Final Report
March 30, 2018
Project Title: Connectivity between shallow and mesophotic ecosystems in Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands: using corals and commensal fauna Principal Invetsigator: Nikolaos Schizas, Department of Marine Sciences, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Co-Principal Investigator: Monica Alfaro, Department of Biology, University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez The proposal was approved on January 28, 2014 and by February 18, 2014, research activities commenced. The project R-101-1014 ended June 30, 2017. Summary of findings: Schizas and Alfaro met all the objectives of the proposal by inferring the population structure of the coral Agaricia lamarcki (Hammerman et al. 2017) and two species from their associated commensal species (Veglia et al. In Review). Three mesophotic workshops were held from 2014 until 2016 and over 30 undergraduate students were involved in sorting small invertebrates from mesophotic samples. This effort has uncovered an extremely diverse of fauna most of it which is unknown. Several new species of crustaceans and mites have been described and dozens more are awaiting formal description. Three graduate students of UPRM were supported from SeaGrant and an MS Thesis was the outcome of this support. In addition to the published and ongoing work we communicated our findings to scientists through tour posters, one conference talk and one invited talk to a Conservation Genomics workshop. We have sent reprints of our work to DNER personnel from the Coral Reef Program, Tania Metz Estrella and Ernesto Diaz. Lastly, thanks to the support from SeaGrant, we were recently funded by NSF to continue our work on the mesophotic reefs, especially after the aftermath of Hurricanes Maria and Irma. Objective 1 – Infer the population structure of a) the coral Agaricia lamarcki and b) their associated commensal species. 1a - Population structure of the coral Agaricia lamarcki We met the main objective of the proposal by applying the modified double Restriction Associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq) method on samples collected from the mesophotic and shallow reefs of Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands. This work formed the Thesis of the MS student Nicholas Hammerman, who defended in December 2016, and a manuscript was published in the journal Coral Reefs: Hammerman NM, RE Rivera-Vicens, MP Galaska, E Weil, RS Appledoorn, M Alfaro, NV Schizas (2017). Population connectivity of the plating coral, Agaricia lamarcki from southwest Puerto Rico. Coral Reefs DOI: 10.1007/s00338-017-1646-x A pdf reprint has been submitted to SeaGrant with the Final Report.
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