Jesús Pineda

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution | WHOI · Department of Biology

Invertebrate larvae are often abundant in the surface ocean, which plays a key role in their dispersal and connectivity. Pelagic microhabitats characterized by small-scale hydrographic variability are complex and ubiquitous in the coastal ocean, but their study is challenging, and they have been largely neglected in meroplankton ecology. Surface co...

The timing of life history events can have profound implications for populations and communities, especially those events that influence species dispersal and recruitment. In benthic invertebrates, the majority of dispersal occurs during the larval phase of life. Yet the extent to which timing of reproduction (the beginning of the larval phase) dir...

To better understand the hydrodynamic and hydrographic conditions experienced by larvae in the nearshore (within 1 km of shore), and the role that larval behavior plays in mediating shoreward transport to adult benthic habitats, we examined the vertical distribution and concentration of barnacle cyprids in a shallow, nearshore region in southern Ca...

Plankton and nekton may respond passively or actively to large‐amplitude, nonlinear internal waves (NLIW), with periods and wavelengths on the order of minutes and hundreds of meters, and the NLIW can cause direct or indirect changes in distribution. NLIW are ubiquitous in the coastal ocean, but understanding the influence of NLIW on organism respo...

Abundance, species diversity, and horizontal distributions of barnacle cyprids offshore of La Jolla, southern California were described from May 2014 to August 2016 to determine how the nearshore barnacle larval assemblage changed before, during, and after the 2015-16 El Niño. The entire water column was sampled at five stations located within one...

We assessed the effects of large‐scale oceanic disturbances on the settlement rate of an abundant intertidal barnacle. Daily or weekly settlement, nearshore temperature, currents, and abundance of early‐stage barnacle nauplii and Chthamalus fissus cyprids were measured in La Jolla, California, from the inception of the large‐scale warm‐water anomal...

Vertical and cross-shore distributions and abundances of shallow-water barnacle larvae were characterized in La Jolla, southern California (USA), during a 2 yr period. Five stations located within 1 km of shore and ranging from 4-12 m water depths were sampled intensively in 2 m depth intervals during 27 cruises throughout spring-summer (April-July...

Larval transport is fundamental to several ecological processes, yet it remains unresolved for the majority of systems. We define larval transport, and describe its components, namely larval behavior and the physical transport mechanisms accounting for advection, diffusion, and their variability. We then discuss other relevant processes in larval t...

A research cruise to Hannibal Bank, a seamount and an ecological hotspot in the coastal eastern tropical Pacific Ocean off Panama, explored the zonation, biodiversity, and the ecological processes that contribute to the seamount’s elevated biomass. Here we describe the spatial structure of a benthic anomuran red crab population, using submarine vid...

Raw data set Columns are Along transect distance, depth, easting, northing, and crab sensity.

Pleuroncodes planipes filmed from the M/V Alucias’s RV2 submarine

Mass stranding events of Pleuroncodes planipes in Southern California from January to August 2015 documented by multiple media outlets

Raw data. CTD profile data Temperature, Salinity and Oxygen with depth.

Current dynamics across a platform reef in the Red Sea near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia are examined using 18 months of current profile, pressure, surface wave, and wind observations. The platform reef is 700 m long, 200 m across with spatial and temporal variations in water depth over the reef ranging from 0.6 m to 1.6 m. Surface waves breaking at the se...

This paper explores the use of a Bayesian non-parametric topic modeling technique for the purpose of anomaly detection in video data. We present results from two experiments. The first experiment shows that the proposed technique is automatically able characterize the underlying terrain, and detect anomalous flora in image data collected by an unde...

We investigated the recruitment of intertidal barnacles and mussels at three temporal scales (months, weeks and days), and its relationships to physical forcings, chlorophyll-a concentration (Chla) and sea surface temperature (SST), at both a local (km) and a regional (10–100 km) resolution. The study was conducted in the South Brazilian Bight, a s...

The barnacle Chthamalus fragilis is found along the US Atlantic seaboard historically from the Chesapeake Bay southward, and in the Gulf of Mexico. It appeared in New England circa 1900 coincident with warming temperatures, and is now a conspicuous member of rocky intertidal communities extending through the northern shore of Cape Cod, Massachusett...

We tested the hypothesis that humpback whales aggregate at the southern flank of Stellwagen Bank (SB) in response to internal waves (IWs) generated semidiurnally at Race Point (RP) channel because of the presence of their preferred prey, planktivorous fish, which in turn respond to zooplankton concentrated by the predictable IWs. Analysis of synthe...

In summer 2010, a bleaching event decimated the abundant reef flat coral Stylophora pistillata in some areas of the central Red Sea, where a series of coral reefs 100–300 m wide by several kilometers long extends from the coastline to about 20 km offshore. Mortality of corals along the exposed and protected sides of inner (inshore) and mid and oute...

In summer 2010, a bleaching event decimated the abundant reef flat coral Stylophora pistillata in some areas of the central Red Sea, where a series of coral reefs 100-300 m wide by several kilometers long extends from the coastline to about 20 km offshore. Mortality of corals along the exposed and protected sides of inner (inshore) and mid and oute...

Gravid adults of the common intertidal barnacle Semibalanus balanoides (L.) brood fully developed larvae until individuals perceive some cue from the environment that triggers synchronous larval release. The prevailing hypothesis has been that phytoplankton blooms trigger release because they provide a food source for nauplius larvae. Through obser...

Time-series data is important for understanding long-term settlement and recruitment patterns of benthic marine invertebrate species and can be used to track changes in environmental stressors, such as climate change. Previous research examined settlement preference of the barnacle Semibalanus balanoides for micro- or macro-habitat. Highest settlem...

Recruitment of benthic marine invertebrates is critical to population dynamics. Behavior of larvae (i.e., settlement preference) and physical transport processes may determine recruitment; however, they are not well understood. The goal of this project was to examine the relative roles of behavior and physical transport on settlement and recruitmen...

Blythe, J. N., da Silva, J. C. B., and Pineda. J. 2011. Nearshore, seasonally persistent fronts in sea surface temperature on Red Sea tropical reefs. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 68: 1827–1832. Temperature variability was studied on tropical reefs off the coast of Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea using remote sensing from Aqua and Terra satellites....

It has been proposed that barnacle cyprids can maintain position in shoreward-propagating fronts by swimming upward against a downwelling flow, potentially mediating onshore transport of larvae toward intertidal habitat. This study developed a novel flume to characterize swimming behavior of barnacle cyprids in a laboratory downwelling flow. Seawat...

The acorn barnacle, Semibalanus balanoides, is thought to release larvae in response to phytoplankton blooms, but there is evidence that another, unidentified cue for release may exist. We conducted high-frequency sampling in Little Harbor, Massachusetts, USA, to determine whether early-stage larval abundance was related to several environmental va...

Barnacles are often abundant on roots and branches of mangrove trees in tidal channels and coastal lagoons of the Pacific coast of Panama. Yet, in some coastal lagoons, barnacles are absent. We investigated pre- and post-settlement factors that affect barnacle distributions in two adjacent coastal lagoons in Bahía Honda, Panama, one with moderate t...

Hydrographic measurements were collected on nine offshore reef platforms in the eastern Red Sea shelf region, north of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The data were analyzed for spatial and temporal patterns of temperature variation, and a simple heat budget analysis was performed with the goal of advancing our understanding of the physical processes that co...

The region of the Middle East around the Red Sea (between 32° E and 44° E longitude and 12° N and 28° N latitude) is a currently undocumented hotspot for atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs). Satellite imagery shows evidence that this region is prone to relatively high occurrence of AGWs compared to other areas in the world, and reveals the spatial cha...

Marine broadcast spawners have two-phase life cycles, with pelagic larvae and benthic adults. Larval supply and settlement link these two phases and are crucial for the persistence of marine populations. Mainly due to the complexity in sampling larval supply accurately, many researchers use settlement as a proxy for larval supply. Larval supply is...

a b s t r a c t Patterns of vertical distribution in marine invertebrate larvae interact with coastal hydrodynamics to determine cross-shore distributions, dispersal ranges, and scales of connectivity among populations. We present observations on the vertical distribution of barnacle larvae from southern California, collected from 3 depth intervals...

Metamorphosis from a pelagic to a benthic stage is a critical transition in the life cycle of sessile marine invertebrates. The barnacle Semibalanus balanoides attaches permanently during set- tlement, and once attached, its gross location in the adult habitat is fixed. The partitioning of benthic habitat among barnacles in a recruit cohort is ofte...

Author Posting. © Society of Population Ecology and Springer, 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Population Ecology 51 (2009): 17-32, doi:10.1007/s10144-008-0118-0. Research of complex systems and problems, enti...

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2008. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research 113 (2008): C08031, doi:10.1029/2008JC004726. The shoaling of the nonlinear internal tide in Massachusetts Bay i...

Author Posting. © Oceanography Society, 2007. This article is posted here by permission of Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 20, 3 (2007): 14-21. There is growing consensus that life within the world’s ocean is under considerable and increasing stress from human activ...

Author Posting. © Oceanography Society, 2007. This article is posted here by permission of Oceanography Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Oceanography 20, 3 (2007): 22-39. Many marine species have small, pelagic early life stages. For those species, knowledge of population connectivity require...

The stage-specific spatial distribution and mortality of Balanus glandula and Chthamalus spp. larvae were assessed with a series of daily vertical plankton tows collected from inner-shelf waters in La Jolla, Southern California, in March 2003. Sampling stations were located within 1.1 km of the shoreline, at depths of 10 to 45 m. For both groups, w...

This report is not copyrighted. The definitive version was published in California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations Reports 48 (2007): 204-214. We compared the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center’s Environmental Research Division (formerly Pacific Fisheries Environmental Laboratory: PFEL) coastal upwelling indices along the northern...

Author Posting. © Sears Foundation for Marine Research, 2007. This article is posted here by permission of Sears Foundation for Marine Research for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Marine Research 65 (2007): 117-145, doi:10.1357/002224007780388702. Accumulation and transport of plankton in fro...

Author Posting. © The Authors, 2006. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Continental Shelf Research 26 (2006): 885-901, doi:10.1016/j.csr.2006.01.017. The effects of the 1997-98 and 2002-04 El Ni˜no on the upper w...

Recruitment is a key factor in benthic population dynamics, and spatial and temporal processes that affect settlement may determine recruitment; however, temporal processes are not well understood. We tested whether the date that recruits settle is a random sample within the settlement season by measuring daily settlement of the barnacle Semibalanu...

The effects of the 1997–1998 and 2002–2004 El Niño on the upper waters in the continental shelf and slope regions off northwestern Baja California are explored with data from eight cruises taken in late spring from 1998 to 2004 and the summers of 1997 and 1998. Geostrophic velocities were calculated referenced to a specific volume anomaly surface s...

We evaluated the spatial variability in barnacle settlement at scales of 10s to 100s of meters (among-sites: 300 m; within-site: 30 m) along 1 km of coastline in the Bay of Todos Santos, northern Baja California, Mexico. Settlement of the intertidal barnacles Chthamalus spp. was monitored daily from April 1 to May 10, 2002, and thereafter every oth...

Author Posting. © American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, 2005. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of American Society of Limnology and Oceanography for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Limnology and Oceanography 50 (2005): 1520-1528. Late stage larvae (cypr...

We evaluated the spatial variability in barnacle settlement at scales of 10s to 100s of meters (among-sites: 300 m; within-site: 30 m) along 1 km of coastline in the Bay of Todos Santos, northern Baja California, Mexico. Settlement of the intertidal barnacles Chthamalus spp. was monitored daily from April 1 to May 10, 2002, and thereafter every oth...

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2004. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Geophysical Research Letters 31 (2004): L22307, doi:10.1029/2004GL021052. We report on near-bottom waves of elevation with amplitude nearly half...

We investigated the effect of the daily sea breeze on the surface flow at Bahia Salsipuedes, Baja California, Mexico. Drifter-tracking experiments were conducted over a 2-week period in July, 1999. Surface drifters were deployed daily and their trajectories tracked from a small boat for 3–7 h. Wind speed and direction, as well as the vertical distr...

▪ Abstract Most of our knowledge of biodiversity and its causes in the deep-sea benthos derives from regional-scale sampling studies of the macrofauna. Improved sampling methods and the expansion of investigations into a wide variety of habitats have revolutionized our understanding of the deep sea. Local species diversity shows clear geographic va...

Field observations imply that accumulation and advection of invertebrate larvae and other plankton by propagating fronts provides an efficient mechanism for the cross-shelf transport and subsequent coastal settlement of larvae and plankton. Gravity currents propagating into a heavier, uniform-density fluid are known to have near-surface velocities...

A central goal of marine ecology is to achieve a mechanistic understanding of the factors regulating the abundance and distribution of marine populations. One critical component of the above goal is to quantify rates of exchange, or connectivity among sub-populations of marine organisms via larval dispersal. Theoretical studies suggest that these l...

Barnacle settlement was monitored in two sites 100 km apart along the coast of Alta and Baja California. In five periods of observations completed between 1991 and 1996, Chthamalus spp., Pollicipes polymerus, and Balanus glandula settlement was consistently higher in the northern site, La Jolla (LJ), than in the southern site, La Salina (LS). For C...

This study measured the progression from pelagic larvae to juvenile barnacles, and examined whether recruitment of barnacles, Semibalanus balanoides Linnaeus, at two intertidal sites in contrasting hydrodynamic regimes was determined by pre-settlement or post-settlement processes. The two sites were 1.5 km apart in the vicinity of Woods Hole, Mass....

Mounting evidence suggests that some populations of benthic marine organisms may be less demographically 'open' than previously thought. The degree to which a population receives recruits from local sources versus other populations has important ecological and management ramifications. For either of these reasons, it is often desirable to estimate...

Models of larval dispersal rarely incorporate the behavior of larvae, yet many potential settlers of marine invertebrates and fishes may navigate toward suitable settlement sites by responding to gradients of environmental stimuli. Accordingly, a variety of stimuli may be used for navigation (directed movements to the source of stimuli) and partial...

In the Southern California Bight a clear seasonal cycle in temperature and diatom abundance is observed, with maximum temperatures in summer and maximum diatom abundance in spring, decreasing in summer. Within this seasonal cycle of temperature and diatom abundance, there is a weak fortnightly temperature variability. Here, we show that diatom abun...

Most of our knowledge of biodiversity and its causes in the deep-sea benthos derives from regional-scale sampling studies of the macrofauna. Improved sampling methods and the expansion of investigations into a wide variety of habitats have revolutionized our understanding of the deep sea. Local species diversity shows clear geographic variation on...

Internal tidal bore warm fronts were observed during the summer of 1996 off the coast of Southern California. Warm bore fronts had concentrating currents resulting from high-frequency internal motions and from a larger two- way flow; the two-way flow featured surface currents onshore and bottom currents offshore. A sharp thermocline depression and...

A system where a set of species is randomly distributed within two spatial boundaries produces parabolic species diversity patterns, where diversity is lowest in the vicinity of the boundaries, and highest in the mid-zone between the boundaries. We demonstrate this phenomenon using simulated data.We tested whether parabolic depth trends in species...

Several recent field studies have found disproportionately high barnacle settlement rates (expressed on a per-area basis) in situations where the amount of suitable substrate is reduced, either due to occupation by other individuals or to physical processes. We call this phenomenon the intensification effect; it is not included in many models of be...

Nearshore upwelling due to predictable large internal bores may be a widespread phenomenon along the west coast of North America. Internal tidal bores (breaking internal tidal waves) cause drops in surface water temperature that last for 2–9 days. Negative surface water temperature anomalies (anomaly = daily datum minus day-of-the-year average) oft...

Nearshore upwelling due to predictable large internal bores may be a widespread phenomenon along the west coast of North America. Internal tidal bores (breaking internal tidal waves) cause drops in surface water temperature that last for 2-9 days. Negative surface water temperature anomalies (anomaly = daily datum minus day-of-the-year average) oft...

Nearshore temperature fluctuations are associated with energetic cross-shore two-way flows that influence onshore transport of neustonic larvae. Water temperature near the surface and bottom at two nearshore stations off southern California (6 and 15 m water depth, respectively) can drop sharply and subsequently rise. This study tests the hypothesi...

Barnacle settlement was monitored at 5 sites separated by 50 to 250 m at Dike Rock, La Jolla, California, USA. Chthamalus spp. and Pollicipes polymerus settlement were spatially correlated at those sites. Within sites, settlement of the 2 species were correlated These results support the hypothesis of common onshore larval transport events for all...

Since environmental gradients are more pronounced on the continental shelf and continental slope than in deeper waters, benthic deep-sea species occurring in shelf and slope regions should have smaller vertical (bathymetric) distributional ranges than species occuring in continental rise and abyssal regions. This paper explains a species' vertical...

A quantitative description of patchiness and the assessment of its effects on ecological and evolutionary processes represents a major research focus as well as a challenge for ecologists and evolutionary biologists (e.g., Pickett and White 1985, Shorrocks and Swingland 1990, Kolasa and Pickett 1991). Patchiness is neither unique in origin nor char...

Internal tidal bores have a crucial role in the transport of drifting larvae to marine nearshore populations, a key factor in structuring benthic communities. Shoreward transport of larvae and abrupt surface temperature drops lasting days can be explained by invoking the advection of subsurface cold water to the shore by internal tidal bores. This...

Several authors have suggested that nonlinear internal waves (solitary waves) can transport plankton over considerable distances. In this talk we present a preliminary analysis of the data collected during a 10-day long experiment in Massachusetts Bay that was specifically designed to test this hipothesys. We sampled over 15 trains of solitary wave...