Pygmy killer whales ( Feresa attenuata ) are a poorly studied, globally‐distributed species found in pelagic waters and around oceanic islands. They are naturally rare, making them difficult to study. Reports indicate that they are highly vulnerable to artisanal fisheries bycatch in some areas. To investigate the global genetic structure of these animals, we sequenced a 671 bp section of the mitochondrial control region of 89...

Age is important for studying population dynamics, but it is difficult to obtain reasonably accurate age estimates and associated uncertainty of free‐ranging individuals, especially for cetaceans. We developed a protocol for deriving probabilistic age estimates using information commonly curated in marine mammal photo‐identification catalogs and applied the approach to 81 biopsy‐sampled and genetically sexed false killer whale...

Understanding dissolved concentrations of the essential coenzyme thiamin (vitamin B 1 ) can provide insights into the biological controls on highly productive upwelling systems such as the California Current Ecosystem. To connect thiamin availability with microbial communities in the California Current Ecosystem, we measured concentrations of dissolved thiamin and its biochemically related moieties (thiamin congeners) and 16S...

Introduction Enhanced creativity is often cited as an effect of microdosing (taking repeated low doses of a psychedelic drug). There have been recent efforts to validate the reported effects of microdosing, however creativity remains a difficult construct to quantify. Objectives The current study aimed to assess microdosing’s effects on creativity using a multimodal battery of tests as part of a randomised controlled trial of...

Small, island-associated populations of cetaceans have evolved around numerous oceanic islands, likely due to habitat discontinuities between nearshore and offshore waters. However, little is known about the ecology and structure of cetacean populations around the Mariana Islands, a remote archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean. We present sighting, photo-identification, and genetic data collected during twelve years of surv...

Environmental monitoring is increasingly shifting toward a set of systems that describe changes in real time. In ecology specifically, a series of challenges have prevented the rollout of real‐time monitoring for features such as biodiversity change or ecosystem service provision. Conservation culturomics, a field concerned with interactions between people and nature, is well placed to demonstrate how monitoring might move tow...

Rough‐toothed dolphins ( Steno bredanensis ) have a global tropical and subtropical distribution with oceanic, neritic, and island‐associated populations. To inform conservation and management for this species, we used sequences from the mtDNA control region ( n = 360), mitogenomes ( n = 19), and six nuclear introns ( n = 35) to provide multiple lines of evidence to critically evaluate the potential taxonomic status of rough‐t...