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https://unca-edu.zoom.us/j/94547058514?pwd=bVJySEcyNVdkUE5YaDZzY2JXa0hqdz09Meeting ID: 945 4705 8514
Passcode: 604673
The ocean’s surface is a unique environment, characterized by a variety of environmental stressors and high concentrations of organic matter. This environment is home to floating marine organisms, including animals, bacteria, plankton, and algae. The free-living animals of this ecosystem, known as the neuston are diverse, with a wide variety of adaptations to survive at the ocean’s surface, and they play important ecosystem roles, connecting disparate marine food webs. We set out to characterize the distributions of several important neustonic animal genera. To do this we collected nearly 4,000 observations from dozens of sources, and then generated minimum bounding polygons to outline the ranges in which they occur. After determining the minimum range, we used Bayesian additive regression trees, a new species distribution modeling algorithm, to identify the most important environmental correlates to the range of each species. In our Embarcadero analysis, for thirteen of fifteen taxa, temperature range or temperature mean were ranked among the most important variables, corresponding with our finding that the ranges of most neustonic species exhibited variation primarily in latitude. Our findings correspond with and expand upon the existing literature on the neuston, highlighting the importance of revisiting historical records using new strategies and tools.
