Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

About: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a nonprofit organization based out in Falmouth, Massachusetts, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Mantle (geology). The organization has 5685 authors who have published 18396 publications receiving 1202050 citations. The organization is also known as: WHOI.

North Atlantic thermohaline circulation during the past 20,000 years linked to high-latitude surface temperature

Abstract: During a surface cooling event 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, higher Cd/Ca and lower 13C/12C ratios are observed in benthic foraminifera shells from rapidly accumulating western North Atlantic sediments. Data from sediment cores show that marked nutrient depletion of intermediate waters occurs in association with reduced glacial North Atlantic Deep Water flux. It is proposed that cold high-latitude sea surface temperatures enhance intermediate-water formation at the expense of deep-water formation.

Species Distributions, Land Values, and Efficient Conservation

Abstract: Efforts at species conservation in the United States have tended to be opportunistic and uncoordinated. Recently, however, ecologists and economists have begun to develop more systematic approaches. Here, the problem of efficiently allocating scarce conservation resources in the selection of sites for biological reserves is addressed. With the use of county-level data on land prices and the incidence of endangered species, it is shown that accounting for heterogeneity in land prices results in a substantial increase in efficiency in terms of either the cost of achieving a fixed coverage of species or the coverage attained from a fixed budget.

Assimilation of organic matter by zooplankton1

Abstract: A method for direct measurement of percentage of assimilation of organic matter by zooplankton that does not require the quantitative recovery of feces and can be adapted for use in the field as well as in laboratory investigations is described. If it is assumed that only the organic fraction of the food ingested by a zooplankton animal is affected by the digestive process, it can be shown that percentage of utilization is defined as where F′ is the ash-free dry weight: dry weight ratio (fraction of organic matter) in the ingested food, and E’ is the same ratio in a representative sample of feces. The method compares favorably, as a measure of assimilation, with direct measurement of the quantity of organic matter lost from food during passage through the digestive tract.

Nitrosopumilus maritimus genome reveals unique mechanisms for nitrification and autotrophy in globally distributed marine crenarchaea

Abstract: Ammonia-oxidizing archaea are ubiquitous in marine and terrestrial environments and now thought to be significant contributors to carbon and nitrogen cycling. The isolation of Candidatus “Nitrosopumilus maritimus” strain SCM1 provided the opportunity for linking its chemolithotrophic physiology with a genomic inventory of the globally distributed archaea. Here we report the 1,645,259-bp closed genome of strain SCM1, revealing highly copper-dependent systems for ammonia oxidation and electron transport that are distinctly different from known ammonia-oxidizing bacteria. Consistent with in situ isotopic studies of marine archaea, the genome sequence indicates N. maritimus grows autotrophically using a variant of the 3-hydroxypropionate/4-hydroxybutryrate pathway for carbon assimilation, while maintaining limited capacity for assimilation of organic carbon. This unique instance of archaeal biosynthesis of the osmoprotectant ectoine and an unprecedented enrichment of multicopper oxidases, thioredoxin-like proteins, and transcriptional regulators points to an organism responsive to environmental cues and adapted to handling reactive copper and nitrogen species that likely derive from its distinctive biochemistry. The conservation of N. maritimus gene content and organization within marine metagenomes indicates that the unique physiology of these specialized oligophiles may play a significant role in the biogeochemical cycles of carbon and nitrogen.