Fauna in flux

 

You can click on the image above for a larger version.  From left to right:
Row 1: Hilton’s Nudibranch, Blue Buoy Barnacle, Short-beaked Common Dolphin, Olive’s Nudibranch
Row 2: Spanish Shawl Nudibranch, Violet Sea Snail, Pelagic Red Crab, Hopkins’ Rose Nudibranch
Row 3: Brown Booby, Striated Sea Butterfly, Glass-spined Brittle Star, Scarlet Sea Cucumber
Photo credits: Brown Booby (Roger Harshaw); Scarlet Sea Cucumber and Striated Sea Butterfly (Eric Sanford); all others by Jacqueline Sones.

Well, it's been almost five years, but our summary of the unusual warm-water species that appeared during the 2014-2016 marine heatwaves has finally been published today! 

Quite a few of you helped in this effort — sending us your photographs and observations over the years.  We really appreciate all that you've done to help document these events and to provide a baseline for future marine scientists and natural historians. 

The scientific article titled “Widespread shifts in the coastal biota of northern California during the 2014–2016 marine heatwaves” in the journal Scientific Reports is available to everyone via open access format here.  (If you can’t download/access a pdf file, let me know and I can help.) 

Also note that much of these data surrounding these observations, and photographs of all 67 species noted in the paper, are included in the Supplementary Information file, which is also available via open access here. 

Check it out and let us know what you think.  It has involved a lot of hard work, so we're pleased to be able to share this article with all of you.  And, as usual, we continue to be interested in hearing about your sightings of unusual species!

P.S.  If you'd like to share this article with your friends or colleagues, here's a shortened URL address that links directly to the paper: https://rdcu.be/bqDmo