AbstractThe loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta) is a circumglobal species and is listed as vulnerable globally. The North Pacific population nests in Japan and migrates to the Central North Pacific and Pacific coast of North America to feed. In the Mexican Pacific, records of loggerhead presence are largely restricted to the Gulf of Ulloa along the Baja California Peninsula, where very high fisheries by-catch mortality has been reported. Records of loggerhead turtles within the Sea of Cortez also known as the Gulf of California (GC) exist; however, their ecology in this region is poorly understood. We used satellite tracking and an environmental variable analysis (chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) and sea surface temperature (SST)) to determine movements and habitat use of five juvenile loggerhead turtles ranging in straight carapace length from 62.7–68.3 cm (mean: 66.7 ± 2.3 cm). Satellite tracking durations ranged from 73–293 days (mean: 149 ± 62.5 days), transmissions per turtle from 14–1006 (mean: 462 ± 379.5 transmissions) and total travel distance from 1237–5222 km (mean: 3118 ± 1490.7 km). We used travel rate analyses to identify five foraging areas in the GC, which occurred mainly in waters from 10–80 m deep, with mean Chl-a concentrations ranging from 0.28–13.14 mg m−3 and SST ranging from 27.8–34.4°C. This is the first study to describe loggerhead movements in the Gulf of California and our data suggest that loggerhead foraging movements are performed in areas with eutrophic levels of Chl-a.
Henry Eccles, in classic studies on logistics, describes the dynamics of strategic procurement in the supply chain stretching from home countries to military theatres of operations. Naval authorities and industrialists concerned with Japanese aggression before and after Pearl Harbor looked towards developing shipbuilding capacity on North America’s Pacific Coast. The region turned into a volume producer of merchant vessels, warships and auxiliaries destined for service in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Shipbuilding involved four broad categories of companies in the United States and Canada that enabled the tremendous production effort.
One of the most important subduction zones in the world is located in the Mexican Pacific Coast, where the Cocos plate inserts beneath the North American plate. One part of it is located in the Mexican Pacific Coast, where the Cocos plate inserts beneath the North American plate with different dip angles, showing important seismicity. Under the central Mexican area, such a dip angle becomes practically horizontal and such an area is known as flat slab. An earthquake of magnitude M7.1 occurred on 19 September 2017, the epicenter of which was located in this flat slab. It caused important human and material losses of urban communities including a large area of Mexico City. The seismicity recorded in the flat slab region is analyzed here in natural time from 1995 until the occurrence of this M7.1 earthquake in 2017 by studying the entropy change under time reversal and the variability β of the order parameter of seismicity as well as characterize the risk of an impending earthquake by applying the nowcasting method. The entropy change ΔS under time reversal minimizes on 21 June 2017 that is almost one week after the observation of such a minimum in the Chiapas region where a magnitude M8.2 earthquake took place on 7 September 2017 being Mexico’s largest quake in more than a century. A minimum of β was also observed during the period February–March 2017. Moreover, we show that, after the minimum of ΔS, the order parameter of seismicity starts diminishing, thus approaching gradually the critical value 0.070 around the end of August and the beginning of September 2017, which signals that a strong earthquake is anticipated shortly in the flat slab.
Knowledge about the sponge fauna from the Mexican Pacific Ocean has increased substantially in recent years, but most of these modern taxonomic studies have been focused on hadromerids. The aim of this study was to contribute to the knowledge of the order Poecilosclerida. At present, seven species of Mycale have been described or recorded from the Pacific coast of Mexico, but only three of them are considered valid: M. contax, M. cecilia and M. aff. magnirhaphidifera. After a revision of the material collected during the last eight years throughout the East Pacific coast of Mexico, along with the type material, and the literature available, eight species of Mycale are considered valid, three of them; M. magnitoxa sp. nov., M. dickinsoni sp. nov., and M. ramulosa sp. nov., are proposed as new to science. In addition, M. adhaerens is reported for the first time from the Mexican Pacific Ocean. Another Mycale-species that was identified was M. psila, which constitutes its seconLamberd record for the Mexican Pacific Ocean. The systematic, distribution and detailed species descriptions are based on newly collected material and previous descriptions from the literature.
Phylogeographic study across codistributed taxa provides temporal and spatial perspectives on the assemblage of communities. A repeated pattern of intraspecific diversification within several taxa of the Pacific Northwest has been documented, and we contribute additional information to this growing data set. We analyzed variation in two mitochondrial genes (cytochrome b and control region) for the black bear (Ursus americanus) and expand previous analyses of phylogeographic variation. Two lineages (coastal and continental) exist; the coastal lineage extends along the Pacific coast from the Takhin River north of Glacier Bay National Park, southeast Alaska, to northern California, whereas the continental lineage is more widespread, occurring from central Alaska to the east coast. Both lineages occur along the coast of southeast Alaska, where interlineage divergence ranged from 3.1 to 3.6% (uncorrected p distances). Multiple lineages of other species have also been identified from southeast Alaska, indicating a complex history for the assembly of biotic communities along the North Pacific coast. The overlapping of the distributions of the black bear lineages with those of other birds and mammals suggests comparable routes of colonization.
Grammonota Emerton, 1882, is one of the many uniform genera that constitute the large and complex family Erigonidae. All of the 28 species and one subspecies recognized by the present writer are American in range, and representatives occur from southwestern Alaska and James Bay in the north to Central America and the West Indies. A few species are arctic-alpine, or are restricted to the Pacific coast, but most occur east of the Rocky Mountains from southern Canada to the Gulf States.
The generic diagnoses of Bacciger and Pentagramma are emended. Recognized as members of the genus Bacciger are the type, B. bacciger (Rudolphi, 1819), from the Mediterranean, Black, and Azov Seas; B. nicolli Palombi, 1934, from Atlantic waters near the British Isles; and B. opisthonemae Nahhas and Cable, 1964, from Jamaican waters. Pentagramma consist of P. symmetricum Chnlkova, 1939, the type, from the Black and Azov Seas and P. petrowi (Layman, 1930) n. comb, from the northern part of the North Pacific region. Synonyms of P. petrowi are Monorcheides(?) petrowi Layman, 1930: Orientophorus sayori Yamaguti, 1942; Faustula sayori (Yamaguti, 1942); Orientophorus petrowi (Layman, 1930); and Bacciger petrowi (Layman, 1930). Pentagramma petrowi is redescribed and additional details of morphology are included for P. symmetricum, B. bacciger, and B. nicolli. Measurements of the species discussed and extensive host and locality records are tabulated.
The membership of the African Studies Association now numbers 1,731— 734 fellows, 618 associates, and 379 student associates. Some 700 of these participated in the eleventh annual meeting of the Association. Although attendance was considerably below the 1,300 registered at the New York Hilton in 1967 and the nearly 1,000 who made their way to the University of Indiana in 1966, there is no indication that this reflects a declining interest in African studies in the United States. Rather, the A.S.A. custom of bringing its annual meetings in turn to scholars in the north-east, on the Pacific coast, and in the Middle West results in predictable fluctations in registration.
Hydroids of the Pacific coast of Mexico have been little studied. For the coast of Oaxaca, only five papers provide information on species of the region, with some records included in those publications being questionable. Seven species, Pennaria disticha, Clytia linearis, Clytia cf. gracilis, Obelia dichotoma, Ventromma halecioides, Dynamena crisioides and Tridentata turbinata, were discovered during the study and are reported herein. Of these species, Pennaria disticha and Tridentata turbinata are new records for the Mexican Pacific coast, and Clytia linearis and Ventromma halecioides are new records for Oaxaca. Geographic ranges of other hydroids, recorded in earlier studies, are expanded.
On the Temperatures in the Nest of the Pacific Loggerhead Turtle (Caretta caretta L.)