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1. Specimen alignment with limited point-based homology: 3D morphometrics of disparate bivalve shells (Mollusca: Bivalvia)

   https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.13617  

   Edie, Stewart M.; Collins, Katie S.; Jablonski, David (January 2022, PeerJ)

   Background Comparative morphology fundamentally relies on the orientation and alignment of specimens. In the era of geometric morphometrics, point-based homologies are commonly deployed to register specimens and their landmarks in a shared coordinate system. However, the number of point-based homologies commonly diminishes with increasing phylogenetic breadth. These situations invite alternative, often conflicting, approaches to alignment. The bivalve shell (Mollusca: Bivalvia) exemplifies a homologous structure with few universally homologous points—only one can be identified across the Class, the shell ‘beak’. Here, we develop an axis-based framework, grounded in the homology of shell features, to orient shells for landmark-based, comparative morphology. Methods Using 3D scans of species that span the disparity of shell morphology across the Class, multiple modes of scaling, translation, and rotation were applied to test for differences in shell shape. Point-based homologies were used to define body axes, which were then standardized to facilitate specimen alignment via rotation. Resulting alignments were compared using pairwise distances between specimen shapes as defined by surface semilandmarks. Results Analysis of 45 possible alignment schemes finds general conformity among the shape differences of ‘typical’ equilateral shells, but the shape differences among atypical shells can change considerably, particularly those with distinctive modes of growth. Each alignment corresponds to a hypothesis about the ecological, developmental, or evolutionary basis of morphological differences, but we suggest orientation via the hinge line for many analyses of shell shape across the Class, a formalization of the most common approach to morphometrics of shell form. This axis-based approach to aligning specimens facilitates the comparison of approximately continuous differences in shape among phylogenetically broad and morphologically disparate samples, not only within bivalves but across many other clades. 

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2. Documenting Environmental and Oceanic Variability in the Down East Coastal Region of the Gulf of Maine using the long-lived bivalve Arctica islandica

   Walton, A.; Griffin, S.M.; Wanamaker, A.D.; Jarosinski, L. (April 2022, PAGES Open Science Meeting)

   The Gulf of Maine (GoM) is currently undergoing rapid environmental and ecological changes and this system is projected to become increasingly stressed in the coming decades. Thus understanding past spatial and temporal conditions of this region is key to understanding how future environmental changes and extreme events may impact fisheries and ecosystem dynamics in the GoM. Changes in the physical and chemical variations in the shells of mollusks can be used as a powerful proxy for studying past climates and environments. In this study, we used the growth and geochemistry signatures in the long-lived marine bivalve Arctica islandica collected from the Down East coastal region in the Gulf of Maine (Jonesport, ME) to evaluate past climatic and hydrographic variability in the northwestern North Atlantic Ocean. The recent collection of shells extends a previously developed master shell growth chronology by 11 years and now spans from 1954 to 2020 CE. Based on visual crossdating techniques, shell growth variability is highly coherent among the population indicating that environmental conditions are driving growth. Variability in annually resolved shell growth increments and stable oxygen isotope values are largely related to sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and water mass properties of the Eastern Maine Coastal Current. This master shell growth chronology and annually-resolved isotope series will fill data gaps prior to instrumental records and allow us to better understand the spatial oceanographic variability in the GoM. 

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3. Evidence of coherent warming in the northwest Atlantic Ocean from Arctica islandica oxygen isotope records

   Thatcher, D.; Whitney, N.; Walton, A.; Sun, H.; Jarosinski, L.; Wanamaker, A.; LaVigne, M.; Williams, B.; Stewart, J. (May 2023, International Sclerochronology Conference)

   Parts of the northwest Atlantic Ocean, including the Gulf of Maine, along the northeastern coast of the United States, are warming at a rate as much as four times faster than the global ocean, according to instrumental and satellite records. In addition to the longer-term temperature increases, the frequency and severity of marine heat waves have been increasing. Combined, the ecological impacts are numerous and concerning, yet our understanding of past climate in this region is incomplete due to sparse and short-duration instrumental records. Here we present annually resolved oxygen isotope records from the marine bivalve, Arctica islandica, from five locations ranging from Jonesport and Seguin Island in the Gulf of Maine to Long Island, New York, Cape May, New Jersey, and Ocean City, Maryland in the Mid-Atlantic Bight, a span of over 870 km along the Atlantic coast. Several of the isotope records span the last 100 years or more and all records show coherent, substantial warming since at least 1980 CE. The level of warming indicated in the shell oxygen isotopes is comparable to the 0.5 °C per decade (1980-2020 CE) warming also shown in the instrumental record of sea surface temperature from Boothbay Harbor along the central coast in the Gulf of Maine. These five spatially distant isotope records span different oceanographic conditions and dynamics, including water mass sources, yet they all indicate a substantial warming in recent decades, likely related to increased anthropogenic warming. Beyond reconstructing seawater temperature prior to instrumental records, a major goal of this work is to disentangle the global warming signal from these records to better understand the underlying ocean dynamics also influencing these records. 

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4. Local and regional geographic variation in inducible defenses

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.4207  

   Corbett, James J.; Trussell, Geoffrey C. (November 2023, Ecology)

   Abstract Invasive predators can cause substantial evolutionary change in native prey populations. Although invasions by predators typically occur over large scales, their distributions are usually characterized by substantial spatiotemporal heterogeneity that can lead to patchiness in the response of native prey species. Our ability to understand how local variation shapes patterns of inducible defense expression has thus far been limited by insufficient replication of populations within regions. Here, we examined local and regional variation in the inducible defenses of 12 native marine snail (Littorina obtusata) populations within two geographic regions in the Gulf of Maine that are characterized by vastly different contact histories with the invasive predatory green crab (Carcinus maenas). When exposed in the field to waterborne risk cues from the green crab for 90 days, snails expressed plastic increases in shell thickness that reduced their vulnerability to this shell‐crushing predator. Despite significant differences in contact history with this invasive predator, snail populations from both regions produced similar levels of shell thickness and shell thickness plasticity in response to risk cues. Such phenotypic similarity emerged even though there were substantial geographic differences in the shell thickness of juvenile snails at the beginning of the experiment, and we suggest that it may reflect the effects of warming ocean temperatures and countergradient variation. Consistent with plasticity theory, a trend in our results suggests that southern snail populations, which have a longer contact history with the green crab, paid less in the form of reduced tissue mass for thicker shells than northern populations. 

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5. Geographic and temporal morphological stasis in the latest Cretaceous ammonoid Discoscaphites iris from the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic Coastal Plains

   https://doi.org/10.1017/pab.2022.15  

   Witts, James D.; Myers, Corinne E.; Garb, Matthew P.; Irizarry, Kayla M.; Larina, Ekaterina; Rashkova, Anastasia; Landman, Neil H. (January 2022, Paleobiology)

   Abstract We examine temporal and spatial variation in morphology of the ammonoid cephalopod Discoscaphites iris using a large dataset from multiple localities in the Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of the U.S. Gulf and Atlantic Coastal Plains, spanning a distance of 2000 km along the paleoshoreline. Our results suggest that the fossil record of D. iris is consistent with no within-species net accumulation of phyletic evolutionary change across morphological traits or the lifetime of this species. Correlations between some traits and paleoenvironmental conditions as well as changes in the coefficient of variation may support limited population-scale ecophenotypic plasticity; however, where stratigraphic data are available, no directional changes in morphology occur before the Cretaceous/Paleogene (K/Pg) boundary. This is consistent with models of “dynamic” evolutionary stasis. Combined with knowledge of life-history traits and paleoecology of scaphitid ammonoids, specifically a short planktonic phase after hatching followed by transition to a nektobenthic adult stage, these data suggest that scaphitids had significant potential for rapid morphological change in conjunction with limited dispersal capacity. It is therefore likely that evolutionary mode in the Scaphitidae (and potentially across the broader ammonoid clade) follows a model of cladogenesis wherein a dynamic morphological stasis is periodically interrupted by more substantial evolutionary change at speciation events. Finally, the lack of temporal changes in our data suggest that global environmental changes had a limited effect on the morphology of ammonoid faunas during the latest Cretaceous. 

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