http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset/999310
eng; USA
utf8
dataset
Highest level of data collection, from a common set of sensors or instrumentation, usually within the same research project
Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO)
Unavailable
508-289-2009
WHOI MS#36
Woods Hole
MA
02543
USA
info@bco-dmo.org
http://www.bco-dmo.org
Monday - Friday 8:00am - 5:00pm
For questions regarding this resource, please contact BCO-DMO via the email address provided.
pointOfContact
2026-05-22
ISO 19115-2 Geographic Information - Metadata - Part 2: Extensions for Imagery and Gridded Data
ISO 19115-2:2009(E)
Sessile organism richness on settlement tiles deployed as part of fish exclusion/exposure experiments in Coastal Costa Rica and Panama in 2024
2026-05-22
publication
2026-05-22
revision
BCO-DMO Linked Data URI
2026-05-22
creation
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset/999310
Mark E. Torchin
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
principalInvestigator
Carmen Schlöder
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
principalInvestigator
Andrew Sellers
McGill University
principalInvestigator
Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO)
Unavailable
508-289-2009
WHOI MS#36
Woods Hole
MA
02543
USA
info@bco-dmo.org
http://www.bco-dmo.org
Monday - Friday 8:00am - 5:00pm
For questions regarding this resource, please contact BCO-DMO via the email address provided.
publisher
Cite this dataset as: Torchin, M. E., Sellers, A., Schlöder, C. (2026) Sessile organism richness on settlement tiles deployed as part of fish exclusion/exposure experiments in Coastal Costa Rica and Panama in 2024. Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO). (Version 1) Version Date 2026-05-22 [if applicable, indicate subset used]. http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset/999310 [access date]
Dataset Description: <p>See "Related Datasets" section for the other datasets in this study describing the sessile organisms on settlement tiles deployed during fish exclusion/exposure experiments.</p> Methods and Sampling: <p>We conducted 4-month fish exclusion/exposure experiments during the upwelling (December-March) and non-upwelling seasons (July-October) of 2024 across 10 sites in Costa Rica and Panama. At each site, we deployed 35 experimental units belonging to one of five treatments: open, caged, partial, cage-control and cage-exposed. Each experimental unit consisted of two 10-cm square PVC horizontal settlement plates mounted flush with each other on a 0.4-cm thick steel threaded stud. One plate faced the surface (top-plate) while the other faced the bottom (bottom-plate). The stud was inserted through a 0.4-cm hole drilled into the middle of each plate, and fixed to a 1.3-cm diameter threaded PVC cap using two stainless-steel nuts. The threaded cap was then screwed to a PVC male adapter fixed to one end of a 20-cm length of 1.3-cm diameter PVC tubing.<br />
<br />
Treatments included:<br />
(1) a ‘caged’ treatment where fish larger than 5cm were excluded using a 1” vexar mesh.<br />
(2) an ‘open’ treatment, which had no cage to limit the access of fish<br />
(3) a procedural control or ‘partial’ treatment which was like the caged treatments, but lacked the top and bottom cage panels, allowing access of fish to sessile organisms attached to the plates, while controlling for alterations in water flow imposed by the cages.<br />
<br />
These 5 units of each of those 3 treatments were retrieved after 4 months. Each plate was weighed, and the exposed surface of each plate was photographed. We then used a grid to quantify percent cover by identifying organisms growing under 50 random points to the lowest possible taxonomic level under a dissecting microscope. We also identified all organisms growing on each plate to the lowest taxonomic level possible to quantify richness.</p>
<p>This dataset reports all taxa observed growing on settlement tiles. These include named taxa (e.g. Polysiphonia), as well as functional groups/codes (e.g. BAM, Ecto 1). See supplemental category_list.csv for more details about categories. The point-intercept method was NOT used to build these list of taxa. The settlement tiles were examined visually to list all taxa found on a given settlement tile. Information regarding the settlement tile's assigned treatment, region, site, and deployment date are also included.<br />
<br />
Additional location description:&nbsp;The experiments were installed in coral reefs dominated by Pocillopora sp. coral at a depth of about 5m. We focused on 4 regions: Santa Elena Bay and Gulf of Papagayo in Costa Rica, and the Gulfs of Panama and Chiriqui in the Republic of Panama.&nbsp;</p>
Funding provided by NSF Division of Ocean Sciences (NSF OCE) Award Number: OCE-2350541 Award URL: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award?AWD_ID=2350541
onGoing
Mark E. Torchin
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Unit 9100 Box 0948
DPO AA
34002-9998
Panama
torchinm@si.edu
pointOfContact
Carmen Schlöder
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Panama City
Panama Province
Panama
SchloederC@si.edu
pointOfContact
Andrew Sellers
McGill University
andrew.sellers@mail.mcgill.ca
pointOfContact
asNeeded
Dataset Version: 1
Unknown
Region
Site
lat
lon
depth
Plate
Treatment
Season
Biomass
Date
Sea
Type
Observer
Taxon_obs_num
category
Dissecting microscopes
theme
None, User defined
region
site
latitude
longitude
depth
sample description
treatment
season
weight
date
site description
recorder
count
taxon_code
featureType
BCO-DMO Standard Parameters
Microscope - Optical
instrument
BCO-DMO Standard Instruments
otherRestrictions
otherRestrictions
Access Constraints: none. Use Constraints: Please follow guidelines at: http://www.bco-dmo.org/terms-use Distribution liability: Under no circumstances shall BCO-DMO be liable for any direct, incidental, special, consequential, indirect, or punitive damages that result from the use of, or the inability to use, the materials in this data submission. If you are dissatisfied with any materials in this data submission your sole and exclusive remedy is to discontinue use.
Collaborative Research: RAPID: Turning up the heat: El Nino warming effects on top-down control of Tropical Eastern Pacific reef communities
https://osprey.bco-dmo.org/project/944223
Collaborative Research: RAPID: Turning up the heat: El Nino warming effects on top-down control of Tropical Eastern Pacific reef communities
<p>NSF Award Abstract:</p>
<p>Species interactions are key drivers shaping marine biodiversity. Recent marine studies demonstrate that predation can be stronger at lower latitudes where water temperatures are higher. With a changing climate, it is important to resolve how environmental forces intensify or moderate consumer interactions and change the distribution and abundance of marine species. Researchers are employing a rapid research response to measure how an extreme event, the 2023-2024 El Niño, will alter consumer interactions on Tropical Eastern Pacific (TEP) coral reefs. Following up on two consecutive years of experimental data during non-El Niño conditions, they will be able to compare how an extreme event and increased ocean temperatures alter predation and herbivory rates and how this in turn influences marine biodiversity and potential invasion by non-native species. The project builds international research and education by training early-career researchers in marine science including those from under-represented groups. The project develops partnerships and fosters collaboration through an international network, which facilitates shared and integrated marine biosecurity solutions across the Americas, informing management of invasive marine species.</p>
<p>Growing evidence suggests that the intensity of interspecific interactions increases at low latitudes. Recent studies along both coasts of the Americas indicate that the strength of consumer effects across latitude increases with temperature, consistent with the metabolic theory of ecology. The hypothesized impact of ocean warming on future trends in top-down control of marine communities predicts that increasing ocean temperatures will increase top-down control by consumers, but the extent to which this will occur in the tropics remains uncertain. The strong spatial and seasonal variation in upwelling that affect both temperature and nutrients in the Tropical Eastern Pacific (TEP) make it an ideal region to test how changes in environmental conditions influence trophic interactions and marine community dynamics. For the past two years, researchers conducted consumer exclusion experiments on sessile marine invertebrate communities at ten coral reef sites, distributed along a gradient of upwelling activity in Panama and Costa Rica. By comparing replicated caged (predator exclusion) and open settlement panels at each site along this gradient, this experiment examines the role of temperature and productivity on top-down control by consumers. Here, researchers are extending the duration of this work to utilize the current El Niño as a natural experiment to measure how this extreme event will alter consumer interactions on TEP reefs. The El Niño event forecasted for 2023-2024 (NOAA 2023) is predicted to (a) cause extreme increases in water temperature and (b) alter the intensity and duration of upwelling events. Using two complementary experiments to sequentially test the strength of consumer interactions, (a) 4-month predator exclusions and (b) short-term predator exposure experiments, the project tests the hypothesis that increased temperature and decreased upwelling activity linked to El Niño will increase consumer effects in the TEP. Repeating previous experiments during the current El Niño, provides a comparison for how changing temperature and productivity regimes influence consumer effects on the reef communities. By focusing these experiments in a thermally dynamic region of the tropics, this research directly tests for temperature regulation of top-down processes without the confounds of latitude, while also examining the bottom-up consequences of declining productivity due to weakened upwelling activity.</p>
<p>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.</p>
Turning up the heat
largerWorkCitation
project
eng; USA
oceans
-85.866
-79.016
7.399
10.948
2024-04-08
2024-12-08
Panama and Costa Rica
0
BCO-DMO catalogue of parameters from Sessile organism richness on settlement tiles deployed as part of fish exclusion/exposure experiments in Coastal Costa Rica and Panama in 2024
Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO)
Unavailable
508-289-2009
WHOI MS#36
Woods Hole
MA
02543
USA
info@bco-dmo.org
http://www.bco-dmo.org
Monday - Friday 8:00am - 5:00pm
For questions regarding this resource, please contact BCO-DMO via the email address provided.
pointOfContact
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002355.rdf
Name: Region
Units: unitless
Description: <p>Region where the experimental site is located. These include Santa Elena (SE) and Papagayo (PP) in Costa Rica, and Gulf of Chiriqui (GC) and Gulf of Panama (GP) in Panama.</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002356.rdf
Name: Site
Units: unitless
Description: <p>Site where the experiments were performed.</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002357.rdf
Name: lat
Units: decimal degrees
Description: <p>Latitude of experimental site</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002359.rdf
Name: lon
Units: decimal degrees
Description: <p>Longitude of experimental site</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002361.rdf
Name: depth
Units: meters (m)
Description: <p>Depth of experimental site</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002363.rdf
Name: Plate
Units: unitless
Description: <p>Identifying code for settlement tile</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002364.rdf
Name: Treatment
Units: unitless
Description: <p>Treatment assigned to settlement tile: partial, open, and caged.</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002365.rdf
Name: Season
Units: unitless
Description: <p>Season when experiments were performed: dry or wet</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002366.rdf
Name: Biomass
Units: grams (g)
Description: <p>Biomass of settlement tile after 4 months</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002367.rdf
Name: Date
Units: unitless
Description: <p>Date when settlement tiles were retrieved</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002368.rdf
Name: Sea
Units: unitless
Description: <p>Season and year when experiments were performed. Dry 2024 (u24) and wet 2024 (nu24).</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002369.rdf
Name: Type
Units: unitless
Description: <p>Orientation of settlement tile (top or bottom facing).</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002370.rdf
Name: Observer
Units: unitless
Description: <p>Initials of person analyzing settlement plate</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002371.rdf
Name: Taxon_obs_num
Units: count
Description: <p>Sequential number of the observed taxa on the settlement plate during visual examination. The identifier is unique per settlement plate. The first observation on the plate is Taxon_obs_num 1, the second one is 2, and so on.</p>
http://lod.bco-dmo.org/id/dataset-parameter/1002372.rdf
Name: category
Units: unitless
Description: <p>Category code for the taxon or category observed at the grid_point_id location (e.g., named taxa such as Polysiphonia, functional groups/codes such as “BAM”, “Ecto 1”, and “Bare” where no organism was present). See the supplemental file category_list.csv for more information about the categories.</p>
GB/NERC/BODC > British Oceanographic Data Centre, Natural Environment Research Council, United Kingdom
Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO)
Unavailable
508-289-2009
WHOI MS#36
Woods Hole
MA
02543
USA
info@bco-dmo.org
http://www.bco-dmo.org
Monday - Friday 8:00am - 5:00pm
For questions regarding this resource, please contact BCO-DMO via the email address provided.
pointOfContact
https://osprey.bco-dmo.org/dataset/999310/data/download
download
onLine
dataset
<p>We conducted 4-month fish exclusion/exposure experiments during the upwelling (December-March) and non-upwelling seasons (July-October) of 2024 across 10 sites in Costa Rica and Panama. At each site, we deployed 35 experimental units belonging to one of five treatments: open, caged, partial, cage-control and cage-exposed. Each experimental unit consisted of two 10-cm square PVC horizontal settlement plates mounted flush with each other on a 0.4-cm thick steel threaded stud. One plate faced the surface (top-plate) while the other faced the bottom (bottom-plate). The stud was inserted through a 0.4-cm hole drilled into the middle of each plate, and fixed to a 1.3-cm diameter threaded PVC cap using two stainless-steel nuts. The threaded cap was then screwed to a PVC male adapter fixed to one end of a 20-cm length of 1.3-cm diameter PVC tubing.<br />
<br />
Treatments included:<br />
(1) a ‘caged’ treatment where fish larger than 5cm were excluded using a 1” vexar mesh.<br />
(2) an ‘open’ treatment, which had no cage to limit the access of fish<br />
(3) a procedural control or ‘partial’ treatment which was like the caged treatments, but lacked the top and bottom cage panels, allowing access of fish to sessile organisms attached to the plates, while controlling for alterations in water flow imposed by the cages.<br />
<br />
These 5 units of each of those 3 treatments were retrieved after 4 months. Each plate was weighed, and the exposed surface of each plate was photographed. We then used a grid to quantify percent cover by identifying organisms growing under 50 random points to the lowest possible taxonomic level under a dissecting microscope. We also identified all organisms growing on each plate to the lowest taxonomic level possible to quantify richness.</p>
<p>This dataset reports all taxa observed growing on settlement tiles. These include named taxa (e.g. Polysiphonia), as well as functional groups/codes (e.g. BAM, Ecto 1). See supplemental category_list.csv for more details about categories. The point-intercept method was NOT used to build these list of taxa. The settlement tiles were examined visually to list all taxa found on a given settlement tile. Information regarding the settlement tile's assigned treatment, region, site, and deployment date are also included.<br />
<br />
Additional location description:&nbsp;The experiments were installed in coral reefs dominated by Pocillopora sp. coral at a depth of about 5m. We focused on 4 regions: Santa Elena Bay and Gulf of Papagayo in Costa Rica, and the Gulfs of Panama and Chiriqui in the Republic of Panama.&nbsp;</p>
Specified by the Principal Investigator(s)
<p>The data was entered manually into spreadsheets. No software was used in this process.</p>
Specified by the Principal Investigator(s)
Note: The primary form of this dataset under "Data Files" is the data table in long format (row per identification). The same data in an additional (wide format - row per plate, columns per plate) is provided as supplemental file.
- Loaded richness.csv as table 999310_v1_settlement-tile_richness (CSV, comma-delimited), treating "", "NA", "nd", and "NaN" as missing values
- Applied find/replace on depth column to strip trailing "m" unit suffix so it can be typed as numeric. Units are described in "Parameters" section.
- Converted Date column from Excel serial number format to ISO date format (%Y-%m-%d)
- Set column types: Date as date, lat/lon/depth/Biomass as number, and Region, Sea, Season, Site, Observer, Plate, Treatment, Type, and Taxon_obs_1 through Taxon_obs_53 as string
- Corrected longitude values that were positive: any lon > 0 was multiplied by -1, as all values in this area should be negative
- Applied BCO-DMO metadata (descriptions, standard name IDs, supplied units) to all columns including lat, lon, depth (primary parameters), Date, Observer, Plate, Region, Sea, Season, Site, Treatment, Type, Biomass, and Taxon_obs_1 through Taxon_obs_53
- Duplicated table to create a wide-format copy named 999310_v1_settlement-tile_richness_wide-format in order to have the main form of this dataset be longform (one column for taxon observation number on the plate and one column for the category identified. The wide format maintains the Taxon_obs_1,...,Taxon_obs_53 columns (a column per the max number of IDs on any plate).
- Unpivoted columns Taxon_obs_1 through Taxon_obs_53 in the original (long-format) table into two new columns: Taxon_obs_num (integer, the observation number) and category (string, the taxon value)
- Filtered rows in the long-format table to retain only rows where category is not null, removing empty taxon observation rows that are unnecessary in long format; all plate IDs are retained since all Taxon_obs_1 values were populated prior to unpivoting. All plate IDs are reported in rows of both the long and wide form tables.
- Updated BCO-DMO metadata on the long-format table for all columns including the newly created Taxon_obs_num and category columns; lon marked as primary parameter
- Output two tables: 999310_v1_settlement-tile_richness.csv (long format, 13,244 rows) and 999310_v1_settlement-tile_richness_wide-format.csv (wide format, 577 rows)
Supplemental file: category_list.csv
BCO-DMO data manager (Amber York) and data submitter (Andrew Sellers) collaboratively made the supplemental category list from the unique category codes used in the settlement tile datasets and corrected any typos in taxon names used. Any associated taxon names in the list were matched to registered names at the World Register of Marine Species (WoRMs) on March 2, 2026 and associated taxon Ids were included in the supplemental category list. Some name matches were ambiguous (could match more than one organism) so the data submitter Andrew modified the list to clarify which taxon name and ID each was.
Specified by BCO-DMO Data Managers
asNeeded
7.x-1.1
Biological and Chemical Oceanography Data Management Office (BCO-DMO)
Unavailable
508-289-2009
WHOI MS#36
Woods Hole
MA
02543
USA
info@bco-dmo.org
http://www.bco-dmo.org
Monday - Friday 8:00am - 5:00pm
For questions regarding this resource, please contact BCO-DMO via the email address provided.
pointOfContact
Dissecting microscopes
Dissecting microscopes
PI Supplied Instrument Name: Dissecting microscopes Instrument Name: Microscope - Optical Instrument Short Name: Instrument Description: Instruments that generate enlarged images of samples using the phenomena of reflection and absorption of visible light. Includes conventional and inverted instruments. Also called a "light microscope". Community Standard Description: http://vocab.nerc.ac.uk/collection/L05/current/LAB05/