Benthic Habitats

On Florida and Caribbean coral reefs, stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) has caused widespread destruction and loss of coral cover since its first appearance off the coast of Miami in 2014. So far, the only intervention found to be effective at halting progression of this disease and saving the lives of infected coral colonies is applying an amoxicillin paste , a type of antibiotic, to the...

Coral disease was first documented on Florida reefs in the 1970s. Since then, outbreaks of diseases have increased, and disease is now one major reason why coral reefs worldwide are in decline. Although what causes most coral diseases is not known, the few with known causes have been linked to microorganisms, highlighting the need for studies of microbes associated with diseased corals.

In nature, microbes typically exist in communities made up of many different types of microorganisms (for example, bacteria, viruses, etc), all interacting with and influencing one another. Therefore, in order to understand the role that microbes play in an environment, it is often important to think of microbes operating as complex communities rather than as individual microorganisms.

This project aims to understand the microbial processes, including disease, that influence the health of coral reef communities. We use microbiology and molecular biology techniques to better understand the role of microorganisms in shaping reef structure and function.

USGS scientists are collaborating with multiple agencies to provide the esssential foundation for understanding these deep-sea environments.

Geologic proxies may shed light on long-term environmental trends and stability of the Louisiana coastal marsh. The combined processes of accretion, sea-level rise and subsidence influence wetland elevation and determine marsh stability.

This project uses amplicon sequencing, and functional microarrays to examine the microbiomes of several deep-sea coral species, with priority given to species that are also of interest to the population genetics group: Desmophyllum dianthus, Lophelia pertusa , Enallopsammia sp., and Acanthogorgia sp. The project also uses metagenomics to survey benthic habitats including coral mounds, cold seeps...

The specific objectives of this project are to identify and describe the processes that are important in determining rates of coral-reef construction. How quickly the skeletons of calcifying organisms accumulate to form massive barrier-reef structure is determined by processes of both construction (how fast organisms grow and reproduce) and destruction (how fast reefs break down by mechanical...

This effort focused on understanding the patterns and scalability of roughness and topographic complexity of marine habitats, such as coral reefs.

ATRIS is a benthic-survey tool that simultaneously acquires geo-located, color, digital images with corresponding water depths.

This project focused on developing algorithms for quantifying benthic habitat complexity from images, modeling the structural complexity of the seafloor, and using fluorescence signatures to classify coral reef habitats.