@lauramacrina.bsky.social
Grateful to all my co-authors and the expedition leaders that allowed us to sample for this study and made this work possible 🪸
30.09.2025 07:33 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0This study provides:
- A reference collection for octocoral research in the Red Sea
- New insights into mesophotic and deep-sea biodiversity, still largely unexplored, as well as 10 new records for the Red Sea
- A foundation for biodiversity assessments in this rapidly developing region
Here, we present the first comprehensive molecular assessment of octocoral diversity in the Saudi Arabian Red Sea, harnessing sampling efforts spanning the latitudinal extension of the basin and more than 800 m depths.
30.09.2025 07:33 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Our manuscript "The hidden diversity of Saudi Arabian Red Sea octocorals revealed through a morpho-molecular assessment across bathymetric and latitudinal gradients", based on the results of my first PhD chapter, is now available open access in Scientific Reports: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
30.09.2025 07:33 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
a close up of what looks like a tuft of flower buds that are pale blue and pearly gray that are radiating from a thick white base as if it's an unusual stationary sea creature
a heavy white trunk is erupting from a dirty yellow base to support crinkly pink nodules along its stubby arms somewhat like an illustration of a stylized tree
there is a highly irregular, almost velvet-like green palm-shaped surface covered in warts of tissue that seems like it's attached to a sturdy white base as if it was a sea creature that lives stationary on a rock
Scientists have completed the largest survey of soft coral diversity ever conducted. Their results show that soft corals have been radiating in a small corner of what was once a giant sea.
🪸 Story: www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/worl...
Study: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A 7 panel figure showing Madracis interjecta in various forms, growing in a bioherm formation and as an individual colony. The 6th panel shows a colony being sampled by the arm of an ROV, and the last panel shows a close up of a branch under a Scanning Electron Microscope.
Our article is out in Ecology and Evolution! We use SDMs to model the habitat distribution of the coral Madracis interjecta in the mesophotic/ deep Red Sea. We also found Madracis bioherms to occur in deeper and cooler waters than the individual colonies 🦑🪸
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
New paper by MISE octocoral crazy collectors and friends!! @lauramacrina.bsky.social
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Honoured to have contributed to this amazing work led by Professor McFadden! 🪸
Biodiversity and biogeography of zooxanthellate soft corals across the Indo-Pacific is now out on Scientific Reports and available open access at:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I wrote about a delightful study about the secret dynamics of a coral, some seahorses, and oodles of tiny worms
defector.com/a-small-and-...
