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Upside-down jellyfish, genusCassiopea(Péron and Lesueur, 1809), are found in shallow coastal habitats in tropical and subtropical regions circumglobally. These animals have previously been demonstrated to produce flow both in the water column as a feeding current, and in the interstitial porewater, where they liberate porewater at rates averaging 2.46 mL h⁻¹. Since porewater inCassiopeahabitat can be nutrient-rich, this is a potential source of nutrient enrichment in these ecosystems. This study experimentally determines that porewater release byCassiopeasp. jellyfish is due to suction pumping, and not the Bernoulli effect. This suggests porewater release is directly coupled to bell pulsation rate, and unlike vertical jet flux, should be unaffected by population density. In addition, we show that bell pulsation rate is positively correlated with temperature, and negatively correlated with animal size. As such, we would predict an increase in the release of nutrient-rich porewater during the warm summer months. Furthermore, we show that, at our field site in Lido Key, Florida, at the northernmost limit ofCassiopearange, population densities decline during the winter, increasing seasonal differences in porewater release.

 

Many coastal foundation plant species thrive across a range of environmental conditions, often displaying dramatic phenotypic variation in response to environmental variation. We characterized the response of propagules from six populations of the foundation species Rhizophora mangle L. to full factorial combinations of two levels of salinity (15 ppt and 45 ppt) reflecting the range of salinity measured in the field populations, and two levels of nitrogen (N; no addition and amended at approximately 3 mg N per pot each week) equivalent to comparing ambient N to a rate of addition of 75 kg per hectare per year. The response to increasing salinity included significant changes, i.e., phenotypic plasticity, in succulence and root to shoot biomass allocation. Propagules also showed plasticity in maximum photosynthetic rate and root to shoot allocation in response to N amendment, but the responses depended on the level of salinity and varied by population of origin. In addition, propagules from different populations and maternal families within populations differed in survival and all traits measured except photosynthesis. Variation in phenotypes, phenotypic plasticity and propagule survival within and among R. mangle populations may contribute to adaptation to a complex mosaic of environmental conditions and response to climate change. 

Water mixing is a critical mechanism in marine habitats that governs many important processes, including nutrient transport. Physical mechanisms, such as winds or tides, are primarily responsible for mixing effects in shallow coastal systems, but the sheltered habitats adjacent to mangroves experience very low turbulence and vertical mixing. The significance of biogenic mixing in pelagic habitats has been investigated but remains unclear. In this study, we show that the upside-down jellyfishCassiopeasp. plays a significant role with respect to biogenic contributions to water column mixing within its shallow natural habitat ($<2$m deep). The mixing contribution was determined by high-resolution flow velocimetry methods in both the laboratory and the natural environment. We demonstrate thatCassiopeasp. continuously pump water from the benthos upward in a vertical jet with flow velocities on the scale of centimeters per second. The volumetric flow rate was calculated to be 212 L⋅h^-1for average-sized animals (8.6 cm bell diameter), which translates to turnover of the entire water column every 15 min for a median population density (29 animals per m²). In addition, we foundCassiopeasp. are capable of releasing porewater into the water column at an average rate of 2.64 mL⋅h⁻¹per individual. The release of nutrient-rich benthic porewater combined with strong contributions to water column mixing suggests a role forCassiopeasp. as an ecosystem engineer in mangrove habitats.

 

This record contains supplementary information for the article "Inheritance of DNA methylation differences in the mangrove Rhizophora mangle" published in Evolution&Development. It contains the barcodes (barcodes.txt), the reference contigs (contigs.fasta.gz), the annotation of the reference contigs (mergedAnnot.csv.gz), the SNPs (snps.vcf.gz), the methylation data (methylation.txt.gz), and the experimental design (design.txt). All data are unfiltered. Short reads are available on SRA (PRJNA746695). Note that demultiplexing of the pooled reads (SRX11452376) will fail because the barcodes are already removed and the header information is lost during SRA submission. Instead, use the pre-demultiplexed reads that are as well linked to PRJNA746695.

 

Table S13 (TableS13_DSSwithGeneAnnotation.offspringFams.csv.gz):

Differential cytosine methylation between families using the mother data set. The first three columns fragment number ("chr"), the position within the fragment ("pos"), and the sequence context ("context"). Columns with the pattern FDR_<X>_vs_<Y> contain false discovery rates of a test comparing population X with population Y. Average DNA methylation levels for each population are given in the columns "AC", "FD", "HI", "UTB", "WB", and "WI". The remaining columns contain the annotation of the fragment, for example whether it matches to a gene and if yes, the gene name ID and description are provided.