Nicola L Foster

University of Plymouth | UoP · School of Biological and Marine Sciences

As global temperatures continue to rise, shallow coral reef bleaching has become more intense and widespread. Mesophotic coral ecosystems reside in deeper (30–150 m), cooler water and were thought to offer a refuge to shallow-water reefs. Studies now show that mesophotic coral ecosystems instead have limited connectivity with shallow corals but hos...

Research on Mesophotic Coral Ecosystems (MCEs; 30–150 m) has grown exponentially in the last few decades, highlighting their rich diversity and extensive distribution. However, they are still largely underexplored compared to shallow-water coral reefs and frequently remain under-protected and under-represented in marine spatial planning. One reason...

Aim Research on mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs) has increased exponentially in recent decades, and the significance of this ecosystem has been recognised both in terms of biodiversity and distribution. However, this research has mostly focussed on corals and is globally sporadic, with the Indian Ocean remaining largely unexplored and overall MCE...

Understanding patterns of connectivity among populations of marine organisms is essential for the development of realistic, spatially explicit models of population dynamics. Two approaches, empirical genetic patterns and oceanographic dispersal modelling, have been used to estimate levels of evolutionary connectivity among marine populations but ra...

This catalogue covers the reef benthos of mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs) of the Chagos Archipelago (6° S, 71°30’ E), central Indian Ocean. The in-situ images presented here were collected during two expeditions, in November 2019 and March 2020. A Saab Seaeye Falcon Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) was used to collect benthic imagery of MCEs. Six...

Climate change can potentially impact coral reefs through several key mechanisms, in particular increasing sea surface temperatures, ocean acidification, increasing storminess, and sea level rise. This chapter focuses on the impact of rising sea temperatures on coral reef ecosystems, particularly the effect of mass bleaching of the corals themselve...

Given the recent trend towards establishing very large marine protected areas (MPAs) and the high potential of these to contribute to global conservation targets, we review outcomes of the last decade of marine conservation research in the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), one of the largest MPAs in the world. The BIOT MPA consists of the atol...

Evidence of alloparental care during the incubation stage has largely been demonstrated for species that incubate their offspring externally in a nest. Alloparental care in these species generally consists of the rearing of mixed broods which contain a low proportion of "foreign" young alongside the host's own offspring. However, many animals, incl...

Video and image data are regularly used in the field of benthic ecology to document biodiversity. However, their use is subject to a number of challenges, principally the identification of taxa within the images without associated physical specimens. The challenge of applying traditional taxonomic keys to the identification of fauna from images has...

Video and image data are regularly used in the field of benthic ecology to document biodiversity. However, their use is subject to a number of challenges, principally the identification of taxa within the images without associated physical specimens. The challenge of applying traditional taxonomic keys to the identification of fauna from images has...

Benthic ecosystems are chronically undersampled, particularly in environments >50 m depth. Yet a rising level of anthropogenic threats makes data collection ever more urgent. Currently, modern underwater sampling tools, particularly autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), are able to collect vast image data, but cannot bypass the bottleneck formed b...

Orbicella annularis (Ellis and Solander, 1786), a key reef building species, is unusual among Caribbean corals in the flexibility it displays in its symbioses with dinoflagellates in the family Symbiodiniaceae. This variability has been documented at a range of spatial scales; from within and between colonies to scales spanning the entire species r...

There is a need for novel classes of antimicrobials to be discovered in order to tackle the growing challenges of antimicrobial resistance. Deep-sea sponges are drawing much attention due to the phylogenetically diverse and dense communities of microbes that live within their tissues. Bioprospecting these sponges offers the possibility of exploring...

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and networks of MPAs are being implemented globally as a spatial management tool for achieving conservation objectives. There has been considerable progress in reaching the prescribed 10% protected area target for 2020, outlined in the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi Target 11 and the United Nations Sustainabl...

• Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and networks of MPAs are being implemented globally as a spatial management tool for achieving conservation objectives. There has been considerable progress in reaching the prescribed 10% protected area target for 2020, outlined in the Convention on Biological Diversity Aichi Target 11 and the United Nations Sustaina...

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Aichi Target 11 states that, “by 2020, at least 17 per cent of terrestrial and inland water, and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem services, are conserved through effectively and equitably managed, ecologically representative...

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a management tool used to respond to human-derived threats in marine ecosystems. Historically, MPAs have been established on an individual ad hoc basis, rather than through a systematic, planned process. However, high levels of functional and spatial connectivity within marine ecosystems have led to the suggestion...

The physiological performance of a reef-building coral is a combined outcome of both the coral host and its algal endosymbionts, Symbiodinium. While Orbicella annularis—a dominant reef-building coral in the Wider Caribbean—is known to be a flexible host in terms of the diversity of Symbiodinium types it can associate with, it is uncertain how this...

Managing ecological systems, which operate over large spatial scales, is inherently difficult and often requires sourcing data from different countries and organizations. The assumption might be made that data collected using similar methodologies are comparable, but this is rarely tested. Here, benthic video data recorded using different towed und...

Methodology and Discussion - Table 1(SADIE outputs, describing the indices for evaluating the spatial distribution of each observed SymbiodiniumITS2 type), Table 2(Cluster indices generated by SADIE analysis for symbionts at each site), Table 3(Summary of DISTLM population-scale outputs), Table 4 (Genotype data for the coral host, Orbicella annular...

Climate change can potentially impact coral reefs through several key mechanisms, in particular increasing sea surface temperatures, ocean acidification, increasing storminess and sea level rise. This chapter focuses on the impact of rising sea temperatures on coral reef ecosystems, particularly the effect of mass bleaching of the corals themselves...

Organisms exposed to environmental stressors respond by rapidly synthesising a suite of highly conserved proteins called heat shock proteins (HSPs). Environmental stress can also enhance and/or block memory formation, with longterm memory formation requiring gene activation and protein synthesis. Thermal stress in the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis c...

Symbiodinium D, a relatively rare clade of algal endosymbiont with a global distribution, has attracted interest as some of its sub-cladal types induce increased thermal tolerance and associated trade-offs, including reduced growth rate in its coral hosts. Members of Symbiodinium D are increasingly reported to comprise low-abundance ‘cryptic’ (30 %...

Symbiodinium D, a relatively rare clade of algal endosymbiont with a global distribution, has attracted interest as some of its sub-cladal types induce increased thermal tolerance and associated trade-offs, including reduced growth rate in its coral hosts. Members of Symbiodinium D are increasingly reported to comprise low-abundance ‘cryptic’ ( 30...

Animals that fast during breeding and/or development, such as phocids, must regulate energy balance carefully to maximize reproductive fitness and survival probability. Adiponectin, produced by adipose tissue, contributes to metabolic regulation by modulating sensitivity to insulin, increasing fatty acid oxidation by liver and muscle, and promoting...

New high-resolution image data obtained from the Hebrides Terrace Seamount and analysed by ourselves and Henry and Roberts (Henry, L-A., and Roberts, J. M. Recommendations for best practice in deep-sea habitat classification: Bullimore et al. as a case study. ICES Journal of Marine Science, 71: 895–898.), suggested that we may have misidentified So...

Pairwise contests occur when two individuals compete directly over ownership of an indivisible resource. Contests vary in the degree of escalation, some encounters being settled through non-injurious behaviour while others are only resolved after dangerous fighting. Here, we investigate the role of relatedness, assessed using AFLP analysis, on the...

Bullimore, R. D., Foster, N. L., and Howell, K. L. 2013. Coral-characterized benthic assemblages of the deep Northeast Atlantic: defining “Coral Gardens” to support future habitat mapping efforts – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 70: 511–522. Providing statistically robust maps of habitat distributions on which to base spatial planning and manageme...

Demands on the resources of the deep-sea have increased in recent years. Consequently, the need to create and implement a comprehensive network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) to help manage and protect these resources has become a global political priority. Efforts are currently underway to implement MPA networks in the deep North East Atlantic....

Supporting information file includes Tables S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5. Table S1: List of taxa and total abundance in the depth band 200–1100 m. Table S2: List of taxa and total abundance in the depth band 1100–1800 m. Table S3: Species accumulation z-values for observed (Sobs) and estimated (Chao1) species richness. Table S4: Estimates of the percenta...

K-selected species with low rates of sexual recruitment may utilise storage effects where low adult mortality allows a number of individuals to persist through time until a favourable recruitment period occurs. Alternative methods of recruitment may become increasingly important for such species if the availability of favourable conditions for sexu...

Montastraea annularis, an endangered species and until recently considered the most important reef building coral in the Caribbean, is known to host multiple endosymbiotic dinoflagellate clades. Symbiont taxa (of the genus Symbiodinium) are of rapidly growing interest, as they play a role in the temperature sensitivity of the holobiont, and hence t...

In recent decades, a rise in coral mortality, attributed to increased frequency of mass-bleaching events, increased prevalence of disease, and more frequent and severe hurricanes, has contributed to a rapid proliferation of macroalgae across many Caribbean reefs. As a consequence, the frequency of coral-algal interactions has risen. Here, we docume...

Long‐lived sedentary organisms with a massive morphology are often assumed to utilize a storage effect whereby the persistence of a small group of adults can maintain the population when sexual recruitment fails. However, employing storage effects could prove catastrophic if, under changing climatic conditions, the time period between favourable co...

The patch dynamics (colonisation rate, growth rate, and extinction rate) are quantified for two dominant species of macroalgae on a Caribbean forereef in Belize: Lobophora variegata (Lamouroux) and Dictyota pulchella (Hörnig and Schnetter). Measurements were taken on time scales of days, weeks, months, and years during which three hurricanes occurr...