Dagoberto Venera Ponton

Dagoberto Venera Ponton
  • Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
  • PostDoc Position at Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

About

23
Publications
5,992
Reads
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298
Citations
Introduction
Dagoberto Venera Ponton is a versatile biologist with skills in multiple fields, including (but not limited to) marine ecology, molecular biology, population genetics, and bioinfomatics. His current research uses DNA barcoding to explore the genetic biodiversity of marine meroplanktonic invertebrates in the Panama isthmus.
Current institution
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Current position
  • PostDoc Position
Additional affiliations
January 2013 - July 2017
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Position
  • Research Assistant
Description
  • Courses: Genetics Lab, Fundamentals of Biology Laboratory I, Marine Botany
August 2010 - December 2012
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Position
  • Research Assistant
Description
  • Project: Impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the population and community structure of macroalgae associated to offshore banks in the NW Gulf of Mexico
July 2009 - February 2010
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Position
  • Research Associate
Description
  • Project: Effects of macroalgae on the recovery of bleached corals
Education
August 2011 - May 2018
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Field of study
  • Environmental and Evolutionary Biology
August 2002 - September 2008
University of Magdalena
Field of study
  • Biology

Publications

Publications (23)
Article
Full-text available
Lingulids and discinids are the only brachiopods that exhibit life histories that include a feeding planktonic stage usually referred to as a “larva”. We collected planktotrophic brachiopod larvae from the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of Panama and took a DNA barcoding approach with mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI), mitochondrial...
Article
Full-text available
Inhibition of early life stages of corals by benthic algae is a critical bottleneck to the recovery and resilience of corals. Increasingly frequent and severe disturbances are causing large-scale coral mortality, usually followed by colonisation and dominance by benthic algae. The capacity of corals to re-establish in such algal-dominated habitats...
Article
In the northwestern Gulf of Mexico, beds of rhodoliths and unconsolidated rubble at 55-70 m depth are associated with unique offshore deep bank habitats known as salt domes or diapirs. Prior to the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill these harbored the highest known seaweed diversity in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Six post-spill cruises led offsho...
Article
Full-text available
Coral reefs are highly dependent on the mutualistic symbiosis between reef-building corals and dinoflagellates from the genus Symbiodinium. These dinoflagellates spend part of their life cycle outside the coral host and in the majority of the cases have to re-infect corals each generation. While considerable insight has been gained about Symbiodini...
Article
Full-text available
Porites colonensis is a coral from the Caribbean Sea; colonies are foliaceous, undulated, and plate-like. Polyps are dark brown or red with small bright white or green centers; pali are present in corallites and the septal plan is bisymmetrical, conformed by three fused ventral septa, a dorsal solitary septum, and two pairs of lateral septa at each...
Article
Full-text available
Biodiversity assessments are critical for setting conservation priorities, understanding ecosystem function and establishing a baseline to monitor change. Surveys of marine biodiversity that rely almost entirely on sampling adult organisms underestimate diversity because they tend to be limited to habitat types and individuals that can be easily su...
Article
The morphological diversity of marine annelid larvae is stunning. Although many of the larval forms have been categorized as trochophores or modified trochophores, there are a few groups with distinctive larval features that make them easy to distinguish from other annelid larvae. We collected 252 annelid larvae from the plankton, with particular e...
Article
As part of a project to document the diversity of larval invertebrates on both coasts of Panama, we collected and photographed 141 larval asteroids and sequenced fragments of their mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) and 16S ribosomal DNA. We uncovered 10 Caribbean operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and five Pacific OTUs. We could id...
Article
The identity of wild cloning sea star larvae has been a mystery since they were first documented in the Caribbean. The most commonly collected cloning species was thought to belong to the Oreasteridae, on the basis of similarity with sequences from Oreaster reticulatus and Oreaster clavatus. This larval form has recently been linked to a rare benth...
Article
Surveys of larval diversity consistently increase biodiversity estimates when applied to poorly documented groups of marine invertebrates such as phoronids and hemichordates. However, it remains to be seen how helpful this approach is for detecting unsampled species in well‐studied groups. Echinoids represent a large, robust, well‐studied macrofaun...
Article
Full-text available
DNA barcoding is a useful tool to identify the components of mixed or bulk samples, as well as to determine individuals that lack morphologically diagnostic features. However, the reference database of DNA barcode sequences is particularly sparsely populated for marine invertebrates and for tropical taxa. We used samples collected as part of two fi...
Article
The diversity of tropical marine invertebrates is poorly documented, especially those groups for which collecting adults is difficult. We collected the planktonic tornaria larvae of hemichordates (acorn worms) to assess their hidden diversity in the Neotropics. Larvae were retrieved in plankton tows from waters of the Pacific and Caribbean coasts o...
Article
Full-text available
Studies on the population structure of common widespread macroalgae in the Gulf of Mexico (GoMx) are scarce, and this knowledge gap limits our understanding on how disturbances affect the genetic diversity of macroalgae in this basin. The latter is due to the lack of a baseline that can be compared with allele frequency surveys conducted after a ma...
Article
Phoronid larvae, actinotrochs, are beautiful and complicated organisms which have attracted as much, if not more, attention than their adult forms. We collected actinotrochs from the waters of the Pacific and Caribbean coasts of Panama, and used DNA barcoding of mtCOI, as well as 16S and 18S sequences, to estimate the diversity of phoronids in the...
Article
Full-text available
DNA barcoding is a useful tool for documenting the diversity of metazoans. The most commonly used barcode markers, 16S and COI, are not considered suitable for species identification within some "basal" phyla of metazoans. Nevertheless metabarcoding studies of bulk mixed samples commonly use these markers and may obtain sequences for "basal" phyla....
Article
Full-text available
Porites colonensis is a coral from the Caribbean Sea; colonies are foliaceous, undulated, and plate-like. Polyps are dark brown or red with small bright white or green centers; pali are present in corallites and the septal plan is bisymmetrical, conformed by three fused ventral septa, a dorsal solitary septum, and two pairs of lateral septa at each...
Article
Full-text available
Sedimentation is frequently associated with coral reef degradation. However, there are few experimental studies evaluating the impacts of this process on the dynamics of algal recruitment on coral reefs. In a field experiment, we manipulated the levels of sedimentation and examined the impacts on the recruitment and growth of the brown macroalgae D...
Article
Sedimentation is frequently associated with coral reef degradation. However, there are few experimental studies evaluating the impacts of this process on the dynamics of algal recruitment on coral reefs. In a field experiment, we manipulated the levels of sedimentation and examined the impacts on the recruitment and growth of the brown macroalgae D...
Article
Full-text available
Increased rates of sedimentation in the marine environment as a consequence of increased runoff, deforestation, inappropriate agricultural practices, etc, is a matter of concern due to the negative impacts on the ecology of coral reefs. Benthic algae are amongst the most important biological components of such ecosystems, however, little is known a...

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