The timing of biological events, known as phenology, plays a key role in shaping ecosystem dynamics, and climate change can significantly alter these timings. The Gulf of Maine on the Northeast U.S. Shelf is vulnerable to warming temperatures and other climate impacts, which could affect the distribution and production of plankton species sensitive to phenological shifts. In this study, we apply a novel data‐driven modeling ap...

Investigation of communities in extreme environments with unique conditions has the potential to broaden or challenge existing theory as to how biological communities assemble and change through succession. Deep‐sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems have strong, parallel gradients of nutrients and environmental stress, and present unusual conditions in early succession, in that both nutrient availability and stressors are high. We...

Synechococcus is a widespread and important marine primary producer. Time series provide critical information for identifying and understanding the factors that determine abundance patterns. Here, we present the results of analysis of a 16‐yr hourly time series of Synechococcus at the Martha's Vineyard Coastal Observatory, obtained with an automated, in situ flow cytometer. We focus on understanding seasonal abundance patterns...

New resting cyst production is crucial for the survival of many microbial eukaryotes including phytoplankton that cause harmful algal blooms. Production in situ has previously been estimated through sediment trap deployments, but here was instead assessed through estimation of the total number of planktonic cells and new resting cysts produced by a localized, inshore bloom of Alexandrium catenella , a dinoflagellate that is a...

The Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) was a social breeder, and it has been suggested that the species experienced functional extinction, defined as a total reproductive failure, prior to its actual extinction in the early years of the 20th century. We applied a novel randomization test based on the relative times of the most recent egg‐ and skin‐specimen sightings (i.e., recorded date of specimen collection) to test f...

The extinction of many species can only be inferred from the record of sightings of individuals. Solow et al. (2012, Uncertain sightings and the extinction of the Ivory‐billed Woodpecker. Conservation Biology 26: 180–184) describe a Bayesian approach to such inference and apply it to a sighting record of the Ivory‐billed Woodpecker ( Campephilus principalis ). A feature of this sighting record is that all uncertain sightings o...

Increasing evidence links exposure to Navy sonar with certain mass stranding events of deep diving beaked whales. Although the cause of these strandings is unknown, one theory suggests that the animals confuse the sonar signals with vocalizations of killer whales, a known predator. Here we analyze the movement patterns of a tagged female Blainville's beaked whale in reaction to playback of killer whale predation calls. During...

United States and Canadian governments have responded to legal requirements to reduce human‐induced whale mortality via vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear by implementing a suite of regulatory actions. We analyzed the spatial and temporal patterns of mortality of large whales in the Northwest Atlantic (23.5°N to 48.0°N), 1970 through 2009, in the context of management changes. We used a multinomial logistic model...

The extinction of a species can be inferred from a record of its sightings. Existing methods for doing so assume that all sightings in the record are valid. Often , however , there are sightings of uncertain validity. To date , uncertain sightings have been treated in an ad hoc way, either excluding them from the record or including them as if they were certain. We developed a Bayesian method that formally accounts for such un...

By definition, ecological systems at a stable equilibrium eventually return to the equilibrium point following a small perturbation. In the short term, however, perturbations can grow. Equilibria that exhibit transient growth following perturbation are said to be reactive. In this report, we present a statistical method for detecting reactivity from multivariate time series. The test is simple and computationally tractable, an...

There is considerable interest in understanding the effect of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on recruitment to North Atlantic cod stocks. An earlier analysis of data for the North‐east Arctic cod stock showed that, while there is an empirical relationship between recruitment and the NAO over the period 1973–96, this relationship was absent over the period 1946–72. It has recently been suggested that the effect of the NAO...