Established non-native species can have significant impacts on native biodiversity without any possibility of complete eradication. In such cases, one management approach is functional eradication, the reduction of introduced species density below levels that cause unacceptable effects on the native community. In this project we evaluated the potential for functional eradication of introduced predatory oyster drills (Urosalpinx cinerea (urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:140429)) using a community science approach in San Francisco Bay. We combined observational surveys, targeted removals, and a caging experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach in mitigating the mortality of prey Olympia oysters (Ostrea lurida (urn:lsid:marinespecies.org:taxname:542155)), a conservation and restoration priority species. This dataset describes field observational data designed to evaluate the effectiveness of the eradication efforts. The dataset file includes date, site name, latitude, longitude, recoded site name, experimental treatment (control or removal), quadrat number, habitat type, location along transect, algal cover boxes, counts of Urosalpinx cinerea, Ostrea oysters, Mytilus mussels, and barnacles, live and dead barnacle cover boxes, oyster drill egg capsule boxes, and additional notes from data collectors.

Table of Contents

• Coverage
• Dataset Description
  • Methods & Sampling
  • BCO-DMO Curation Notes
• Data Files
• Related Publications
• Related Datasets
• Parameters
• Instruments
• Project Information
• Funding

Site selection

To quantify the relationship between oyster drills and native oysters, we established eight intertidal field sites in Richardson Bay, CA. Of these sites, we further focused on a subset of four sites, establishing two sites for community science-based oyster drill removals and two sites as paired controls. One of our removal sites, Lani’s Beach (hereafter Lani’s) was selected because of easy access, high public use, and because it is valuable to the community due to its use in outdoor educational programs at the immediately adjacent Richardson Bay Audubon Center & Sanctuary. Lani’s was paired with a control area that was separated by 50 m along shore (Cheng et al. 2021; Fig. 1, Supplementary Information S1). Second, we used two sites located on Aramburu Island because of extensive habitat restoration activities that were completed by the Audubon Society in 2010. The Aramburu removal and control sites were separated by 140 m along shore. The quadrat survey reported here is for the four core sites.

• Lani's Beach (or Lani's Cove) -  Latitude 37.893744°, Longitude -122.497176°
• Cove Apartments -  Latitude 37.893558°, Longitude -122.498177°
• Aramburu Central - Latitude  37.888246°, Longitude -122.499479°
• Aramburu South - Latitude  37.886735°, Longitude - -122.499000°

Benthic sampling

To quantify the abundance of Urosalpinx and its relationship to native oysters, we conducted quadrat surveys at each of the four field sites. At each site, we established a permanent 30 m transect at 0.5 m above mean lower low water (MLLW). Along each transect, we censused all oyster drills and oysters at the surface and by overturning all stones within 10 randomly distributed 0.5 x 0.5 m quadrats. Quadrats were randomly stratified such that five were conducted between 0 and 15 m of the transect and the remaining five occurred between 15 and 30 m. For each site, surveys occurred two to five times (20–50 quadrats, mean = 40.5 quadrats) during the low tides of summer, fall, and winter of 2017 and spring and summer of 2018. 

Functional eradication of drills

At each removal site, we established a 60 m swath of shoreline (along shore) from the lower mud zone to the upper barnacle zone (approximately 15 m across shore) to serve as the focal area for removals. For the removal sites, the 60 m total swath included the 30 m fixed transect with additional 15 m buffer zones on each side (along shore). Paired with each eradication site, we established a similar swath of shoreline to serve as a control area except snails were not removed from these areas. Control and removal zones were also separated by stretches of shoreline that did not have hard substrate, potentially limiting the movement of oyster drills. All areas were marked with stakes for the duration of the experiment. We organized drill removal events, inviting members of the public to assist us in finding and removing drills. To increase community participation, we scheduled drill removals on weekends and only during daylight low tides. In 2017, we organized four removal days at Lani’s and three at Aramburu; in 2018, we held three removal days at each location. Between 20 and 35 people participated at each event and were provided project background and training prior to removal efforts. Teams then worked for 1–2 h, removing snails by hand from the focal areas described above. Teams also searched for snails on the surface of the mud, but these were rarely found. To ensure complete spatial coverage of the removal area, we divided removal and buffer areas into * 2 m wide swaths running perpendicular to shore and assigned volunteers to these zones. Collected snails were taken to the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s Tiburon, CA laboratory (housed at the Estuary and Ocean Science Center, San Francisco State University) and frozen.

This section documents curation actions performed prior to publication review with the submitter, and additional information relevant to understanding and reusing this dataset. It distinguishes changes made to the submitted (meta)data from unresolved issues and/or enhancements that improve future reuse and interoperability.

CURATION ACTIONS PERFORMED ON DATA

- Loaded data from "Counts" sheet of Benthic survey Richardson Bay COUNTS 11 Sept 2018 cjz BSC BCO-DMO.xlsx, header row 1, with preserve_formatting enabled; treated "", "nd", "na", "N/A", "NA" as missing values; named table benthic_survey_counts
- Renamed columns according to BCO-DMO parameter naming conventions: cover.boxes to cover_boxes, live barn (squares) to live_barn_squares, dead barn (squares) to dead_barn_squares, drill eggs (squares) to drill_eggs_squares
- Converted Date column from MM-DD-YY display format to ISO 8601 date (YYYY-MM-DD), overwriting original Date column
- Extracted non-numeric annotated values (e.g. "1 77 mm", "photo") found in mussel, live_barn_squares, and dead_barn_squares columns into new companion columns mussel_comment, live_barn_squares_comment, dead_barn_squares_comment, leaving original cells blank for those rows so count columns could be typed as integer without losing annotation data
- Output as 1006955_v1_benthic_survey_counts.csv

CURATION ACTIONS PERFORMED ON METADATA

- BCO-DMO's standard metadata entry and text formatting steps were performed. See: https://www.bco-dmo.org/how-to/standard-curation-edits

ISSUES POTENTIALLY IMPACTING REUSE

- N/A

Coverage: Coastal marine waters of western Atlantic ocean from 31 to 44 degrees latitude N

NSF Award Abstract:
Understanding how marine life copes with drastically different environmental conditions now and into the future is essential for the management and conservation of biodiversity in the ocean. One complicating factor is the observation that populations within a given species are often fine-tuned to the environment that they live in. Yet, it is often unclear what components of the environment create these differences across populations. This project focuses on Atlantic oyster drills, a predatory snail that consumes farmed and wild oysters on the Atlantic coast of North America, the location of one of the strongest temperature gradients in the world. The investigators combine field and laboratory studies to understand how differences in temperature affect the growth and survival of oyster drills sourced from populations throughout their range. This information is paired with molecular analyses to help determine genetic and physiological differences among populations. In addition to benefitting oyster reefs, this information broadly contributes to the understanding of how marine life will respond to rapidly changing environmental conditions. The project also supports the education and marine science training of students at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral level. In partnership with the non-profit organization Waterstrong, the investigators will provide marine science and swimming skills training to thirty girls from historically underrepresented groups.

Predicting how marine communities will respond to rapid environmental change is difficult because species responses can vary across populations and because organisms may evolve over time. Knowledge of how such evolutionary potential arises and is maintained is limited. A useful approach for examining species response to environmental change is to investigate how species have locally adapted to environmental differences across their range. This project tests competing mechanisms that can generate countergradient variation (CnGV; a widespread form of local adaptation) in an ecologically important marine species (Atlantic oyster drill, Urosalpinx cinerea). The objectives of this integrative research are to 1) quantify the strength of seasonality and mean temperature in generating CnGV and to 2) identify if these responses are correlated across biological traits using a combination of field sampling and common garden experimentation. These objectives are complemented with a molecular approach that 3) quantifies neutral genetic structure across populations and 4) identifies the roles of genetic adaptation and transcriptional plasticity in facilitating physiological adaptation to environmental change. The proposed work is significant because it provides a novel test for different environmental drivers of a commonly observed form of local adaptation. This research also reveals the genetic underpinnings of how such local adaptation arises and will give insight into the adaptive capacity of organisms to rapid change.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Other project information:
Further information about this project and related work can be found on the UMass Amherst website "MARINE GLOBAL CHANGE ECOLOGY" (http://bscheng.com).