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Between 2004 and 2009, South Australia suffered its longest period of below average annual rainfall. This impacted riverine ecosystems and particularly the Murray-Darling Basin (MDB), the largest river system in Australia. The MDB combines 30,000 wetlands of which the Coorong wetland is of significant importance for the reproduction of bird and fish species, and is listed under the Ramsar Convention. We sampled water in the Coorong wetland between 2011 and 2013 and compiled additional data from 1997 to 2013 to assess the impact of the drought and subsequent recovery of the environment. The salinity levels of the Coorong wetland increased dramatically during the drought because of the lack of freshwater inflow from the Murray River. The changes in water flow observed from 2002 to 2009 had an impact on the number of habitats present along the Coorong wetland. In addition, a shift in community composition was observed between the freshwater habitat ( 85) dominated by diatoms. It is evident that during the drought, the Coorong wetland was dominated by diatoms and dinoflagellates. After the drought, the North Lagoon was dominated by chlorophytes up to a salinity level of 20. However, over 20 and in the South Lagoon, diatoms dominated the community. This study highlights how salinity levels drive the phytoplankton community. Based on the complementary data obtained for salinity between 1997 and 2010, there is a significant difference between the salinity levels observed during the drought and those observed before and after the drought. It appears that salinity levels are now recovered to what they were in the late 1990s.

Fatty acid (FA) analysis is increasingly being used as a tool to investigate the diet of sharks and rays. Quantifying the diet of sharks using FA profiles, however, requires an understanding of the effects that fluctuating diet has on the biochemical pathways in different tissues, and of the time scales of FA integration. The effects of dietary changes on the muscle and liver FA profiles were investigated in a controlled feeding experiment with Port Jackson sharks (Heterodontus portusjacksoni) fed exclusively on squid then prawns for six weeks each. Multivariate analysis indicated that shark muscle and liver FA profiles were 9.8% and 7.7% dissimilar after dietary change. This suggests that dietary FAs are preferentially utilised by muscle after dietary change and that muscle FA profiles are a stronger indicator of dietary changes occurring within three weeks of sampling than the FA profiles of the liver. This should be carefully considered when determining the type of tissue and frequency of sampling needed to undertake chondrichthyan dietary studies based on FA profile analysis. Some FA biomarkers and their metabolic processes are also identified and described, but further work is required to enable quantitative assessment of a species diet. Data presented here gives justification towards more complex experiments to investigate metabolic and FA tissue incorporation rates.

Coastal upwelling systems play an essential role in bringing cold and nutrient-rich water into the euphotic zone, hence enhancing the biological productivity of the world's oceans. We describe a “cryptic” upwelling occurring in South Australian waters, in which cold upwelled waters do not reach surface waters and do not exhibit a sea surface temperature (SST) signature. Due to the wide continental shelf (ca. 100 km), upwelled waters form a sub-surface cold water pool and are forced north-west after a secondary event. Using flow cytometry we investigated the abundance and composition of viruses, heterotrophic bacteria and pico-phytoplankton within upwelling affected and unaffected waters. Our results identified the presence of upwelled waters at and below the Deep-Chlorophyll Maximum (DCM), where water temperature was at least 4 °C colder than surface waters. In contrast to previous studies, no significant differences were observed between upwelled and non-upwelled waters for most individual viral, bacterial and pico-phytoplankton sub-groups. However, one viral, one bacterial and two pico-phytoplankton sub-groups were significantly more abundant at the DCM. This indicates the presence of depth- and population-specific shifts in abundance and potential niche partitioning of these cytometrically-defined sub-groups that may be related to their host organisms and/or resource availability.

Despite the increasing awareness of the role of viruses and heterotrophic bacteria in microbial dynamics and biogeochemical cycles, there is still a critical lack of information on their community composition and dynamics, especially in relation to upwellings. We investigated, within surface waters and the Deep Chlorophyll Max, the community composition and dynamics of flow cytometrically defined sub-populations of heterotrophic bacteria and virus-like particles in nearby water masses that were affected and unaffected by a localised wind-driven coastal upwelling. In contrast to previous studies we uniquely identified a 4-fold increase in total viral abundance and a decrease in bacterial abundance, from upwelled to offshore waters. Individual viral sub-populations were seen to correlate significantly to both bacterial populations and chlorophyll a, suggesting the possibility of individual viral populations infecting multiple host species rather than the often assumed single host species. The percentage of HDNA bacteria was high (84.3–93.4%) within upwelled waters, in accordance with the highest recorded values within an upwelling system, and decreased down to 35.5–42.6% away from the upwelling. Additionally, changes in the community composition of individual bacterial sub-populations suggest individual populations might be better adapted to distinct environments. We suggest that each flow cytometrically defined bacterial population may possess its own environmental niche where favourable conditions for that population result in an increase in abundance, cellular activity and productivity.

Proximity Communication (PxC) facilitates the integration of VLSI chips in a package using near-field capacitive coupling between chips, eliminating the need for solder or wires for I/O at the chip-to-chip interface. PxC provides chip-to-chip interconnect with bandwidth density and energy per bit similar to on-chip I/O, enabling system on a chip performance within a package. We have built early packages to explore assembly concepts and developed test methods for verification of the PxC design space. This package started with an adhesively-bonded three-chip subassembly of two Island chips and one Bridge chip. The two outer Island chips were reflowed to an alumina ceramic substrate. In the resulting package, communication between chips was achieved using PxC from Island to Bridge and then from the Bridge to the other Island. We demonstrated the ability to detect the X, Y, and Z chip-to-chip relative location and the ability to steer PxC data to optimize signal integrity within the package. This paper describes the first demonstration of active monitoring of chip-to-chip alignment during thermal cycling, in a PxC-enabled package. Leveraging this work, future packages will better exploit PxC benefits such as free-space electrical interconnect and re-workability of multi-chip modules.

Metallothioneins (MT) concentration, renal damage, and bone malformations were investigated in 38 adult Tursiops aduncus carcasses to determine any associations with cadmium, copper, zinc, mercury, lead and selenium. Significantly higher concentrations of cadmium, copper, and zinc in the liver were observed in dolphins showing evidence of more advanced renal damage. No significant differences in metal or selenium concentrations in the liver were observed between groups differing in level of bone malformations. Some dolphins displayed evidence of toxicity and knowledge of metal toxicity pathways were used to elucidate the cause of these abnormalities. Two dolphins had high metal burdens, high MT concentrations, renal damage, and evidence of bone malformations, indicating possible severe and prolonged metal toxicity. One dolphin showed evidence of renal damage, but the lack of any other symptoms suggests that this was unlikely to be caused by metal toxicity. We recommend examining a range of metal toxicity symptoms simultaneously to aid in distinguishing metal toxicity from unrelated aetiologies.

Sampling was conducted within inshore and offshore sites, characterized by highly dissimilar hydrodynamic and hydrobiological conditions, in the Eastern English Channel. The eutrophic inshore site was dominated by the influence of a dense bloom of the Prymnesiophyceae phytoplankton species Phaeocystis globosa, while the offshore site was characterized by more oceanic conditions. Within each site the microscale distributions of chlorophyll a and several flow cytometrically-defined subpopulations of heterotrophic bacteria and viruses were measured at a spatial resolution of 5 cm. The inshore site was characterized by comparatively high levels of microscale spatial variability, with concentrations of chlorophyll a, heterotrophic bacteria, and viruses varying by 8, 11 and 3.5-fold respectively across distances of several centimeters. Within the offshore site, microscale distributions of chlorophyll a and bacteria were markedly less variable than within the inshore site, although viruses exhibited slightly higher levels of heterogeneity. Significant mesoscale variability was also observed when mean microbial parameters were compared between the inshore and offshore sites. However, when the extent of change (max/min and coefficient of variation) was compared between meso- and microscales, the variability observed at the microscale, particularly in the inshore site, was substantially greater. This pattern suggests that microscale processes associated with Phaeocystis globosa bloom dynamics can generate heterogeneity amongst microbial communities to a greater degree than large scale oceanographic discontinuities.

Marine phytoplankton experience competition, predation, infection and aggregation occurring across distances of micrometres to centimetres. However, the consequences of these interactions influence global processes, such as climate and fisheries productivity. There is a long-standing default assumption that these global processes cannot be traced to plankton distributions and interactions below a few metres because of the homogenising effect of turbulence [Hutchinson, G.E., 1961. The paradox of the plankton. Am. Nat. 95, 137–146.; Siegel, D.A., 1998. Resource competition in a discrete environment: Why are plankton distributions paradoxical? Limnol. Oceanogr. 43, 1133–1146.]. We show that, in active turbulence, phytoplankton patches, on the order of 10 cm, have repeatable asymmetry and regular spacing over distances of centimetres to tens of metres. The regularity and hierarchical nature of the patches in mixed ocean water means that phytoplankton are distributed in a dynamic, but definite seascape topography, where groups of patches coalesce between intermittent turbulent eddies. These patches may link large scale processes and microscale interactions, acting as fundamental components of marine ecosystems that influence grazing efficiency, taxonomic diversity, and the initiation of aggregation and subsequent carbon flux.

Large temporal and spatial data series are increasingly available and easy to produce. This paper uses Zipf analysis to evaluate serial data sets from the HOTS, BATS, EquaPac and high-resolution vertical profiles of FluoroMAP. Zipf analysis produced Zipf exponents from best-fit lines that permitted comparison among data sets. It allows comparison of one-dimensional series despite differences in scale and missing data. Zipf exponents ranged from 0.043 to 0.83. Serial data with sampling intervals of milliseconds and months showed exponents that ranged around 0.3. To the extent that Zipf exponents measure structure and variation, the indication is that structure of distributions is similar over millimeters and hundreds of kilometers. Zipf analysis provides a means to quantify similarities and differences, and suggests that variation is linked across many length scales for phytoplankton.

Two data analysis methods, referred to as the Zipf and Pareto methods, initially introduced in economics and linguistics two centuries ago and subsequently used in a wide range of fields (word frequency in languages and literature, human demographics, finance, city formation, genomics and physics), are described and proposed here as a potential tool to classify space–time patterns in marine ecology. The aim of this paper is, first, to present the theoretical bases of Zipf and Pareto laws, and to demonstrate that they are strictly equivalent. In that way, we provide a one-to-one correspondence between their characteristic exponents and argue that the choice of technique is a matter of convenience. Second, we argue that the appeal of this technique is that it is assumption-free for the distribution of the data and regularity of sampling interval, as well as being extremely easy to implement. Finally, in order to allow marine ecologists to identify and classify any structure in their data sets, we provide a step by step overview of the characteristic shapes expected for Zipf's law for the cases of randomness, power law behavior, power law behavior contaminated by internal and external noise, and competing power laws illustrated on the basis of typical ecological situations such as mixing processes involving non-interacting and interacting species, phytoplankton growth processes and differential grazing by zooplankton.

The microscale (1 and 4 cm sampling resolution) distributions of chemical (O2, NH3, NO3−, NO2−, PO43−) and biological (Chl a, phytoplankton, bacterioplankton, viruses) parameters were measured in the 16 cm of water immediately overlaying the sediment-water interface (SWI) within a temperate mangrove estuary in South Australia during December 2003 and March 2004. Shear velocities ( u * ) during the time of sampling were very low (

To identify the potential relationship between Pheaocystis globosa bloom conditions and seawater properties, a hydrobiological survey was performed in the inshore waters of the Eastern English Channel over the course of the phytoplankton spring bloom. Chlorophyll concentration, auto- and hetero/mixotrophic composition of protists and standing stock, and seawater viscosity were measured weekly from March to June 2004. The decline of the bloom is characterized by a massive foam formation in the turbulent surf zone. Before foam formation, seawater viscosity significantly increased, showing a significant positive correlation with chlorophyll concentration. In contrast, after foam formation this correlation was negative, seawater viscosity kept increasing despite a sharp decrease in chlorophyll concentrations. No significant correlation has been found between seawater viscosity and the composition of the phytoplankton assemblages observed during the survey. However, significant positive correlations have been found between seawater viscosity and both the size and the abundance of P. globosa colonies. From the correlation patterns observed between chlorophyll concentration and seawater viscosity, we suggest that the rheological properties of seawater are mainly driven by extracellular materials associated with colony formation and maintenance rather than by cell composition and standing stock.

It is shown that “super diffusion” (i.e., the rate of growth of the variance of displacements is faster than linear in time) can be caused by a chaotic mechanism. A one-dimensional amplified climbing-sine model generates a diffusive process with the variance growing asymptotically like t m , 1 m B t ( B : constant > 1).