Emergence of a neopelagic community through the establishment of coastal species on the high seas

Linsey E Haram; James T Carlton; Luca Centurioni; Mary Crowley; Jan Hafner; Nikolai Maximenko; Cathryn Clarke Murray; Andrey Y Shcherbina; Verena Hormann; Cynthia Wright; Gregory M Ruiz

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-27188-6

Emergence of a neopelagic community through the establishment of coastal species on the high seas

Nat Commun. 2021 Dec 2;12(1):6885. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-27188-6.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD, USA. haraml@si.edu.
² Ocean and Coastal Studies Program of Williams College and Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, CT, USA.
³ Lagrangian Drifter Laboratory, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
⁴ Ocean Voyages Institute, Sausalito, CA, USA.
⁵ International Pacific Research Center, School of Ocean & Earth Science & Technology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA.
⁶ Institute of Ocean Sciences, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Sidney, BC, Canada.
⁷ Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
⁸ Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, MD, USA.

Abstract

Discoveries of persistent coastal species in the open ocean shift our understanding of biogeographic barriers. Floating plastic debris from pollution now supports a novel sea surface community composed of coastal and oceanic species at sea that might portend significant ecological shifts in the marine environment.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

Ecology*
Ecosystem
Marine Biology*
Oceans and Seas*
Plastics
Water Pollutants*
Water Pollution

Substances

Plastics
Water Pollutants

Grants and funding

80NSSC17K0559/ImNASA/Intramural NASA/United States