleague, chemist Paul Fenter, used Argonne's Advanced Photon Source, a DOE Office of Science User Facility, to observe the activity of the rubidium using a technique called resonant anomalous X-ray reflectivity. This technique allows scientists to probe the position of a single element at an interface.

"Essentially, it's like looking for a goldfinch in a tree, and using a technique that only shows you where yellow things are," Fenter said.

By using the technique, the researchers were able to condense the timeframe it takes to measure the signal from the data. "Normally these data take hours to measure, but now we can have a time resolution of one or two seconds," Fenter said.

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Deep-sea coral reefs discovery in depths of the North-Pacific

Scientists ask how it's possible that certain coral reefs are thriving in this location.

Scientists have long believed that the waters of the Central and Northeast Pacific Ocean were inhospitable to deep-sea scleractinian coral, but a Florida State University professor's discovery of an odd chain of reefs suggests there are mysteries about the development and durability of coral colonies yet to be uncovered.

Associate Professor of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science Amy Baco-Taylor, in collaboration with a team from Texas A&M University, observed these reefs during an autonomous underwater vehicle survey through the seamounts of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

In an article published in the journal Scientific Reports, Baco-Taylor and her team document these reefs and discuss possible explanations for their appearance in areas considered impossibly hostile to reef-forming scleractinia, whose communities are formed by small, stony polyps that settle on the seabed and grow bony skeletons to protect their soft bodies.

"I've been exploring the deep-sea around the Hawaiian Archipelago since 1998, and I'd seen enough to know that the presence of these reefs at these depths was definitely unexpected," Baco-Taylor said.

Areas like the North Atlantic and South Pacific are particularly fertile habitats for deep-sea scleractinian reefs, but a combination of factors led scientists to believe that the accumulation of deep-sea coral colonies into healthy reefs was exceedingly unlikely in the deep waters of the North Pacific.

Low levels of aragonite, an essential mineral in the formation of scleractinian skeletal structures, in the region make it difficult for the coral polyps to develop their rugged coral skeletons. In addition, North Pacific carbonate dissolution rates, a measure of the pace at which carbonate substances like coral skeletons dissolve, exceed those of the more amenable North Atlantic by a factor of two.

In other words, these reefs simply should not exist.

"Even if the corals could overcome low aragonite saturation and build up robust skeletons, there are areas on the reefs that are just exposed skeleton, and those should be dissolving," Baco-Taylor said. "Even if the species could survive in the area, we shouldn't be finding an accumulation of reef."

In the study, Baco-Taylor and her team articulate two potential reasons for the improbable success of these hardy reefs. Higher concentrations of chlorophyll in the areas of pronounced reef growth suggests that an abundance of food may provide the excess energy needed for calcification in waters with low aragonite saturation. Suitable current velocities in the area may also help the reefs to flourish.

But neither of these factors tell the whole story.

"Neither the chlorophyll nor the currents explain the unusual depth distributions of the reefs, why they actually get shallower moving to the northwest along the seamounts," Baco-Taylor said. "There's still a mystery as to why these reefs are here."

The unexpected discovery of these reefs has prompted some to reconsider the effects of ocean acidification on vulnerable coral colonies. At a time when stories about the wholesale demise of reefs around the world are sparking alarm, these findings may offer a glimmer of hope.

"These results show that the effect of ocean acidification on deep-water corals may not be as severe as predicted," said David Garrison, a program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research. "What accounts for the resilience of these corals on seamounts in the Pacific remains to be determined."

The reefs observed during this research occur primarily outside of the local protected Papah?naumoku?kea Marine National Monument, which means they exist in areas where destructive trawling is permitted and active.

Nicole Morgan, an FSU doctoral candidate and a coauthor of the article, said that locating these survivalist reefs is crucial because it gives scientists a chance to preserve them.

"We want to know where these habitats are so that we can protect them," Morgan said. "We don't want important fisheries to collapse, which often happens when reefs disappear, but we also want to protect them because they're vulnerable, and we don't want to destroy habitats."

The discovery of these puzzling reefs shows that there are still gaps at the edges of our scientific understanding waiting to be filled. The success of hypothesis-driven exploration, like the kind that produced these findings, demonstrates the importance of continuing to strike out into the unknown.

"These results highlight the importance of doing research in unexplored areas, or 'exploration sciences' as we like to call it," said Brendan Roark, associate professor of geography at Texas A&M University and Baco-Taylor's co-principal investigator.

If there are additional reefs sprinkled across the Northwestern Hawaiian seamounts, Baco-Taylor wants to find them. Further study of these reefs could reveal important secrets about how these organisms might endure in the age of climbing carbon dioxide levels and ocean acidification.

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