Caribbean reef corals have declined sharply since the 1980s, but the lack of prior baseline data has hindered identification of drivers of change. To assess anthropogenic change in reef environments over the past century, we tracked the composition of subfossil assemblages of bivalve and gastropod mollusks excavated from pits below lagoonal and offshore reefs in Bocas del Toro, Panama. The high...

Coastal lagoons, both hypersaline and freshwater, are common, but still understudied ecosystems. We describe, for the first time, using high throughput sequencing, the extant microbiota of two large and representative Mediterranean coastal lagoons, the hypersaline Mar Menor, and the freshwater Albufera de Valencia, both located on the south eastern coast of Spain. We show there are considerable...

PROBLEM To determine whether neighbors around manure lagoons and massive hog confinement buildings who complained of offensive odors and symptoms had impaired brain and lung functions. METHOD We compared near hog manure neighbors of lagoons to people living beyond 3 kilometers in Ohio and to unexposed people controls in a nearby state for neurophysiological, cognitive, recall and memory funct...

In atoll lagoons of French Polynesia, growth and reproduction of pearl oysters are mainly driven by plankton concentration. However, the actual diet of black-lip pearl oysters Pinctada margaritifera in these lagoons is poorly known. To fill this gap, we used the flow through chamber method to measure clearance rates of P. margaritifera in Ahe atoll lagoon (Tuamotu Archipelago, French Polynesia)...

Traits used to group species and generalize predator–prey interactions can aid in constructing models to assess human impacts on food webs, especially in complex, species-rich systems. Commercial netting has reduced populations of large-bodied piscivores in some lagoons of a Venezuelan floodplain river, and cascading effects result in distinct prey fish communities in netted and unnetted lagoon...

Chironomid larvae were collected and abiotic variables measured at monthly intervals at 21 sampling stations in two lagoons (Guaraná and Patos) and two tributaries (Baía and Ivinheima) of the Upper Paraná River floodplain. The genera Procladius, Chironomus, Goeldichironomus, and Polypedilum were dominant in the lagoons and in the Baía River, while Cryptochironomus and Lopescladius were more dom...

In this study, we investigated differences in feeding habits of small-sized ichthyofauna among lateral lagoons and the river channel in a large reservoir. The study was performed in four lagoons and in one sampling site of the main channel in Rosana Reservoir, Paranapanema River, Brazil. The samples were taken in September and November of 2004 and in January, March, May, and August of 2005. Fis...

Freshwater lagoons comprise important coastal ecosystems and natural buffers between urbanized land areas and open ocean in the Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil. Studies of sediment and water chemistry, zooplankton and bacterial communities to assess the extent of anthropogenic disturbance are available. Here we contribute with an organic-geochemical approach supplemented by some microbiological as...

The first attempt to obtain artificials pearls from the black-lip pearl oyster Pinctada margaritifera in French Polynesia dates back 1963. The pearl oyster culture has grown quickly especially since the eighties. This industry is now the first exportation in value of French Polynesia. 19 atolls of the Tuamotu islands have at this time one or more farms and this activity become more and more att...

Bacteriophages (phages) associated with Salmonella were collected from nine swine manure lagoons in Mississippi. Phages were isolated by an enrichment protocol or directly from effluent. For enrichment, chloroform-treated samples were filtered (0.22 mum) and selectively enriched by adding a cocktail of Salmonella strains in trypticase soy broth. After overnight incubation at 35 degrees C, chlor...