Julia Briand & MK Hickox
Historically, the general public have had restricted access to scientific findings. Science has largely been communicated in Western journals, which are generally exclusive to academic institutions and require subscriptions. Publications are often riddled with jargon, requiring advanced technical knowledge and a higher education to comprehend. These barriers act to limit access to scientific knowledge, so that only privileged audiences can engage with the literature and the wider scientific community. However, digital media and globalization may provide an opportunity to break past these barriers, dramatically increasing the accessibility of scientific knowledge.
More and more often, science is being communicated to the lay man in a comprehensible format. Documentaries such as Blue, Chasing Coral, Planet Earth, and Oceans act to disseminate scientific knowledge through cinema, while many non-governmental organizations and nature photographers, such as Paul Nicklen, utilize social media to spread awareness and cultivate a love for nature within their audiences. Social media and film often reach a younger demographic and can thus be used as outreach tools for science. For example, Science Sketches (https://www.sciencesketches.org/) are short videos produced by scientists on a wide range of research topics, as well as fundamental scientific concepts. ScienceBlogs (https://www.scienceblogs.com/) is another great example of scientific information written for the public eye. Some journals have also made an effort to generate more accessible content, often developing summaries and articles to unpack the dense and highly technical language used in the actual research article or letter. Additionally, in 2014, Nature announced that subscribers and selected media could release “read-only” versions of its content to the general public. However, the publication processes of true open-access journals, such as PLOS One, have been subject to much criticism, limiting their legitimization within the scientific community. For example, PLOS One’s impact factor (2.776) remains much lower than that of Science (41.063). Thus, jargon-heavy, inaccessible journals continue to be the dominant means by which scientific findings are dispersed.
To demonstrate the stark contrast between traditional and more current, reachable means of communication, we will present our Coibita research project in two summarized formats.
Traditional journal/presentation structure:
Acanthaster planci induced coral mortality
Acanthaster planci is a unique starfish and corallivore (Fig 1). One of the largest sea stars in the world, A. planci has five arms lined with poisonous spines (Moran 1997). Such features gave rise to its common name: Crown of Thorns (COT). Acanthaster predates upon coral by ejecting its stomach to engulf and dissolve the flesh of the organism. The remaining white skeleton is typically colonized by non-reef building organisms, such as algae (Chesher 1969). Nutrient-loading and release from predation have led to outbreaks of these coral predators in several regions, including the Indo-Pacific (Kayal et al. 2012). To better anticipate COT outbreaks, a better understanding of their distribution and feeding habits is necessary. Thus, this study aims to determine how A. planci predation varies with habitat type. It is hypothesized that coral communities will have a greater abundance of COT compared to coral reefs, as interstitial space within the rockier substrate of coral communities may effectively provide refuge.
The island of Coibita, located off of the Pacific coast of Panama, was selected as the study site. Within this region, A. planci generally feeds on two species: Pocillopora sp, a branching coral, and Porites sp, a non-branching coral. To detect COT predation upon these two species, 20-minute timed surveys were conducted on the North, East and South sides of Grenada de Oro and the North and South sides of Machete. Research pairs were assigned to shallow, intermediate or deep depths for each survey. The size of every COT detected was determined using a PVC pipe. Each COT was also flipped to estimate the percent mortality of the coral it was ingesting. Additionally, the condition of surrounding coral was recorded.
The resulting data was regressed using a Poisson distribution. A negative binomial distribution was excluded from the regression with coral type (y) and starfish count (y), as the mean was around 0 and the model incorporated a link function with a natural log, creating an infinitely high standard error. This revealed significant variation in COT abundance with substrate type (P = .008). Additionally, COT predation was higher in coral communities when compared to coral reefs (Fig 2), possibly due to the presence of refugia and a wider variety of suitable niches. In fact, A. planci commonly takes shelter under stones within proximity of coral colonies (Sastry 1991). Other mutualistic organisms, such as crustacean symbionts Trapezia and Alpheus, also protect coral reefs from COT predation (Glynn 1976). These symbionts are more abundant in the reef flat, likely contributing to the observed distribution of Acanthaster. However, it should be noted that sample size was relatively small for this study. Thus, these results may not accurately represent true COT distribution and should be expanded upon in future work.
Documentary/film-style presentation:
References
Chesher, R.H. 1969. Destruction of Pacific corals by the sea star Acanthaster planci, Science 165: 280-283.
Glynn, P.W. 1976. Some physical and biological determinants of coral community structure in the Eastern Pacific, Ecological Monographs 46.
Kayal et al. 2012. Predator crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci) outbreak, mass mortality of corals, and cascading effects on reef fish and benthic communities, PLoS One 7.
Moran, P. 1997. Crown-of-thorns starfish questions and answers. Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). http://www.aims.gov.au/pages/reflib/cot-starfish/pages/cot-000.html
Sastry, D. R. K. 1991. Echinodermata: Asteroidea, Ophiuroidea and Echinoidea. In: Jairajpuri MS (Ed) Fauna of Lakshwadeep, State Fauna Series, 2, Calcutta, pp 363–397.
STRI'S TROPICAL BIOLOGY FIELD COURSE 