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Abstract Lionfish (Pterois volitans) have rapidly invaded the tropical Atlantic and spread across the wider Caribbean in a relatively short period of time. Because of its high invasion capacity, we used it as a model to identify the connectivity among nine marine protected areas (MPAs) situated in four countries in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. This study provides evidence of local genetic differentiation of P. volitans in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. A total of 475 lionfish samples were characterized with 12 microsatellites, with 6–20 alleles per locus. Departures from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) were found in 10 of the 12 loci, all caused by heterozygous excess. Moderate genetic differentiation was observed between Chiriviche, Venezuela and Xcalak, México localities (FST = 0.012), and between the Los Roques and the Veracruz (FST = 0.074) sites. STRUCTURE analysis found that four genetic entities best fit our data. A unique genetic group in the Gulf of Mexico may imply that the lionfish invasion unfolded both in a counterclockwise manner in the Gulf of Mexico. In spite of the notable dispersion of P. volitans, our results show some genetic structure, as do other noninvasive Caribbean fish species, suggesting that the connectivity in some MPAs analyzed in the Caribbean is limited and caused by only a few source individuals with subsequent genetic drift leading to local genetic differentiation. This indicates that P. volitans dispersion could be caused by mesoscale phenomena, which produce stochastic connectivity pulses. Due to the isolation of some MPAs from others, these findings may hold a promise for local short‐term control of by means of intensive fishing, even in MPAs, and may have regional long‐term effects.

For several decades, white plagues (WPDs: WPD-I, II and III) and more recently, stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) have significantly impacted Caribbean corals. These diseases are often difficult to separate in the field as they produce similar gross signs. Here we aimed to compare what we know about WPD and SCTLD in terms of: (1) pathology, (2) etiology, and (3) epizootiology. We reviewed over 114 peer-reviewed publications from 1973 to 2021. Overall, WPD and SCTLD resemble each other macroscopically, mainly due to the rapid tissue loss they produce in their hosts, however, SCTLD has a more concise case definition. Multiple-coalescent lesions are often observed in colonies with SCTLD and rarely in WPD. A unique diagnostic sign of SCTLD is the presence of bleached circular areas when SCTLD lesions are first appearing in the colony. The paucity of histopathologic archives for WPDs for multiple species across geographies makes it impossible to tell if WPD is the same as SCTLD. Both diseases alter the coral microbiome. WPD is controversially regarded as a bacterial infection and more recently a viral infection, whereas for SCTLD the etiology has not been identified, but the putative pathogen, likely to be a virus, has not been confirmed yet. Most striking differences between WPD and SCTLD have been related to duration and phases of epizootic events and mortality rates. While both diseases may become highly prevalent on reefs, SCTLD seems to be more persistent even throughout years. Both transmit directly (contact) and horizontally (waterborne), but organism-mediated transmission is only proven for WPD-II. Given the differences and similarities between these diseases, more detailed information is needed for a better comparison. Specifically, it is important to focus on: (1) tagging colonies to look at disease progression and tissue mortality rates, (2) tracking the fate of the epizootic event by looking at initial coral species affected, the features of lesions and how they spread over colonies and to a wider range of hosts, (3) persistence across years, and (4) repetitive sampling to look at changes in the microbiome as the disease progresses. Our review shows that WPDs and SCTLD are the major causes of coral tissue loss recorded in the Caribbean.

This essay focuses on two unclassifiable books by the Chilean storyteller Diamela Eltit: El Padre Mío (1989) and El infarto del alma (1994). From the overexposure of the author that manifests itself in the first person as overturned towards the unavoidable outside of an encounter with difference, embodied in the madness and the helplessness of the bodies of “vagabundage” and psychiatric isolation, respectively, as well as the responsibility that emerges as a position of discourse before the problematic act of shaping the materiality of its recovered presence, I go through the ways in which the other writing of a critique of the Real is outlined in them. Knotted around the subjective shiver of who is willing to account for the “other” in writing, in both atypical texts within the writer’s fictional-theoretical productivity, and atopic within the framework of what could be thought of as a work of non-fiction, literature and art become powerful reading spaces for the deployment of cultural criticism dislocated and politically engaged in the visibility of a Real inscribed in the Letter through the effects of its concern.

This dataset contains 2850 photographs of the seafloor in coral communities from Venezuela that were taken during 2017 and 2018. We used a hierarchical experimental design with four random factors representing four different spatial scales: (1) region (hundreds of kilometers), (2) localities (tens of kilometers), (2) reef sites (hundreds of meters) and (3) transects (a couple meters) across the Venezuelan coast. At each site, four 30-m transects were deployed parallel to the coastline, and 15 pictures were taken every other meter at each transect, containing an area of at least 80 × 90cm with enough resolution to identify benthic groups. This dataset covers spatial scales from a few meters to hundreds of kilometers; marine protected areas, and non-protected areas; coastal zones, continental and oceanic islands. These images have the potential to be further used for training researchers in benthic organisms identification, and training artificial intelligence classification algorithms. Also, they represent and updated baseline to perform spatial and temporal comparisons in Venezuela or further studies involving multiple spatial scales in the region.

Adaptation to changes in the delivery of ecosystem services while maintaining resilience of natural systems is one of the main challenges faced by multi-use marine protected areas (MPAs). To overcome this, it is crucial to improve our understanding of interdependencies among resource users and ecosystems. In this study we used networks to model the socio-ecological system of a multi-use MPA in the southern Caribbean. Using a mixed-method approach, we built a socio ecological network (SEN) from the flow of economic benefits that stakeholders obtain from coral reefs in Los Roques National Park. We specifically looked at how these benefits are distributed among stakeholder groups and how the structure and other network properties can inform management. For this, four networks (simple, weighted, directed and directed-weighted) were built from 125 nodes representing three services and six stakeholder groups, linked through 475 edges. The SEN structure indicated an open resource use pattern with reduced social capital, suggesting that community-based management could be challenging. Only 31% of the benefits from ecosystem services stay within the SEN. Regulation services, derived from the coral reef framework were the most important in terms of maintaining the flow of benefits through the SEN; however, most benefits depended on provisioning services. This approach, based on network theory allowed identification of inequalities in the access to benefits among groups, externalities in benefits derived from fisheries and trade-offs between provisioning and regulation services. Our results suggest that Los Roques might be falling into a socio-ecological trap. Improving access to benefits and increasing trust need be prioritized. Low-cost management intervention can help internalize financial benefits and reduce trade-offs affecting more vulnerable stakeholder groups. However, these would require changes in governance and institutions at the executive level.

Global and local stressors are causing the worldwide loss of coral cover and structural complexity at an unprecedented pace on reefs. In consequence, the habitat of coral reef fish has suffered a profound degradation affecting the abundance, biodiversity and species composition of this taxonomic group. Thus, understanding the link between coral reef fish assemblages and their habitats is paramount to predict their responses to increasing human threats. Herein, we implemented Structure from Motion (SfM) techniques and digital mosaics to characterize the habitat of reef fish in terms of structural complexity and cover of benthic organisms, and we examined the relationships between these metrics and the variation in fish assemblages among sites using a multivariate approach. We found that attribute of fish assemblage varied across reef sites in Los Roques, depending on the highly specific features of the benthic habitat. Results indicate that 69% of the variation in species-specific abundances of fish (i.e., reef fish assemblage structure) was explained by cover of massive coral and turf algae, the number and sizes of holes, and the site. Furthermore, when fish biomass per species was utilized as a response variable, 64% of the variation in assemblage structures was explained by a model that included: cover of crustose coralline algae (CCA), variation and the maximum height of reef structures along the transect, the number of holes and the site. All these variables together also explained >60% of variation of total abundance, biomass and species richness. When data were sorted by trophic groups, CCA cover explained 70% of the variation in forager biomass, whereas the number of holes explained up to 60% of variation in carnivore biomass. These results suggest that each trophic group relates differently to the benthic habitat. We conclude that variation in fish assemblages among sites can be explained by features of the benthic habitat, but more importantly the absence of specific attributes may impact fish trophic groups differently.

Starting from a question about the "diasporic" position of certain authors of cultural criticism in Latin America, always halfway between academic affiliation and a kind of fractious position regarding their increasingly bureaucratized practices of knowledge administration, this paper proposes a reading of three representative texts by the Brazilian-Argentine critic Raul Antelo: Crítica acéfala, Archifilologías latinoamericanas. Lecturas tras el agotamiento and A ruinologia. These strange and problematic texts seem to be articulated from a position that not only (post)critically revises the foundations of more conventional criticism, but also moves toward the behavior of the most radical bids of artistic conceptualism; in other words, in them criticism becomes an act: intervention. And therein lies its forceful emergence in the framework of contemporary literary and cultural studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Caribbean Coastal Marine Productivity (CARICOMP) was a basin-wide cooperative, international network of marine laboratories established in 1985. Recognizing major trends of change in coastal ecosystems and the importance of the linkages among them, our goal was to monitor synoptically with standardized methods the physical environment and to document trends in measures of the structure and functioning of coral reefs, seagrasses and mangroves. Between 1985 and 1993, the CARICOMP Steering Committee established a data management center and wrote a methods manual. Marine laboratories joined the program by appointing a Site Director and signing an agreement specifying the cost sharing and responsibilities of the laboratory. With significant outside funding in 1992, the program became fully functional and ultimately more than 30 institutions in 21 Caribbean countries participated. Monitoring lasted from 1992 to 2007, spanning many technological advances including the internet, automated in situ data logging and remote sensing. Annual CARICOMP meetings, organized at a different laboratory each year, were essential in standardization of methods and maintaining interest. Open access to the data was a goal from the start, although the members imposed an embargo to allow time to publish major results. At some of the sites, monitoring continues to this day, generating among the longest coastal monitoring data sets in the Caribbean, and possibly in the world. Over time, multi-authored papers were prepared for the Proceedings of the International Coral Reef Symposia and other journals, and independent scientists drew on the open database for regional analyses of ecosystem trends. Recently, active members have written summary papers based on the monitoring data covering physical parameters, coral reefs, seagrasses, and mangroves. Overall, the data reveal major differences across the region and changing rates and trends showing the dynamism and vulnerability of coastal ecosystems. The longer the monitoring continues, the more valuable the dataset becomes as a tool to discern the underlying factors driving the structure and functioning of Caribbean coastal ecosystems. Several recent workshops have concluded that the need for regionally cooperative monitoring and research has never been greater.

El presente ensayo en torno al problema de la universidad, situado en las circunstancias que atañen a las universidades autónomas en la Venezuela contemporánea, se propone como una llamada de atención a la urgencia de asumir una reflexión sobre la universidad no sólo tendente a revisar lo que ha sido la tradición en la que se inscribe, sino también a postular las condiciones imprescindibles para su supervivencia en tiempos de postautonomía como los que parecen imponerse en el presente mundializado. En este orden de ideas, fija su atención en los institutos, centros y grupos de investigación como lugares capaces de hacer posible una resistencia que parecería imposible, toda vez que ellos cuentan con las condiciones necesarias para la generación de una comunidad de pensamiento abierta a la proposición de nuevas perspectivas de investigación y estudio, al tiempo que permiten una integración distinta de docentes y estudiantes.

Ante el horror que atraviesa los modos de sobrevivir en un territorio devastado, entre otras causas, por la ausencia radical de la política, y/o por la imposibilidad de remontar a través de ella, el impase fundamental entre el antes y el después de la llamada “Revolución bolivariana”, que desde el principio supuso la fractura irreconciliable del tejido social en dos grandes grupos de “amigos” y “enemigos” en pugna, así como por su incapacidad de aportar alguna respuesta contundente al arruinamiento económico y moral del país que actualmente se impone entre las gentes como “sin otra salida posible que la diáspora”; y a propósito, en este sentido, de los efectos corrosivos de cierto tipo de violencia entre “pirata” y “policial” (Benjamin: 1991) espectacularmente desplegada en Venezuela, en el marco de los enfrentamientos entre las fuerzas represivas orgánicas e inorgánicas del gobierno de Nicolás Maduro y algunos sectores radicalizados de la oposición civil entre 2014 y 2017, así como del enmudecimiento al que condujo tanto la brutalidad de su exceso como su banalización mediática. En el presente trabajo me detengo en una serie de imágenes significativas. Ampliamente difundidas en los medios y canales alternativos de comunicación, considero que ellas no sólo son relevantes por la manera en que llegaron a impactar tanto las subjetividades individuales como el espacio colectivo de la imaginación pública en el país, sino por lo que permiten pensar del tránsito de un desnudamiento simbólico y real del cuerpo social en Venezuela, al imperio de la “nuda vida” inscrita hoy entre el nosotros precario que vamos siendo en esta suerte de “campo” en el cual se ha convertido la Nación, con toda la crudeza de su manifestación anonadante e indigerible.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0188564.].

Coastal ecosystems and the livelihoods they support are threatened by stressors acting at global and local scales. Here we used the data produced by the Caribbean Coastal Marine Productivity program (CARICOMP), the longest, largest monitoring program in the wider Caribbean, to evidence local-scale (decreases in water quality) and global-scale (increases in temperature) stressors across the basin. Trend analyses showed that visibility decreased at 42% of the stations, indicating that local-scale chronic stressors are widespread. On the other hand, only 18% of the stations showed increases in water temperature that would be expected from global warming, partially reflecting the limits in detecting trends due to inherent natural variability of temperature data. Decreases in visibility were associated with increased human density. However, this link can be decoupled by environmental factors, with conditions that increase the flush of water, dampening the effects of human influence. Besides documenting environmental stressors throughout the basin, our results can be used to inform future monitoring programs, if the desire is to identify stations that provide early warning signals of anthropogenic impacts. All CARICOMP environmental data are now available, providing an invaluable baseline that can be used to strengthen research, conservation, and management of coastal ecosystems in the Caribbean basin.

The transformation of coffee plantlets with the cry1ac gene of Bacillus thuringiensis was achieved by biolistic using either the whole pUBC plasmid or only the ubi-cry1ac-nos genetic cassette. The cry1ac gene was inserted into coffee plants in order to confer resistance to the leaf miner Leucoptera coffeella, an insect responsible for considerable losses in coffee crops. Bearing in mind that the genetic cassettes used for this study lack reporter genes and/or selection marker genes, the parameters for the transformation procedure by biolistic were previously standardised with a plasmid carrying the gus reporter gene. The presence of the cry1ac gene in young plantlet tissues was determined by PCR, Southern blot and reverse transcription-PCR. Our results show that the obtainment of viable coffee plantlets, transformed by bombardment with the cry1ac gene and without selection markers nor reporter genes, is feasible.A transformação das plântulas de café com o gene cry1ac de Bacillus thuringiensis foi realizada por biobalística, utilizando todo o pUBC plasmídeo ou só o cassete genético UBI-cry1ac-nos. O gene cry1ac foi inserido no cafeeiro a fim de conferir resistência à folha mineiro Leucoptera coffeella, um inseto responsável por perdas consideráveis nas culturas de café. Tendo em conta que ao plasmídeo e ao cassete genético utilizados para este estudo faltam genes repórteres e/ou de seleção, os parâmetros para o processo de transformação por biobalística foram previamente padronizados com um plasmídeo transportando o gene repórter gus. A presença do gene cry1ac em tecidos de jovens plântulas foi determinada por PCR, Southern blot e transcrição reversa-PCR. Nossos resultados mostram que a obtenção de plântulas de café, transformado por bombardeamento com o gene cry1ac sem genes de seleção genética nem repórteres é viável.