Bastian Bentlage

University of Guam | UOG · Marine Laboratory

This contribution investigates phenotypic plasticity in Cassiopea ornata Haeckel, 1880 from Guam, Micronesia. We collected C. ornata from two distinct habitats and used DNA barcoding for species identification. With this, we were able to document intraspecific phenotypic variation between populations that is likely reflective of distinct ecotypes r...

Upside-down jellyfish, Genus Cassiopea, are often reported as invasive organisms despite high rates of endemism. Crypsis as a byproduct of phenotypic plasticity and high molecular divergence makes discerning environmental and species-specific differences difficult. Guided by molecular phylogenetics, documentation of Cassiopea diversity should follo...

Coral reefs are ecosystems under increasing threat from global climate change. Coral restoration is a tool for preserving biological and ecological function of coral reefs by mitigating coral loss and maintaining the structural integrity and complexity of reefs. To generate the necessary stock for coral restoration, larger coral colonies are usuall...

Reef-building corals form complex relationships with a wide range of microbial partners, including symbiotic algae in the family Symbiodiniaceae and various bacteria. These coral-associated communities can be shaped to varying degrees by environmental context. Sedimentation can structure a coral’s microbial community by altering light availability...

More than half of reef-building corals (Scleractinia) participate in a nutritional symbiosis, known as photosymbio-sis, with photosynthetic dinoflagellates that ranges from obligate to facultative dependence. Fitting hidden-rates models allowing among-lineage variation in the rate of trait evolution to supertree and molecular phylogenies of Sclerac...

Higher-level relationships of the Hydrozoan subclass Hydroidolina, which encompasses the vast majority of medusozoan cnidarian species diversity, have been elusive to confidently infer. The most widely adopted phylogenetic framework for Hydroidolina based on ribosomal RNA data received low support for several higher level relationships. To address...

Coral reefs are experiencing unprecedented declines in health on a global scale leading to severe reductions in coral cover. One major cause of this decline is increasing sea surface temperature. However, conspecific colonies separated by even small spatial distances appear to show varying responses to this global stressor. One factor contributing...

Staghorn corals represent dominant reef-builders in lagoons and back reefs in Guam. These habitats experience peak seawater temperatures close to 36°C during the hottest months of the year which causes increasingly frequent bleaching episodes that have led to major staghorn coral declines. To study the photo-physiological response of staghorn coral...

Higher-level relationships of the Hydrozoan subclass Hydroidolina, which encompasses the vast majority of medusozoan cnidarian species diversity, have been elusive to confidently infer. The most widely adopted phylogenetic framework for Hydriodolina based on ribosomal RNA data received low support for several higher level relationships. To address...

Several species of small, red, deep-sea Trachymedusae have been described and then re-described over the past 20 years, leading to some confusion in the scientific literature. This paper provides an overview of three genera (Benthocodon, Crossota, and Pectis) in the family Rhopalonematidae (Cnidaria: Hydrozoa) that have been observed and examined b...

While records of Carybdea marsupialis in the literature suggest a worldwide distribution of this species, the validity of some of these records has been questioned recently, as has the validity of some nominal Carybdea species. We inspected material of all known species of Carybdea from multiple locations (i.e. Spain, Algeria, Tunisia, Puerto Rico,...

Cnidarians are a stunning group of animals with diverse ecologies, life histories, and morphologies. Relationships within the cnidarian tree of life have been the subject of controversy for many years and the position of several nodes, especially within the Anthozoa, remain unresolved. This project aims to clarify the relationships among and within...

Background The phylogeny of Cnidaria has been a source of debate for decades, during which nearly all-possible relationships among the major lineages have been proposed. The ecological success of Cnidaria is predicated on several fascinating organismal innovations including stinging cells, symbiosis, colonial body plans and elaborate life histories...

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) commits its 196 nation parties to conserve biological diversity, use its components sustainably, and share fairly and equitably the benefits from the utilization of genetic resources. The last of these objectives was further codified in the Convention's Nagoya Protocol (NP), which came into effect in 201...

Of the ~1500 species of scleractinian corals, roughly 800 species participate in photosymbiosis: a nutritional mutualism with photosynthetic dinoflagellates of the genus Symbiodinium (also known as zooxanthellae). These zooxanthellate corals are the main bio-constructors of coral reefs in shallow-water, tropical to sub-tropical seas. Roughly 700 az...

Of the ~1500 species of scleractinian corals, roughly 800 species participate in photosymbiosis: a nutritional mutualism with photosynthetic dinoflagellates of the genus Symbiodinium (also known as zooxanthellae). These zooxanthellate corals are the main bio-constructors of coral reefs in shallow-water, tropical to sub-tropical seas. Roughly 700 az...

Algal biofuels have the potential to curb the emissions of greenhouse gases from fossil fuels, but current growing methods fail to produce fuels that meet the multiple standards necessary for economical industrial use. For example, algae grown as monocultures for biofuel production have not simultaneously and economically achieved high yields of th...

Loss or stark reduction of the free-swimming medusa or jellyfish stage is common in the cnidarian class Hydrozoa. In the hydrozoan clade Trachylina, however, many species do not possess a sessile polyp or hydroid stage. Trachylines inhabiting freshwater and coastal ecosystems (i.e., Limnomedusae) possess a metagenetic life cycle involving benthic,...

The phylogeny of Cnidaria has been a source of debate for decades, during which nearly all-possible relationships among the major lineages have been proposed. The ecological success of Cnidaria is predicated on several fascinating organismal innovations including symbiosis, colonial body plans and elaborate life histories, however, understanding th...

The phylogeny of Cnidaria has been a source of debate for decades, during which nearly all-possible relationships among the major lineages have been proposed. The ecological success of Cnidaria is predicated on several fascinating organismal innovations including symbiosis, colonial body plans and elaborate life histories, however, understanding th...

Online biogeographic databases are increasingly being used as data sources for scientific papers and reports, for example, to characterize global patterns and predictors of marine biodiversity and to identify areas of ecological significance in the open oceans and deep seas. However, the utility of such databases is entirely dependent on the qualit...

1. Phenotypic variation controls the species interactions which determine whether or not species coexist. Long-standing hypotheses in ecology and evolution posit that phenotypic differentiation enables coexistence by increasing the size of niche differentiation. This hypothesis has only been tested using macroscopic traits to date, but niche differ...

Medusae can be conspicuous and abundant members of seafloor communities in deep-sea benthic boundary layers. The epibenthic trachymedusa, Ptychogastria polaris Allman, 1878 (Hydrozoa: Trachylina: Ptychogastriidae) occurs in the cold, high latitude systems of both the northern and southern hemispheres, with a circumpolar distribution in Arctic and s...

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009;...

This plot is not part of the published stance but derives from it. The plot shows the number of authors by geographic region (courtesy of Dr. Diego Astua).

Species of the box jellyfish (Cubozoa) genus Alatina are notorious for their sting along the beaches of several localities of the Atlantic and Pacific. These species include Alatina alata on the Caribbean Island of Bonaire (the Netherlands), A. moseri in Hawaii, and A. mordens in Australia. Most cubozoans inhabit coastal waters, but Alatina is unus...

Background: In most animals, the mitochondrial genome is characterized by its small size, organization into a single circular molecule, and a relative conservation of the number of encoded genes. In box jellyfish (Cubozoa, Cnidaria), the mitochondrial genome is organized into 8 linear mito-chromosomes harboring between one and 4 genes each, includ...

Isoprenoid metabolism occupies a central position in the anabolic metabolism of all living cells. In plastid-bearing organisms, two pathways may be present for de novo isoprenoid synthesis, the cytosolic mevalonate pathway (MVA) and nuclear-encoded, plastid-targeted non-mevalonate pathway (DOXP). Using transcriptomic data we find that dinoflagellat...

Hydrozoans display the most morphological diversity within the phylum Cnidaria. While recent molecular studies have provided some insights into their evolutionary history, sister group relationships remain mostly unresolved, particularly at mid-taxonomic levels. Specifically, within Hydroidolina, the most speciose hydrozoan subclass, the relationsh...

A review of the current status of DNA barcoding in pelagic cnidarians is given. Most current studies tend towards using the 16S mitochondrial ribosomal RNA gene for barcoding purposes in pelagic cnidarians, judged more appropriate for this group than the mitochondrial COI gene. Although further studies on mitochondrial genome structure and the prev...

Research Cite this article: Alexandrou MA et al. 2015 Evolutionary relatedness does not predict competition and co-occurrence in natural or experimental communities of green algae. The competition-relatedness hypothesis (CRH) predicts that the strength of competition is the strongest among closely related species and decreases as species become les...

Metagenomic methods provide a powerful means to investigate complex ecological phenomena. Developed originally for study of Bacteria and Archaea, the application of these methods to eukaryotic microorganisms is yet to be fully realized. Most prior environmental molecular studies of eukaryotes have relied heavily on PCR amplification with eukaryote-...

Here we establish a neotype for Alatina alata (Reynaud, 1830) from the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire. The species was originally described one hundred and eighty three years ago as Carybdea alata in La Centurie Zoologique-a monograph published by René Primevère Lesson during the age of worldwide scientific exploration. While monitoring monthly...

Background/Question/Methods The impact of biodiversity loss on the functioning of ecosystems has been an active area of research for two decades. We now know that declining species richness results in reduced standing stocks of biomass and lower resource use efficiency. However, the functional traits of species that impact their interaction streng...

Ecological niche modelling (ENM) and species distribution modelling (SDM) have been used extensively to study biogeographic and macroecological patterns of terrestrial fauna and flora. Few studies to date have applied ENM and SDM to marine ecosystems, and those that have treated the marine environment as a two-dimensional space owing to limitations...

A new species of chirodropid box jellyfish belonging to the genus Chiropsella (Cubozoa: Chirodropida: Chiropsalmidae) is described from Madagascar. In addition to being a new species from Madagascar, this represents the first record of the genus from Africa, and more generally the Indian Ocean. So far the genus Chiropsella is represented by two spe...

Box jellyfishes (Cnidaria: Cubozoa) have a profound impact on human activities because of their highly potent venoms that may lead to severe envenomations in humans. Cubozoa is one of the smallest classes within Cnidaria with only some 50 described species in seven families. The literature on Cubozoa is scattered and oftentimes difficult to access....

1. Ecological niche and species distribution models (ENMs and SDMs) are widely used in macroecological studies to investigate the potential geographic distributions of invasive species, the effects of climate change on past, present and future species distributions as well as the evolution of ecological niches. For many of these studies, estimating...

In nearly all animals, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) consists of a single circular molecule that encodes several subunits of the protein complexes involved in oxidative phosphorylation as well as part of the machinery for their expression. By contrast, mtDNA in species belonging to Medusozoa (one of the two major lineages in the phylum Cnidaria) compri...

A new species of cubozoan jellyfish has been discovered in shallow waters of Bonaire, Netherlands (Dutch Caribbean). Thus far, approximately 50 sightings of the species, known commonly as the Bonaire banded box jelly, are recorded, and three specimens have been collected. Three physical encounters between humans and the species have been reported....

Numerous nominal species have been considered synonymous with Carybdea alata Reynaud, 1830 (cf. Gershwin 2005). A recent revision concluded that several of the species collectively referred to as C. alata are valid and indeed separate species (Gershwin 2005; but see also Bentlage et al. 2010). Additionally, these species (including C. alata) were m...

Cubozoa (Cnidaria: Medusozoa) represents a small clade of approximately 50 described species, some of which cause serious human envenomations. Our understanding of the evolutionary history of Cubozoa has been limited by the lack of a sound phylogenetic hypothesis for the group. Here, we present a comprehensive cubozoan phylogeny based on ribosomal...

Geographic distributions of many marine species are poorly documented or understood, which is particularly true for marine invertebrates. Ecological niche modeling (ENM) offers a means to address this issue, but to date most studies using ENM have focused on terrestrial taxa. In general, ENM relates environmental information to species' occurrence...

Here we describe the new species Chironex yamaguchii (Cnidaria: Cubozoa) from the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan. This highly venomous cubomedusa, commonly referred to as Habu-kurage in Japan, is the culprit for several fatalities in Japanese waters. The scientific name adopted for this species in the literature is Chiropsalmus quadrigatus, but our taxo...

Here we describe the new species Chironex yamaguchii (Cnidaria: Cubozoa) from the Ryukyu Archipelago, Japan. This highly venomous cubomedusa, commonly referred to as Habu-kurage in Japan, is the culprit for several fatalities in Japanese waters. The scientific name adopted for this species in the literature is Chiropsalmus quadrigatus, but our taxo...

FIGURE 2. Chironex yamaguchii, sp. nov. A. juvenile specimen (bell height approximately 5 cm) displayed at Enoshima Aquarium, Japan; B. preserved tentacles; C. manubrium with four lips; D. gastric cirri; E. gastric saccules; F. perradial lappet as seen from below the subumbrellar opening; G. perradial lappet and frenulum as seen from inside the sub...

FIGURE 1. Comparison between the pedalial canal bend of Chironex fleckeri (B; QM G 322755) and Chironex yamaguchii, sp. nov. (C; USNM 1121555); the location of the pedalial canal bend at the proximal end of the pedalium is indicated in A (Chironex fleckeri; QM G 322298). Note the sharp tip as well as the concave slope of the bend (“ upswept cornicu...