{"640262":{"#nid":"640262","#data":{"type":"event","title":"Prof. Mark Hay - Loss of detritivores and increases in bad-bugs on coral reefs?","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u0026quot;Ecologists have long debated the importance of top-down (the effects of consumers) versus bottom-up (nutrients and productivity) forces in structuring populations and communities. \u0026nbsp;There are numerous demonstrations of removing top consumers (wolves, sea otters, etc.) and the dramatic cascading effects on natural communities. Effects of removing lower trophic levels are relatively uninvestigated. \u0026nbsp;Here, we ask about the potential effects of removing a major class of detritivores from coral reefs and the possible roles of microbes in mediating the effects we demonstrate. \u0026nbsp;During recent decades, reefs have lost 50-90% of their live coral cover world-wide. \u0026nbsp;There are many drivers of the loss (overfishing, global warming, pollution, disease, etc.), but how these stressors may interact with low-level trophic alterations of reef communities has not been addressed. Over the past 200+ years, many thousands of tons of dried sea cucumbers have been removed from tropical coastal systems; these once abundant animals are now rare. The impacts of removing these detritivores is unknown (think of them as previously abundant vacuum cleaners on coral reefs). \u0026nbsp;In field experiments, we show that i) corals in areas with sea cucumbers produce extracts that are more suppressive of a common coral pathogen (\u003Cem\u003EVibrio coralliilyticus\u003C\/em\u003E) than corals where sea cucumbers have been excluded, ii) that corals without co-occurring sea cucumbers are more commonly killed by an apparent sediment-associated pathogen than corals with sea cucumbers, and iii) that damelfish that culture algal gardens on coral bases protect corals from these sediment-associated pathogens. \u0026nbsp;We are presently investigating the dynamics of coral microbiomes in these different treatments and in various stages of infection in hopes of identifying the pathogen(s) involved.\u0026quot;\u0026nbsp;\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\n\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\n\u003C!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\r\n\u003C!--[endif]--\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"CMDI Seminar Series 2020"}],"uid":"35021","created_gmt":"2020-10-16 12:44:05","changed_gmt":"2020-10-16 12:44:05","author":"mavdonina3","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2020-10-16T16:00:00-04:00","event_time_end":"2020-10-16T17:00:00-04:00","event_time_end_last":"2020-10-16T17:00:00-04:00","gmt_time_start":"2020-10-16 20:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2020-10-16 21:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2020-10-16 21:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[{"id":"78761","name":"Faculty\/Staff"},{"id":"78771","name":"Public"},{"id":"78751","name":"Undergraduate students"}],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n\r\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\r\n","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}