Fort Johnson Seminar Series

Seminar Schedule 2024

• August 26

  Giacomo "Jack" DiTullio - College of Charleston

  An emerging paradigm shift in phytoplankton community composition in Western Antarctic Coastal Waters

  After decades of international research investigating the Ross Sea ecosystem there remains no definitive understanding of the relative importance of various physical, chemical, and biological factors that regulates the annual competition between seasonal blooms of diatoms and Phaeocystis populations. On a coastal transect from the Amundsen Sea into the Ross Sea during austral summer 2018 we measured various biogeochemical parameters to understand how phytoplankton community composition may be influenced by micro-nutrient variability and physical factors including variables directly related to climate change processes (e.g. glacial meltwater). Bioassay incubation experiments conducted at a few stations on the coastal transect revealed the potential for the ecosystem to become prone to fluctuating multiple co-limiting nutrients. Results from these micronutrient bioassay studies performed on the expedition will be presented and used as a framework for describing and understanding the spatial variability of Phaeocystis antarctica and diatom blooms along the coastal transect. We posit that a new biogeochemical paradigm is emerging wherein transitory alleviation of iron and light limitation from glacial ice melt can trigger significant biogeochemical changes that will facilitate and trigger new co-limiting nutrients in the region. These changes will directly impact the phytoplankton community structure and carbon export efficiency in coastal waters of the western Antarctic region. Hence, physical factors (e.g. stratification, salinity), circulation patterns and biogeochemical studies investigating the potential interactive effects of multiple co-limiting micronutrients such as cobalt, zinc, manganese, and Vitamin B12 will become increasingly more relevant in the coming decades as the impacts of climate change processes accentuate changes in ecosystem dynamics in the Ross Sea and coastal waters of western Antarctica.

• September 23

  Randy Singer - Augusta University

  "Seaing" the Potential of Natural History Collections in Marine Research, Education, and Outreach

  Natural history collections have been the primary way that we have documented changes in the biota of our planet through time. Recently, these data became widely available due to a massive international effort to increase the use and visibility of biodiversity collections. In doing so, we have enabled their use in broadscale research projects and broader impacts efforts with what could be described as humanity’s first and only "time machine." In the past, these data have mainly been used as supplemental data to corroborate observational data, but more recently we have begun to really unlock the power of large data in biodiversity sciences. With millions of specimens with painstakingly collected data at our fingertips, what's stopping us from shooting for the moon?

• September 30

  CJ Schlick - SCDNR MRRI

  How many is too many: Age structure sampling strategies to support stock assessments for two important North Carolina fishes

• October 7

  Kelly Filer Robinson - UGA

  Making Hard Decisions: Accounting for Uncertainty and Climate Change in Aquatic Conservation and Management

  Making decisions for aquatic conservation and management is often
  challenging because of ecological and social uncertainty, a need for multijurisdictional collaboration, and potentially large-scale ecosystem changes that
  threaten the resource or ecosystem. In particular, invasive species, land use /
  landscape change, and climate change affect decisions made for natural resources
  across the globe. Decision analysis (i.e., structured decision making and adaptive
  management) provides a framework to allow decision makers and stakeholders
  to transparently and deliberatively work through these difficult decisions. I
  provide two examples of applications of decision analysis to aquatic
  conservation and management that are currently in progress. The first example is
  a framework for responding to climate and land use change in cold water
  streams, with a focus on the Au Sable River, MI. The second example discusses
  decisions for prioritizing barrier removal and remediation projects on tributaries
  to the Great Lakes, accounting for multiple ecological, economic, and social
  objectives. Although these examples are focused on systems in the Great Lakes
  region, they provide a framework for decision making that is being implemented
  more frequently for fisheries and wildlife concerns.

• October 21

  Catherine Min - SC Office of Resilience

  TBA

• October 28

  Brian Shamblin

  Associate Research Scientist, Conservation Genetics
  Warnell School of Forestry & Natural Resources
  University of Georgia

  “Loggerhead turtle genetic tagging:
  Connecting the demographic dots across space and time”

  Loggerhead turtles are inherently difficult to study given complex life cycles that can
  span the North Atlantic Gyre. South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) trawl
  surveys have provided temporal context on several key demographic metrics, notably size class
  proportions, sex ratios, and haplotype distributions. Over two decades, only a handful of
  juveniles tagged at sea were later resighted on nesting beaches as mature females, all of which
  occurred more than a decade after initial capture. Numerous potential explanations exist for this
  low resighting rate, including a very small proportion of nesting beaches that are monitored by
  night surveys to intercept live sea turtles. Therefore, we genotyped (at 16 microsatellite loci) a
  subset of 425 loggerhead sea turtles captured by SCDNR to compare them with a nesting
  female database that now comprises 15,000 individuals to provide additional context on the
  scale of connectivity between foraging and nesting grounds. Thus far, we have identified 18
  direct recaptures of trawl turtles on the nesting beach from St. Johns County, Florida through
  Bald Head Island, North Carolina. Additionally, 14 parent-offspring relationships and 31 fullsibling relationships between in-water-captured and nesting turtles have been suggested by
  relatedness analyses in program COLONY. Similar patterns of relatedness have emerged among
  recent cohorts of new nesting females with about 20% of new females from 2016-2021 having
  at least one full sister also present in that recruitment cohort, suggesting non-random survival.
  Female CC0400, captured as a 69.5 cm juvenile off Charleston, SC in 2006, recruited to the
  nesting beach in 2021 in Bald Head, North Carolina. CC0400 has three full sisters that have
  also nested in the Cape Fear region of North Carolina with an additional outlier sister nesting on
  Folly Beach. About 40% of the new nesting females from 2016-2021 had mothers that last
  nested or continue to nest at Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge. We initiated a pilot study
  in 2024 to collect dead hatchlings from nests from Florida to North Carolina to better
  characterize male abundance and the scale of male-mediated gene flow. This will provide an
  opportunity to “recapture” genotyped in-water males. We ultimately hope to use the genetic
  tagging data to inform close-kin mark-recapture models.

• November 4

  Alec Cooley - Senior Advisor, Busch Systems

  How Recycling Works and Why It's (Still) Worth the Effort

  Recycling expert Alec Cooley will pull back the curtain to
  explain how recycling works. The recycling system isn’t perfect but it,
  nonetheless, delivers real-world benefits to the environment and our
  economy. Alec will answer questions about how to recycle locally, as
  well as explain the importance of going beyond recycling to reduce
  what we consume in the first place.

• November 18

  Annie Bourbonnais - University of South Carolina

  The role of vegetation, including harmful benthic algae, for nitrogen removal and transformations in South Carolina stormwater detention pond and lake sediments.

• November 25

  Tyler Cyronak - Georgia State University

  TBA

• December 2

  Corey Dunn - NCSU, Robust Redhorse Conservation Committee 

  TBA