John F Bruno

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | UNC · Department of Biology

Coral reef ecosystems are facing severe degradation due to anthropogenic activities at both local and global scales. In response, extensive restoration efforts are underway, aiming to bolster coral cover and enhance reef fish communities to foster facilitation between fish and corals. This reciprocal relationship is anticipated to improve overall r...

DNA sequences were obtained from 32 blade-forming Ulva specimens collected in 2018 and 2019 from four islands in the Galápagos Archipelago: Fernandina, Floreana, Isabela and San Cristóbal. The loci sequenced were nuclear encoded ITS and plastid encoded rbc L and tuf A, all recognized as barcode markers for green algae. Four species were found, Ulva...

Warm-water coral reefs are facing unprecedented Anthropogenic driven threats to their continued existence as biodiverse, functional ecosystems upon which hundreds of millions of people rely. Determining the tipping point thresholds of coral reef ecosystems requires robust assessment of multiple stressors and their interactive effects. We draw upon...

Marine foundation species are the biotic basis for many of the world's coastal ecosystems, providing structural habitat, food, and protection for myriad plants and animals as well as many ecosystem services. However, climate change poses a significant threat to foundation species and the ecosystems they support. We review the impacts of climate cha...

Anthropogenic climate change is intensifying natural disturbance regimes, which negatively affects some species, while benefiting others. This could alter the trait composition of ecological communities and influence resilience to disturbance. We investigated how the frequency and intensification of the regional storm regime (and likely other distu...

Greenhouse gas emissions are warming the ocean with profound consequences at all levels of organization, from organismal rates to ecosystem processes. The proximate driver is an interplay between anthropogenic warming (the trend) and natural fluctuations in local temperature. These two properties cause anomalously warm events such as marine heatwav...

Shark meat is widely available in the United States in grocery stores and seafood markets. The meat is often mislabeled or generically labeled as shark. The ambiguity of these generic labels makes it challenging to assess the conservation implications of this practice and for consumers to avoid species with high mercury concentrations. For this stu...

Four drivers of global change are acting in concert to speed up the ecology of our coastal and open ocean ecosystems. Ocean warming, nutrient pollution, disturbance, and species additions increase biological and ecological rates, favoring weedy communities and causing pervasive human impacts. Ocean warming via greenhouse gas emissions is accelerati...

A substantial portion of seafood is mislabeled, causing significant impacts to human health, the environment, the economy, and society. Despite the large scientific literature documenting seafood mislabeling the public’s awareness of seafood mislabeling is unknown. We conducted an online survey to assess the public’s awareness and perceptions of se...

Increased standing macroalgal biomass in upwelling zones is generally assumed to be the result of higher nutrient flux due to upwelled waters. However, other factors can strongly impact macroalgal communities. For example, herbivory and temperature, via their effects on primary producers and the metabolic demands of consumers, can also influence ma...

The world’s oceans are warming at an unprecedented rate, causing dramatic changes to coastal marine systems, especially coral reefs. We used three complementary ocean temperature databases (HadISST, Pathfinder, and OISST) to quantify change in thermal characteristics of Caribbean coral reefs over the last 150 years (1871–2020). These sea surface te...

Disease, storms, ocean warming, and pollution have caused the mass mortality of reef-building corals across the Caribbean over the last four decades. Subsequently, stony corals have been replaced by macroalgae, bacterial mats, and invertebrates including soft corals and sponges, causing changes to the functioning of Caribbean reef ecosystems. Here...

Remote coral reefs are thought to be more resilient to climate change due to their isolation from local stressors like fishing and pollution. We tested this hypothesis by measuring the relationship between local human influence and coral community re- silience. Surprisingly, we found no relationship between human influence and resist- ance to distu...

The frequency and intensity of Atlantic cyclonic storms are projected to increase as climate change warms the ocean 1,2 . These changing disturbance dynamics, paired with simultaneous changes in the condition and composition of Caribbean coral reefs, could be altering reef resilience to storms in unexpected ways. For example, the observed decline o...

Coral reefs worldwide are facing impacts from climate change, overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution. The cumulative effect of these impacts on global capacity of coral reefs to provide ecosystem services is un- known. Here, we evaluate global changes in extent of coral reef habitat, coral reef fishery catches and effort, Indigenous consum...

The physiology of ectotherms living in marine environments is strongly influenced by their local thermal experience. Scleractinian corals living near their thermal optimums are increasingly vulnerable to bleaching and mortality as oceanic heat waves increase globally. Mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs) below 30 m depths are characteristically coole...

Anthropogenic climate change is rapidly altering the characteristics and dynamics of biological communities. This is especially apparent in marine systems as the world's oceans are warming at an unprecedented rate, causing dramatic changes to coastal marine systems, especially on coral reefs of the Caribbean. We used three complementary ocean tempe...

Disease, ocean warming, and pollution have caused catastrophic declines in the cover of living coral on reefs across the Caribbean. Subsequently, reef-building corals have been replaced by invertebrates and macroalgae, leading to changes in ecological functioning. We describe changes in benthic community composition and cover at 15 sites across the...

The responses of ectothermic organisms to changes in temperature can be modified by acclimatization or adaptation to local thermal conditions. Thus, the effect of global warming and the deleterious effects of extreme heating events (e.g., heatwaves) on the metabolism and fitness of ectotherms can be population specific and reduced at warmer sites....

Susan Lynn Williams (1951–2018) was an exceptional marine ecologist whose research focused broadly on the ecology of benthic nearshore environments dominated by seagrasses, seaweeds, and coral reefs. She took an empirical approach founded in techniques of physiological ecology. Susan was committed to applying her research results to ocean managemen...

Seafood mislabeling occurs when a market label is inaccurate, primarily in terms of species identity, but also regarding weight, geographic origin, or other characteristics. This widespread problem allows cheaper or illegally-caught species to be marketed as species desirable to consumers. Previous studies have identified red snapper ( Lutjanus cam...

Seafood mislabeling occurs in a wide range of seafood products worldwide, resulting in public distrust, economic fraud, and health risks for consumers. We quantified the extent of shrimp mislabeling in coastal and inland North Carolina. We used standard DNA barcoding procedures to determine the species identity of 106 shrimp sold as “local” by 60 v...

Coral decline in the Caribbean is marked by the loss of habitat-forming corals, such as elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata). Elkhorn coral recovery has been isolated and patchy, but recently a “re-sheeting” phenomenon, in which elkhorn tissue grows over standing dead coral skeletons, was observed along the reefs in the Mexican Yucatán peninsula. Littl...

A major challenge facing subsistence fisheries is gaining support for sustainable management, ensuring the longevity of coastal resources for livelihood and ecosystem benefits. Territorial User Rights for Fishing (TURFs) have emerged as a possible solution to overfishing by requiring fishers to report their catch, color-code their vessels, and fish...

In 2014, a DNA‐based phylogenetic study confirming the paraphyly of the grass subtribe Sporobolinae proposed the creation of a large monophyletic genus Sporobolus, including (among others) species previously included in the genera Spartina, Calamovilfa, and Sporobolus. Spartina species have contributed substantially (and continue contributing) to o...

Temperature drives biological responses that scale from the cellular to ecosystem levels and thermal sensitivity will shape organismal functions and population dynamics as the world warms. Reef-building corals are sensitive to temperature due to their endosymbiotic relationship with single-celled dinoflagellates, with mass mortality events increasi...

Without drastic efforts to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate globalized stressors, tropical coral reefs are in jeopardy. Strategic conservation and management requires identification of the environmental and socioeconomic factors driving the persistence of scleractinian coral assemblages—the foundation species of coral reef ecosystems. Here, we...

Seafood mislabeling is a widely documented problem that has significant implications for human and environmental health. Defined as when seafood is sold under something other than its true species name, seafood fraud allows less-desired or illegally caught species to be marketed as one recognizable to consumers. Red snapper is one of the most frequ...

Seafood mislabeling occurs in a wide range of seafood products worldwide, resulting in public distrust, economic fraud, and health risks for consumers. We quantified the extent of shrimp mislabeling in coastal and inland North Carolina. We used standard DNA barcoding procedures to determine the species identity of 106 shrimp sold by 60 vendors acro...

Restricting human activities through Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) is assumed to create more resilient biological communities with a greater capacity to resist and recover following climate events. Here we review the evidence linking protection from local pressures (e.g., fishing and habitat destruction) with increased resilience. Despite strong th...

Various personal dimensions of students—particularly motivation, self-efficacy beliefs, and epistemic beliefs—can change in response to teaching, affect student learning, and be conceptualized as learning dispositions. We propose that these learning dispositions serve as learning outcomes in their own right; that patterns of interrelationships amon...

Ecology is a young discipline that needs to develop into a predictive science to confront the challenges of human population pressures and habitat degradation. Basic ecology has disproportionately focused on undisturbed, charismatic ecosystems, species and academic questions, leaving gaps in its ability to inform the conservation and management of...

Temperature drives biological responses that scale from the cellular to ecosystem levels and thermal sensitivity will shape organismal functions and population dynamics as the world warms. Reef building corals are sensitive to temperature due to their endosymbiotic relationship with single celled dinoflagellates, with mass mortality events increasi...

Scientists have advocated for local interventions, such as creating marine protected areas and implementing fishery restrictions, as ways to mitigate local stressors to limit the effects of climate change on reef-building corals. However, in a literature review, we find little empirical support for the notion of managed resilience. We outline some...

Scientists have advocated for local interventions, such as creating marine protected areas and implementing fishery restrictions, as ways to mitigate local stressors to limit the effects of climate change on reef-building corals. However, in a literature review, we find little empirical support for the notion of managed resilience. We outline some...

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) provide students opportunities to engage in research in a course. Aspects of CURE design, such as providing students opportunities to make discoveries, collaborate, engage in relevant work, and iterate to solve problems are thought to contribute to outcome achievement in CUREs. Yet how each of...

Temperature can influence trophic interactions via predictable effects on the metabolism of ecothermic consumers. Under some conditions, warming should increase top–down control, and trophic transfer rates, leading to declines in prey populations. We tested this prediction in the Galápagos Islands, an equatorial upwelling region, where water temper...

In the version of this Letter originally published, the x axes titles of Fig. 3 erroneously read ‘Latitude’; they should have read ‘Longitude’. This has been corrected in the online versions of the Letter.

The United States has been at the forefront of marine resource stewardship since the 1970s when Federal officials began to implement a series of national policies aimed at the conservation and management of public trust resources in the ocean. Beginning with the establishment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in 1970, soon foll...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a primary management tool for mitigating threats to marine biodiversity1,2. MPAs and the species they protect, however, are increasingly being impacted by climate change. Here we show that, despite local protections, the warming associated with continued business-as-usual emissions (RCP8.5)³ will likely result in f...

Coral reefs are important habitats that represent global marine biodiversity hotspots and provide important benefits to people in many tropical regions. However, coral reefs are becoming increasingly threatened by climate change, overfishing, habitat destruction, and pollution. Historical baselines of coral cover are important to understand how muc...

Distribution of responses for highest coral cover observed by region Numbers of respondents by position: professional scientists = 133, students = 45, managers, policy makers or NGO employees = 12, recreational divers = 5. Number of respondents by region: Atlantic Ocean = 5, Caribbean = 54, Indian Ocean = 13, Pacific Ocean = 109, Persian Gulf = 4,...

Distribution of responses for expert opinion baseline estimates of coral reef cover by survey respondent position Numbers of respondents by position: professional scientists = 133, students = 45, managers, policy makers or NGO employees = 12, recreational divers = 5. Number of respondents by region: Atlantic Ocean = 5, Caribbean = 54, Indian Ocean...

Distribution of responses for expert opinion baseline estimates of coral reef cover according to the region where the respondent reported their highest observed coral cover Numbers of respondents by position: professional scientists = 133, students = 45, managers, policy makers or NGO employees = 12, recreational divers = 5. Number of respondents b...

Distribution of responses for first year that a coral reef was observed by survey respondent position Numbers of respondents by position: professional scientists = 133, students = 45, managers, policy makers or NGO employees = 12, recreational divers = 5.

Distribution of responses for highest coral cover observed by survey respondent position Numbers of respondents by position: professional scientists = 133, students = 45, managers, policy makers or NGO employees = 12, recreational divers = 5. Number of respondents by region: Atlantic Ocean = 5, Caribbean = 54, Indian Ocean = 13, Pacific Ocean = 109...

Qualitiative survey data Survey data provided by respondents about coral baselines, highest coral cover observed, location, position, and year coral first observed.

Intra- and interspecific interactions can be broken down into facilitative and competitive components. The net interaction between two organisms is simply the sum of these counteracting elements. Disentangling the positive and negative components of species interactions is a critical step in advancing our understanding of how the interaction betwee...

Species interaction components based on relative growth Net, negative, and positive effects of three salt marsh matrix species on adult and juvenile Aster based on relative growth. Apparent differences in the strength of interaction components among the matrix species were not statistically significant (P > 0.05, ANOVA).

Intra- and interspecific interactions can be broken down into facilitative and competitive components. The net interaction between two organisms is simply the sum of these counteracting elements. Disentangling the positive and negative components of species interactions is a critical step in advancing our understanding of how the interaction betwee...

Intra- and interspecific interactions can be broken down into facilitative and competitive components. The net interaction between two organisms is simply the sum of these counteracting elements. Disentangling the positive and negative components of species interactions is a critical step in advancing our understanding of how the interaction betwee...

Invasive lionfish are assumed to significantly affect Caribbean reef fish communities. However, evidence of lionfish effects on native reef fishes is based on uncontrolled observational studies or small-scale, unrepresentative experiments, with findings ranging from no effect to large effects on prey density and richness. Moreover, whether lionfish...

Appendix: Supplemental Text, Tables, and Figures

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Supporting information

The natural, prehuman abundance of most large predators is unknown because of the lack of historical data and a limited understanding of the natural factors that control their populations. Determining the supportable predator biomass at a given location (that is, the predator carrying capacity) would help managers to optimize protection and would p...

Coral reefs are dynamic systems whose composition is highly influenced by unpredictable biotic and abiotic factors. Understanding the spatial scale at which long-term predictions of reef composition can be made will be crucial for guiding conservation efforts. Using a 22-year time series of benthic composition data from 20 reefs on the Kenyan and T...

Coral reefs are dynamic systems whose composition is highly influenced by unpredictable biotic and abiotic factors. Understanding the spatial scale at which long-term predictions of reef composition can be made will be crucial for guiding conservation efforts. Using a 22-year time series of benthic composition data from 20 reefs on the Kenyan and T...

The global decline of reef-building corals is understood to be due to a combination of local and global stressors. However, many reef scientists assume that local factors predominate and that isolated reefs, far from human activities, are generally healthier and more resilient. Here we show that coral reef degradation is not correlated with human p...

Coral reefs are dynamic systems whose composition is highly influenced by unpredictable biotic and abiotic factors. Understanding the spatial scale at which long-term predictions of reef composition can be made will be crucial for guiding conservation efforts. Using a 22-year time series of benthic composition data from 20 reefs on the Kenyan and T...

ABSTRACT: Native prey can be particularly vulnerable to consumption by exotic predators. Prey naiveté, the failure to recognize a novel predator due to lack of recent co-evolutionary history, likely facilitates the disproportionate impact that some exotic predators exert on prey populations. Lionfish Pterois volitans, exotic predators from the Paci...