Project Proposal: Math can be cool (and help blue crabs too!)

Submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), such as seagrasses, within Chesapeake Bay provide protection and resources for fishery species like the blue crab Callinectes sapidus (Duffy & Baltz 1998). In Chesapeake Bay, seagrasses have been declining since the 1960s and 1970s due to both anthropogenic and natural disturbances (for example, Orth & Moore 1983). Increased fragmentation of and decreased shoot density within seagrass beds may negatively impact the recruitment of blue crab postlarvae that use seagrasses as nursery habitat (Stockhausen & Lipcius 2003). In areas where seagrasses have declined, macroalgae may provide valuable habitat for organisms like the blue crab. Gracilaria vermiculophylla is an exotic, coarsely branching, red macroalga originating from the Western Pacific (Ohmi 1956) that has colonized shallow coastal areas of North America and Europe (Bellorin et al. 2004; Freshwater et al. 2006; Thomsen et al. 2006a, b, 2007; Gulbransen et al. 2012; Miller 2012) and is found in lower Chesapeake Bay. It is possible that this exotic alga may fill some of the ecological roles of seagrasses in these areas where they have declined (Rodriquez 2006). Because it is a structured nursery habitat, G. vermiculophylla provides refuges for juvenile blue crabs and other species that require structure (Beck et al. 2001; Lipcius et al. 2007; Thomsen 2010). Juvenile crab survival is as great or greater in G. vermiculophylla compared to Zostera marina (the dominant seagrass in lower Chesapeake Bay) or unvegetated habitat (Johnston & Lipcius 2012).

My dissertation research aims to determine the value of G. vermiculophylla as a nursery habitat for juvenile blue crabs in the York River, a tributary of lower Chesapeake Bay. My research involves exploratory surveys to determine where the alga is and how much there is at randomly selected sites, how many juvenile crabs are using the alga as habitat compared to seagrass, and differences in prey resources between the habitats. Other field and laboratory studies focus on habitat preferences of juvenile crabs as well as growth rates. Finally, the development of a system of equations to describe habitat use of juvenile crabs will allow me to simulate how the changing nursery habitat landscape in Chesapeake Bay will impact juvenile crabs and, thus, the adult blue crab population.

The key stakeholder groups that might benefit from my research, particularly the model, are managers and watermen in the blue crab fishery. The commercial blue crab fishery in Chesapeake Bay is tightly controlled by managers, but management tends to focus only on mature crabs (those that can be fished). There seems to be a disconnect between the way blue crabs are managed and the ecology of the species in that juvenile crabs and their habitat requirements are often ignored by managers. My work seeks to link habitat information with population information, which may lead to a better-informed stock-recruit model for blue crabs in Chesapeake Bay and, therefore, better-informed management strategies that will allow watermen to continue to harvest blue crabs in the future.

To better communicate my model to all audiences, but particularly to managers and watermen, I will create a series of slides using a tool like Prezi (https://prezi.com/) that will help explain my model step-by-step using pictures and simple graphs connected to each variable within the equations. Since the equations of my model are very similar to each other, I will likely focus on one and then zoom out to show the entire model. Hopefully this will allow the audience to understand what the model is doing without getting bogged down in terminology. This also will reduce the loss of interest that many audiences have when presented with a slide of 10 equations. I plan to present this initially at the 2016 VA Sea Grant Participants’ Symposium alongside a poster of related research.


References:

Beck, MW, KL Heck, KW Able, DL Childers, DB Eggleston, BM Gillanders, et al. 2001. The identification, conservation, and management of estuarine and marine nurseries for fish and invertebrates. BioScience 51: 633–641.

Bellorin, AM, MC Oliveira, and EC Oliveira. 2004. Gracilaria vermiculophylla: a western Pacific species of Gracilariaceae (Rhodophyta) first recorded from the eastern Pacific. Phycological Research 52: 69–79.

Duffy, KC, and DM Baltz. 1998. Comparison of fish assemblages associated with native and exotic submerged macrophytes in the Lake Pontchartrain estuary, USA. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology 223: 199–221.

Freshwater, DW, F Montgomery, J Greene, R Hamner, M Williams, and P Whitfield. 2006. Distribution and identification of an invasive Gracilaria species that is hampering commercial fishing operations in southeastern North Carolina, USA. Biological Invasions 8: 631–637.

Gulbransen, DJ, KJ McGlathery, M Marklund, JN Norris, and CFD Gurgel. 2012. Gracilaria vermiculophylla (Rhodophyta, Gracilariales) in Virginia coastal bays, USA: cox1 analysis reveals high genetic richness of an introduced macroalga. Journal of Phycology 48: 1278-1283.

Johnston, CA, and RN Lipcius. 2012. Exotic macroalga Gracilaria vermiculophylla provides superior nursery habitat for native blue crab in Chesapeake Bay. Marine Ecology Progress Series 467: 137–146.

Lipcius RN, DB Eggleston, KL Heck, Jr., RD Seitz, J van Montfrans. 2007. Ecology of postlarval and young juvenile blue crabs. In: Kennedy VS, Cronin LE (eds) The blue crab, Callinectes sapidus. University of Maryland Sea Grant Press, College Park, MD, pp. 535−564.

Miller, KA. 2012. Seaweeds of California: Updates of California Seaweed Species List. pp. 1-59. Berkeley: University of California Jepson Herbarium.

Ohmi, H. 1956. Contributions to the knowledge of Gracilariaceae from Japan. II. On a new species of the genus Gracilariopsis, with some considerations on its ecology. Bulletin of the Faculty of Fisheries Hokkaido University 6: 271−279.

Orth, RJ, and KA Moore. 1983. Chesapeake Bay: An unprecedented decline in submerged aquatic vegetation. Science 222: 51–53.

Rodriguez, LF. 2006. Can invasive species facilitate native species? Evidence of how, when, and why these impacts occur. Biological Invasions 8: 927-939.

Stockhausen, WT, and RN Lipcius. 2003. Simulated effects of seagrass loss and restoration on settlement and recruitment of blue crab postlarvae and juveniles in the York River, Chesapeake Bay. Bulletin of Marine Science 72: 409-422.

Thomsen, M. 2010. Experimental evidence for positive effects of invasive seaweed on native invertebrates via habitat-formation in a seagrass bed. Aquatic Invasions 5: 341-346.

Thomsen, MS, CFD Gurgel, S Fredericq, KJ McGlathery. 2006a. Gracilaria vermiculophylla (Rhodophyta, Gracilariales) in Hog Island Bay, Virginia: a cryptic alien and invasive macroalgae and taxonomic corrections. Journal of Phycology 42: 139–41.

Thomsen, MS, KJ McGlathery, and AC Tyler. 2006b. Macroalgal distribution patterns in a shallow, soft-bottom lagoon, with emphasis on the nonnative Gracilaria vermiculophylla and Codium fragile. Estuaries and Coasts 29: 465–473.

Thomsen, M, P Staehr, C Nyberg, D Krause-Jensen, S Schwaerter, and B Silliman. 2007. Gracilaria vermiculophylla (Ohmi) Papenfuss, 1967 (Rhodophyta, Gracilariaceae) in northern Europe, with emphasis on Danish conditions, and what to expect in the future. Aquatic Invasions 2: 83-94.

One thought on “Project Proposal: Math can be cool (and help blue crabs too!)

  1. Hi Megan!

    I just got done adding a new category to your post: Animation/Illustration.
    If you go to the Communication Projects menu at the top of the site and click on Animation/Illustration, you’ll see all of the seminar participants who are working on this type of communication project. We hope this will help connect you with other participants who are working on a similar challenge. Please feel free to provide feedback and comments on others’ posts, and when you post your first draft, please make sure to check the category for your name as well as Animation/Illustration.

    I’ve also added some new resources about building animations that might be useful to you as you work on your first draft http://sciencecomm.edublogs.org/category/resources/tips-tutorials/animations-video/

    Lastly, I know you had some concerns initially about posting drafts to the public site. If possible to do your first draft in a ‘vague’ way so that you can post to the site and get additional comment from other participants, I think that would be ideal. But keep me informed on whether you might prefer to share your draft directly with the seminar faculty. Whatever works for you, just keep us in the loop.

    If you have any questions, let me know. Otherwise, looking forward to your draft on December 4!

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