Nautilus and Allonautilus cephalopods and their extinct ancestors have been drifting through of the ocean for more than 500 million years. Researchers have spent the last 40 years trying to understand how these mysterious “living fossils” thrive in areas with limited nutrients. published in Scientific Reports, a UW-led team documented new habits and habitats for current Nautilus and Allonautilus species. These creatures appear to live in deeper water than their extinct cousins did, and the younger ones live twice as deep as the fully mature adults. Nautilus and Allonautilus species scavenge their food and never stop moving. While a few species migrate hundreds of meters down at dawn and then back up at dusk every day, the team found that most species aren’t quite as intrepid. The researchers also describe a new population of Allonautilus in waters off the island , one of several populations thriving due to hunting restrictions inspired in part by research efforts from this team.

For more information, contact senior author , UW professor of both biology and Earth and space sciences, at argo@uw.edu.

Other UW co-authors are , and . A full list of co-authors and funding is included

Green clay tennis courts become carbon negative after 10 years

The United States has around a quarter of a million tennis courts, 40,000 of which are helping mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Green clay tennis courts, an alternative to traditional hard courts and the red clay courts popular in Europe, are constructed with a type of rock that reacts with carbon dioxide and water to sequester carbon as a stable dissolved salt. In , UW researchers show that in the U.S., green clay courts remove 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year and 80% of green clay courts make up for construction emissions within 10 years. Moving forward, the researchers hope to experiment with other materials that also remove carbon dioxide without compromising performance for players.

For more information contact lead author , UW assistant professor of oceanography, at fjpavia@uw.edu.

A full list of co-authors and funding is available .

Temperature dynamics, not just extremes, impact heat tolerance in mussels

Intertidal mussels, forming bumpy layers on shoreline rocks, withstand significant temperature swings as the tide ebbs and flows. These creatures live in one of the most thermally variable environments on Earth, but a new study shows that the rate, timing and duration of heating and cooling impact their metabolic rate, a proxy for overall health. At the UW鈥檚 , researchers exposed mussels to temperature regimens with equal highs and lows but different patterns of change. Even when the average temperature for a set period was the same, the mussels鈥� response was distinct. These results, , show that predicting how marine organisms respond to climate change means considering how temperature changes over time, not just how warm it gets.

For more information, contact lead author , assistant professor of biology at the College of the Holy Cross and a mentor for the UW Friday Harbor Laboratories , at mnishizaki@holycross.edu.

The other UW co-author is . A full list of co-authors and funding is available .

When algae stop growing, bacteria start swarming

Tiny geometric algae, called , produce nearly a quarter of the world鈥檚 organic matter by photosynthesis. In the microscopic marine universe, diatoms coexist with both harmful and helpful bacteria. A new study, , describes how a recently identified species of marine bacteria targets diatoms based on growth phase and nutrient availability. Growing diatoms can resist bacterial attacks, but when growth ceases, the bacteria modulate their gene expression patterns to become aggressive 鈥� first swimming and releasing compounds that damage the diatom and then clustering around them to feed. Bacteria can also overcome the diatom鈥檚 defenses in nutrient-rich environments. These findings highlight the dynamic relationship between bacteria and algae in the lab. Moving forward, researchers will explore what, if anything, changes in a more complex environment.

For more information, contact lead author , UW postdoctoral fellow in oceanography, at dawiener5@gmail.com.

Other UW co-authors are and . A full list of co-authors and funding is available .

Biologists at the 天美影视传媒 hope September will bring welcome news for a dazzling array of sea creatures that have long been victims of human aesthetic fascination.

At a meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, an international assembly of scientists and policymakers will decide then if the chambered nautilus and its kin 鈥� all quizzically shaped relatives of squid 鈥� should be subject to global restrictions on trade and collection. With nautilus numbers plummeting in the Philippines and other regions due to their prized shells, many researchers say it is long past time to protect these mysterious marine creatures.

“Unregulated fishing is a huge issue for these animals,” said Frederick Dooley, a researcher and instructor in the UW Department of Biology. “We’re at risk of losing whole populations just as we’re learning about their genetic diversity.”

Dooley is one of several scientists and students working with , a lauded expert on nautiluses who also happens to be a UW professor of biology and Earth and space sciences. Through three decades of sun-baked, salt-encrusted field studies across the Pacific basin, Ward and his team have shown that nautiluses are more widespread than scientists once thought.

They have of nautilus populations from the Great Barrier Reef to the Philippines and collected genetic data of these “living fossils.” Ward’s discoveries about these long-lived enigmatic how nautiluses eat, reproduce, travel and stay afloat in the narrow range of ocean water pressure and temperature they can tolerate.

“Previous studies showed that nautiluses like to stay close to the relatively shallow bottom areas near island chains,” said , a UW biology graduate student working with Ward and Dooley. “But now we have documented nautiluses among island chains thousands of miles apart and our genetic data show that far-flung populations likely breed with one another. How does this happen?”

So even after decades of study, the nautiluses still surprise Ward and his team. Scattered among these recent discoveries, which throw cold water on old ideas that nautilus populations are isolated from one another, is the occasional surprise. Last year near New Guinea, Ward and his team spotted a for the first time in 30 years.

“What a surprise,” said Ward. “We had set up baited traps to attract nautiluses, and of course they came. But we also saw this rare species, which we had not seen since the early 1980s!”

Ward’s body of research has helped policymakers recognize the impact nautiluses have on ocean ecosystems, as well as how they can 鈥� and cannot 鈥� replenish their numbers in the face of unrestricted, unregulated fishing.

“Nautiluses are not harvested for meat, food, products or any other practical purpose 鈥� just their shells,” said Dooley. “In areas where harvesting is high 鈥� like the Philippines 鈥� we see a crash in the nautilus population.”

The September meeting in Johannesburg will determine which species should be subject to new restrictions on trade, harvesting and collection by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or . All but a handful of countries have ratified the convention, which since 1975 has imposed limits on trade of over 35,000 species. Protections under the CITES conventions can range from the total prohibition of imports and exports to limits on collection or licensing requirements.

This year, the United States delegation to CITES will propose regulating trade in nautilus species, shells and products. Normally, a country only advocates protection for a species within its borders. While the tropical nautilus seems far removed from Alaskan salmon or Maine lobster, Ward’s team verified that nautiluses definitely reside within United States waters 鈥� specifically around American Samoa.

In June, Ward testified at a meeting of the UN Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome, presenting recent data from his team and collaborators that laid bare the precarious decline of nautilus populations. Delegations from over 50 countries were present. Along with representatives from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, they helped stave off an effort to block consideration of nautiluses at the upcoming CITES gathering. This gives Ward hope for the Johannesburg meeting.

“This was a big hurdle, as attendees included major doubters and skeptics,” said Ward. “I stood before them with data 鈥� data gathered by my current team over the past five years, data from former UW graduate students who are now faculty members or researchers 鈥� , and 鈥� as well as data from our colleague at the City University of New York.”

Ward, Dooley and Vandepas and their colleagues continue to gather, process and analyze the surprising diversity of nautiluses. These creatures are a delightful contradiction for biologists. They appear in the fossil record going back millions of years, yet show recent genetic adaptations and signatures of evolutionary change. In short, they are a delightful crop for biologists who seek to understand evolution, ecology and genetics.

Assuming, that is, that the nautiluses can be preserved.

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For more information, contact Dooley at 206-543-2962 or fdd@uw.edu, Vandepas at 206-543-2962 or lvandepa@uw.edu and Ward at argo@uw.edu.

The creature in question is Allonautilus scrobiculatus, a species of nautilus that Ward and a colleague had previously discovered off of Ndrova Island in Papua New Guinea. are small, distant cousins of squid and cuttlefish. They are an ancient lineage of animal, often christened a “living fossil” because their distinctive shells appear in the fossil record over an impressive 500 million year period. Ward says this recent sighting of Allonautilus indicates that there is still much to learn about these creatures.

“Before this, two humans had seen Allonautilus scrobiculatus,” said Ward, who holds appointments at the UW in both the Department of Biology and the . “My colleague from Bryn Mawr College found Allonautilus first, and I saw them a few weeks later.”

Those sightings were in 1984, when Ronald Reagan was finishing his first term as president and the oldest millennials were starting preschool. Ward and Saunders collected several Allonautilus scrobiculatus specimens for analysis and realized that their gills, jaws, shell shape and male reproductive structures differ significantly from other nautilus species.

“Some features of the nautilus 鈥� like the shell giving it the ‘living fossil’ label 鈥� may not have changed for a long time, but other parts have,” said Ward.

Allonautilus also sports a distinctive accessory clearly visible in photographs.

“It has this thick, hairy, slimy covering on its shell,” said Ward. “When we first saw that, we were astounded.”

This slimy nautilus turned out to be even more elusive than its siblings. Aside from another brief sighting by Saunders in 1986, Allonautilus disappeared until July 2015, when Ward returned to Papua New Guinea to survey nautilus populations. Since nautiluses are expert scavengers, Ward and his colleagues set up “bait on a stick” systems each evening 鈥� fish and chicken meat suspended on a pole between 500 and 1,300 feet below the surface 鈥� and filmed activity around the bait for 12 hours.

“We started using this approach in 2011,” said Ward. “This year, there were about 30 guys involved and each day we would all watch the movies from the night before at 8X speed. There were a lot of ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs’.”

One night’s footage from a site off of Ndrova Island showed an Allonautilus approach the bait after a 31-year absence from Ward’s life. It was soon joined by another nautilus, and the two fought for access to the bait until a sunfish arrived on the scene.

“For the next two hours, the sunfish just kept whacking them with its tail,” said Ward.

The team also used baited traps to capture several nautiluses, including Allonautilus, at a depth of about 600 feet. Since most nautiluses do not like the heat, the researchers brought them to the surface in chilled water to obtain small tissue, shell and mucous samples and measure the dimensions of each animal. They then transported the animals back to their capture site and released them.

Ward and his colleagues used this information to determine the age and sex of each animal, as well as the diversity of each nautilus population in the South Pacific. Through these studies, they have learned that most nautilus populations are isolated from one another because they can only inhabit a narrow range of ocean depth.

“They swim just above the bottom of wherever they are,” said Ward. “Just like submarines, they have ‘fail depths’ where they’ll die if they go too deep, and surface waters are so warm that they usually can’t go up there. Water about 2,600 feet deep is going to isolate them.”

These restrictions on where nautiluses can go mean that populations near one island or coral reef can differ genetically or ecologically from those at another. The findings also pose a challenge for conservationists.

“Once they’re gone from an area, they’re gone for good,” said Ward.

Illegal fishing and 鈥渕ining鈥� operations for nautilus shells have already decimated some populations, Ward said. This unchecked practice could threaten a lineage that has been around longer than the dinosaurs were and survived the two largest mass extinctions in Earth’s history. In September, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide whether to advocate for nautiluses to become a protected species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wildlife Fauna and Flora, or treaty. Such protection could curb international trade in nautilus shells, with the aim of reducing nautilus harvests across the Pacific.

“As it stands now, nautilus mining could cause nautiluses to go extinct,” said Ward.

Ward hopes to see Allonautilus again, especially since he would like to study how this species, which arose relatively recently according to genetic tests, behaves differently from other nautiluses. Its rarity makes this endeavor challenging.

“It’s only near this tiny island,” said Ward. “This could be the rarest animal in the world. We need to know if Allonautilus is anywhere else, and we won’t know until we go out there and look.”

Ward’s main partners in this field season included and from the Nature Conservancy and from the City University of New York. More than 30 fisheries experts, guides and local residents in the Admiralty Islands and the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea also provided crucial aid and support, Ward said. Their work is funded by National Geographic, the National Science Foundation’s and the .

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For more information, contact Ward at 206-327-7326 or argo@uw.edu.