Coral Reef Research in PLoS ONE

We were delighted to hear that PLoS ONE has become a preferred venue for publishing in the Coral Reef research community:

“PLoS ONE has a huge standing and popularity in the Coral Reef world–it is where all the great stuff is coming out. I think it is really popular in part because so many coral reef scientists are in developing countries, with little access to paid subscription journals.” – John F. Bruno (PLoS ONE Author & Editorial Board member)

IMAGE: Diverse benthic habitat off Adak Island, Alaska, showing sponges, hydroids, and stylasterid corals of the genus Stylaster at a depth of 150 meters (from http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0002429).

We’d like to take this opportunity to express our gratitude to this community for embracing PLoS ONE and Open Access publishing and also to showcase this research (some of which is listed below, along with the name of the Editorial Board member who handled the peer review for each paper). Feel free to share this with colleagues and let them know that we welcome more submissions in this area!

John F. Bruno (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA):

• A “Shallow Phylogeny” of Shallow Barnacles (Chthamalus) by Wares JP et al.
• Fishery-Independent Data Reveal Negative Effect of Human Population Density on Caribbean Predatory Fish Communities by Stallings CD.
• Spatio-Temporal Transmission Patterns of Black-Band Disease in a Coral Community by Zvuloni A et al.
• Vibrio Zinc-Metalloprotease Causes Photoinactivation of Coral Endosymbionts and Coral Tissue Lesions by Sussman M et al.
• Natural Disease Resistance in Threatened Staghorn Corals by Vollmer SV and Kline DI.

Niyaz Ahmed (Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, India):

• Mitochondrial and Nuclear Genes Suggest that Stony Corals Are Monophyletic but Most Families of Stony Corals Are Not (Order Scleractinia, Class Anthozoa, Phylum Cnidaria) by Fukami H et al.
• Coral Pathogens Identified for White Syndrome (WS) Epizootics in the Indo-Pacific by Sussman M et al.
• Microbial Ecology of Four Coral Atolls in the Northern Line Islands by Dinsdale EA et al.
• Baselines and Degradation of Coral Reefs in the Northern Line Islands by Sandin SA et al.

Steve Vollmer (Northeastern University, USA):

• Reef Endemism, Host Specificity and Temporal Stability in Populations of Symbiotic Dinoflagellates from Two Ecologically Dominant Caribbean Corals by Thornhill DJ et al.
• Coping with Commitment: Projected Thermal Stress on Coral Reefs under Different Future Scenarios by Donner SD.
• Macroalgae Has No Effect on the Severity and Dynamics of Caribbean Yellow Band Disease by Vu I et al.

Rob Freckleton (University of Sheffield, UK):

• Climate Warming, Marine Protected Areas and the Ocean-Scale Integrity of Coral Reef Ecosystems by Graham NAJ et al.
• Regional Decline of Coral Cover in the Indo-Pacific: Timing, Extent, and Subregional Comparisons by Bruno JF and Selig ER.

Robert DeSalle (American Museum of Natural History, USA):

• Identification and Gene Expression Analysis of a Taxonomically Restricted Cysteine-Rich Protein Family in Reef-Building Corals</a by Sunagawa S et al.
• From Offshore to Onshore: Multiple Origins of Shallow-Water Corals from Deep-Sea Ancestors by Lindner A et al.

Sean Rands (University of Bristol, UK):

• Endemicity, Biogeography, Composition, and Community Structure On a Northeast Pacific Seamount by McClain CR et al.
• Genetic Traces of Recent Long-Distance Dispersal in a Predominantly Self-Recruiting Coral by van Oppen MJH et al.

Stuart Humphries (University of Sheffield, UK):

• Expulsion of Symbiotic Algae during Feeding by the Green Hydra – a Mechanism for Regulating Symbiont Density? by Fishman Y et al.
• Macroalgal-Associated Dinoflagellates Belonging to the Genus Symbiodinium in Caribbean Reefs by Porto I et al.

Suzannah Rutherford (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, USA):

• Some Rare Indo-Pacific Coral Species Are Probable Hybrids by Richards ZT et al.
• The p53 Tumor Suppressor-Like Protein nvp63 Mediates Selective Germ Cell Death in the Sea Anemone Nematostella vectensis by Sandra Pankow S and Bamberger C.

Ross Thompson (Monash University, Australia):

• Nutrient Enrichment Increases Mortality of Mangroves by Lovelock CE et al.

Eric Warrant (Lund University, Sweden):

• The Effect of Adult Aggression on Habitat Selection by Settlers of Two Coral-Dwelling Damselfishes by Ben-Tzvi O et al.

Stuart A. Sandin (University of California San Diego, USA):

• Doom and Boom on a Resilient Reef: Climate Change, Algal Overgrowth and Coral Recovery by Diaz-Pulido G et al.

Eshel Ben-Jacob (Tel Aviv University, Israel):

• Critical Evaluation of Branch Polarity and Apical Dominance as Dictators of Colony Astogeny in a Branching Coral by Shaish L and Rinkevich B.

Craig R. McClain (National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, USA):

• Phase Shift from a Coral to a Corallimorph-Dominated Reef Associated with a Shipwreck on Palmyra Atoll by Work TM et al.

Hany A. El-Shemy (Cairo University, Egypt):

• Diversity and Evolution of Coral Fluorescent Proteins by Alieva NO et al.

Robin Charles May (University of Birmingham, UK):

• Cellular Responses in Sea Fan Corals: Granular Amoebocytes React to Pathogen and Climate Stressors by Mydlarz LD et al.

Zoe Finkel (Mount Allison University, Canada):

• Shellfish Face Uncertain Future in High CO2 World: Influence of Acidification on Oyster Larvae Calcification and Growth in Estuaries by by Miller AW et al.

As a truly multidisciplinary journal, PLoS ONE publishes a wide range of Coral Reef research that has (to date) spanned the subject areas of Marine and Aquatic Sciences, Evolutionary Biology, Ecology, Infectious Diseases, Plant Biology, Microbiology, Physics, Science Policy, Genetics and Genomics, Developmental Biology, Biophysics, Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, Computational Biology, Biotechnology, Public Health and Epidemiology, Physiology, and Immunology.