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1. A Life Outside

   https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-marine-032223-014227  

   Koehl, MAR (January 2024, Annual Review of Marine Science)

   How do the morphologies of organisms affect their physical interactions with the environment and other organisms? My research in marine systems couples field studies of the physical habitats, life history strategies, and ecological interactions of organisms with laboratory analyses of their biomechanics. Here, I review how we pursued answers to three questions about marine organisms: ( a) how benthic organisms withstand and utilize the water moving around them, ( b) how the interaction between swimming and turbulent ambient water flow affects where small organisms go, and ( c) how hairy appendages catch food and odors. I also discuss the importance of different types of mentors, the roadblocks for women in science when I started my career, the challenges and delights of interdisciplinary research, and my quest to understand how I see the world as a dyslexic. 

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2. A Hidden Life of Research

   https://doi.org/10.1511/2024.112.1.24  

   Abramson, Charles (January 2024, American Scientist)
3. A stark future for ocean life

   https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abo4259  

   Pinsky, Malin L.; Fredston, Alexa (April 2022, Science)

   The year 2021 marked the highest temperature and likely the lowest oxygen content for the oceans since human records began ( 1 , 2 ). These changes have put marine species on the front lines of climate change. For example, marine species’ geographical ranges are shifting faster and experiencing more contractions than those of terrestrial species ( 3 , 4 ). However, whether climate change poses an existential threat to ocean life has been less clear. Marine species are often considered to be more resilient to extinction than terrestrial ones, and human-caused global extinctions of marine species have been relatively rare ( 5 ). On page 524 of this issue, Penn and Deutsch ( 6 ) present extensive modeling to reveal that runaway climate change would put ocean life on track for a mass extinction rivaling the worst in Earth’s history. Furthermore, they reveal how keeping global warming below an increase of 2°C compared with preindustrial levels could largely prevent these outcomes. 

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4. A Game of Life with dormancy

   https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.2543  

   Nevermann, Daniel Henrik; Gros, Claudius; Lennon, Jay T (January 2025, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences)

   The factors contributing to the persistence and stability of life are fundamental for understanding complex living systems. Organisms are commonly challenged by harsh and fluctuating environments that are suboptimal for growth and reproduction, which can lead to extinction. Many species contend with unfavourable and noisy conditions by entering a reversible state of reduced metabolic activity, a phenomenon known as dormancy. Here, we develop Spore Life, a model to investigate the effects of dormancy on population dynamics. It is based on Conway’s Game of Life (GoL), a deterministic cellular automaton where simple rules govern the metabolic state of an individual based on the metabolic state of its neighbours. For individuals that would otherwise die, Spore Life provides a refuge in the form of an inactive state. These dormant individuals (spores) can resuscitate when local conditions improve. The model includes a parameter $\alpha \in \left[\mathrm{0,1}\right]$that controls the survival probability of spores, interpolating between GoL ( $\alpha =0$) and Spore Life ( $\alpha =1$), while capturing stochastic dynamics in the intermediate regime ( $0<\alpha <1$). In addition to identifying the emergence of unique periodic configurations, we find that spore survival increases the average number of active individuals and buffers populations from extinction. Contrary to expectations, stabilization of the population is not the result of a large and long-lived seed bank. Instead, the demographic patterns in Spore Life only require a small number of resuscitation events. Our approach yields novel insight into what is minimally required for the origins of complex behaviours associated with dormancy and the seed banks that they generate. 

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5. Scholarly resource linking: Building out a “relationship life cycle”: Scholarly Resource Linking: Building out a “Relationship Life Cycle”

   https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.2018.14505501037  

   Mayernik, Matthew S. (January 2018, Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology)