Dannise V Ruiz-Ramos

University of Maryland Eastern Shore | UMES · Department of Natural Sciences

Biodiversity monitoring in conservation projects is essential to understand environmental health, complexity, and recovery. However, traditional field surveys can be expensive, time‐consuming, biased toward visual detection, and/or only measure a limited set of taxa. Environmental DNA (eDNA) methods provide a new approach to biodiversity monitoring...

Vernal pools are temporary wetlands that can form during a rainy season, often in Mediterranean climates, and serve as ideal testing grounds to understand species detection using eDNA and how biological communities may shift across time and spatial and environmental heterogeneity. Most vernal pools exhibit high plant and animal diversity and endemi...

Biodiversity monitoring in conservation projects is essential to understand environmental status and recovery. However, traditional field surveys can be biased towards visual detection and/or focused on measuring the biodiversity of a limited set of taxa. Environmental DNA (eDNA) methods provide a new approach to biodiversity monitoring that has th...

Quantitative genetic variation (QGV) represents a major component of adaptive potential and, if reduced toward range-edge populations, could prevent a species’ expansion or adaptive response to rapid ecological change. It has been hypothesized that QGV will be lower at the range edge due to small populations—often the result of poor habitat quality...

Ecosystems globally are under threat from ongoing anthropogenic environmental change. Effective conservation management requires more thorough biodiversity surveys that can reveal system‐level patterns and that can be applied rapidly across space and time. Using modern ecological models and community science, we integrate environmental DNA and Eart...

Climate change is leading to habitat shifts that threaten species persistence throughout California's unique ecosystems. Baseline biodiversity data would provide opportunities for habitats to be managed under short-term and long-term environmental change. Aiming to provide biodiversity data, the UC Conservation Genomics Consortium launched the Cali...

Unique ecosystems globally are under threat from ongoing anthropogenic environmental change. Effective conservation management requires more thorough biodiversity surveys that can reveal system-level patterns and that can be applied rapidly across space and time. We offer a way to use environmental DNA, community science and remote sensing together...

Beginning in 2013, sea stars throughout the Eastern North Pacific were decimated by wasting disease, also known as ‘asteroid idiopathic wasting syndrome’ (AIWS) due to its elusive etiology. The geographic extent and taxonomic scale of AIWS meant events leading up to the outbreak were heterogeneous, multifaceted, and oftentimes unobserved; progressi...

Although the hydrocoral Millepora alcicornis is a prominent and ecologically relevant amphi-Atlantic reef builder, little attention has been given to its endosymbionts which are also involved in the survival and adaptation success of the species in different environments. In this study, we resolve the genetic relationships between M. alcicornis and...

Global change is leading to habitat shifts that threaten species persistence throughout California's unique ecosystems. Baseline biodiversity data provide opportunities for ecosystems to be managed for community complexity and connectivity. In 2017, the University of California Conservation Genomics Consortium launched the California Environmental...

Although the hydrocoral Millepora alcicornis is a prominent and ecologically relevant amphi-Atlantic reef builder, little attention has been given to its endosymbionts which are also involved in the survival and adaptation success of the species in different environments. In this study, we resolve the genetic relationships between M. alcicornis and...

The 2010 Deep Water Horizon oil well failure released billions of gallons of crude oil into the deep Gulf of Mexico, and, combined with chemical dispersants, this oil caused significant coral mortality. However, the mechanisms by which oil and dispersed oil impact deep marine fauna are not well understood. Here, we investigate the effects of oil an...

The black coral Leiopathes glaberrima is a foundation species of deep-sea benthic communities but little is known of the longevity of its larvae and the timing of spawning because it inhabits environments deeper than 50 m that are logistically challenging to observe. Here, the potential connectivity of L. glaberrima in the northern Gulf of Mexico w...

ADCP data availability from off-shore oil platforms. List of platform stations and their time availability (gray boxes) used in the model validation process. Data are from the National Data Buoy Center catalog (http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/). (PDF)

Sensitivity tests (part 1). Tests varying the number of particles, deployment area extension, and the inclusion of vertical diffusion scheme for winter 2011, fall 2011 and winter 2012. VD: Vertical Diffusion; A1: Deployment area 50 km x 50 km; A2: Deployment area 25 km x 25 km. (PDF)

Horizontal viscosity coefficient sensitivity test. Top: Modeled zonal (west to east) velocity field on February 3rd, 2011 obtained setting the horizontal harmonic mixing coefficient Ah equal to a) 5 m s-2 and b) 25 m s-2. Bottom: particle distributions c) 10 days and d) 40 days past deployment. Black and blue particles: Ah = 5 m s-2; red and green...

Sensitivity test (Part 2). Sensitivity tests varying the number of particles for an identical deployment area extension (50 km x 50 km) and no vertical diffusion for winter 2011, fall 2011 and winter 2012. 100, 1000 and 2500 particles. (PDF)

Connectivity matrices. (DOCX)

Migration rates calculated with BayesAss. Immigration rates calculated with BayesAss, using random seed determined by the program, the Markov Chain Monte Carlo was run for 10 million iterations discarding the first 1 million iterations burn-in = 1000000), with and interval within MCMC samples of 1000. The direction of migration represents the possi...

Colonial corals occur in a wide range of marine benthic habitats from the shallows to the deep ocean, often defining the structure of their local community. The black coral Leiopathes glaberrima is a long-lived foundation species occurring on carbonate outcrops in the Northern Gulf of Mexico (GoM). Multiple color morphs of L. glaberrima grow sympat...

Cold-water corals serve as important foundation species by building complex habitat within deep-sea benthic communities. Little is known about the stress response of these foundation species yet they are increasingly exposed to anthropogenic disturbance as human industrial presence expands further into the deep sea. A recent prominent example is th...

Background The hydrocoral Millepora is an important framework builder that dominates shallow turbulent environments in the Indo-Pacific and the Atlantic-Caribbean. The Caribbean representatives of the genus are classified in four species - Millepora alcicornis , Millepora complanata , Millepora striata , and Millepora squarrosa - but their taxonomi...

Background Microsatellite loci have high mutation rates and thus are indicative of mutational processes within the genome. By concentrating on the symbiotic and aposymbiotic cnidarians, we investigated if microsatellite abundances follow a phylogenetic or ecological pattern. Individuals from eight species were shotgun sequenced using 454 GS-FLX Tit...

The branching coral Acropora palmata is a foundation species of Caribbean reefs that has been decimated in recent decades by anthropogenic and natural stressors. Declines in population density and genotypic diversity likely reduce successful sexual reproduction in this self-incompatible hermaphrodite and might impede recovery. We investigated varia...

A mass mortality event of the long-spined sea urchin Diadema antillarum (Philippi, 1845) occurred during 1983-1984 across the western Atlantic. Recovery to pre-mortality densities has been slow throughout most of the Caribbean as current stocks remain low, existing at a small fraction of previously recorded levels. To measure population recovery at...