Understanding the role of diet in shaping the ecology and evolution of species is a steadfast pursuit. Yet, resolving the relative importance of dietary sources in an organisms’ energy and growth budgets is particularly difficult within nutritional symbioses – such as those ubiquitous amongst shallow marine invertebrates (corals, bivalves, jellyfish, sponges) and their microbial symbionts. Increasingly, stable isotope approaches are employed to resolve diet – often as an alternative to exhaustive and potentially misleading examinations of ingestion (e.g. particle removal, substrate depletion, etc.). Here, I will share results from a novel application of Stable Isotope Bayesian Ellipses in R (SIBER) to symbiotic partnerships – from reef building corals, to giant clams. Heterotrophy – as evidenced by little overlap in host and symbiont isotopic niche areas correlates well with large polyp size (corals) and slower growth rates (clams) – whereas autotrophy is linked to an elevated conservation status. Other factors, such as seasonal variation in trophic plasticity, fatty acid and amino acid compound-specific isotope analysis, and how all of this can inform effective management and restoration action will be discussed.

28 Apr 2023
3:30pm - 4:30pm
Where
4472 (lift 25-26)
Speakers/Performers
David Baker
Hong Kong University
Organizer(S)
Department of Ocean Science
Contact/Enquiries

Please contact Alex Wyatt (wyatt@ust.hk)

Payment Details
Audience
Language(s)
English
Other Events
24 Mar 2025
Seminar, Lecture, Talk
IAS / School of Science Joint Lecture - Pushing the Limit of Nonlinear Vibrational Spectroscopy for Molecular Surfaces/Interfaces Studies
Abstract Surfaces and interfaces are ubiquitous in Nature. Sum-frequency generation vibrational spectroscopy (SFG-VS) is a powerful surface/interface selective and sub-monolayer sensitive spect...
22 Nov 2024
Seminar, Lecture, Talk
IAS / School of Science Joint Lecture - Leveraging Protein Dynamics Memory with Machine Learning to Advance Drug Design: From Antibiotics to Targeted Protein Degradation
Abstract Protein dynamics are fundamental to protein function and encode complex biomolecular mechanisms. Although Markov state models have made it possible to capture long-timescale protein co...