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The ocean’s soundscape is fundamental to marine ecosystems, not only as a source of sensory information critical to many ecological processes but also as an indicator of biodiversity and habitat health. Yet, little is known about how ecoacoustic activity in marine habitats is altered by environmental changes such as temperature. The sounds produced by dense colonies of snapping shrimp dominate temperate and tropical coastal soundscapes worldwide and are a major driver broadband sound pressure level (SPL) patterns. Field recordings of soundscape patterns from the range limit of a snapping shrimp distribution showed that rates of snap production and associated SPL were closely positively correlated to water temperature. Snap rates changed by 15-60% per °C change in regional temperature, accompanied by fluctuations in SPL between 1-2 dB per °C. To test if this relationship was due to a direct effect of temperature, we measured snap rates in controlled experiments using two snapping shrimp species dominant in the Western Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico ( Alpheus heterochaelis and A. angulosus ). Snap rates were measured for shrimp held at different temperatures (across 10-30 °C range, with upper limit 2°C above current summer mean temperatures) and under different social groupings. Temperature had a significant effect on shrimp snap rates for all social contexts tested (individuals, pairs, and groups). For individuals and shrimp groups, snap production more than doubled between mid-range (20°C) and high (30°C) temperature treatments. Given that snapping shrimp sounds dominate the soundscapes of diverse habitats, including coral reefs, rocky bottoms, seagrass, and oyster beds, the strong influence of temperature on their activity will potentially alter soundscape patterns broadly. Increases in ambient sound levels driven by elevated water temperatures has ecological implications for signal detection, communication, and navigation in key coastal ecosystems for a wide range of organisms, including humans.more » « less
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In response to declining coral populations worldwide, conservation groups are increasingly applying restoration strategies to bolster abundance and diversity, including sexual propagation of corals. Collection and fertilization of coral gametes as well as larval rearing and settlement have been successful. However, post‐settlement stages remain a bottleneck (80–100% mortality), which makes this technique costly to implement at scale. To address this challenge, we compared the survival and colony size of three sexually propagated Caribbean coral species,Diploria labyrinthiformis,Pseudodiploria strigosa, andOrbicella faveolata, reared at three levels of investment: direct outplant to reef, in situ field nursery rearing, and ex situ aquaculture facility rearing. As part of coral sexual propagation work in St. Croix, United States Virgin Islands, recruits were reared for 1 year before being outplanted to reef plots and were monitored annually for three subsequent years. The cost‐effectiveness of each rearing strategy was calculated at each monitoring time point via coral seeding unit yield and cost per seeding unit. Although survival was low at 4 years (0–1.8%), corals reared in the in situ nursery displayed significantly higher survival and therefore lower cost per seeding unit than the other two investment strategies. These results highlight the benefits of an in situ nursery stage to increase long‐term juvenile survival and cost‐effectiveness. The return on investment of corals reared in the in situ nursery suggests that outplanting sexually propagated corals may be a viable restoration strategy; however, the low proportion of corals surviving at 4 years highlights current limitations when outplanting on degraded reefs.more » « less
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