Geoscientists now live in a world rich with digital data and methods, and their computational research cannot be fully captured in traditional publications. The Geoscience Paper of the Future (GPF) presents an approach to fully document, share, and cite all their research products including data, software, and computational provenance. This article proposes best practices for GPF authors to make data, software, and methods openly accessible, citable, and well documented. The publication of digital objects empowers scientists to manage their research products as valuable scientific assets in an open and transparent way that enables broader access by other scientists, students, decision makers, and the public. Improving documentation and dissemination of research will accelerate the pace of scientific discovery by improving the ability of others to build upon published work.

No abstract

The objective of this study was to provide quantitative information on environmental feeding rates of warm water oceanic epipelagic copepods. We determined clearance rates at 23 °C for various particle size ranges in shipboard studies in the western oligotrophic subtropical Atlantic Ocean for females of the calanoid species Clausocalanus furcatus and Mecynocera clausii. These in situ clearance rates were then applied to the various particle size ranges of environmental particle spectra of auto‐ and heterotrophs at different depths from three stations in the western Atlantic. After calculating the metabolic demands of each of these two copepod species and applying an assimilation efficiency of 90%, we determined that C. furcatus meets its metabolic demands in all six cases, and M. clausii in two of six cases. Clausocalanus furcatus would also meet its energy demands at 25 °C, where it is often found, while M. clausii at 20 °C, where it is regularly found, would cover its metabolic needs in four of six cases. It is hypothesized that these species, and most likely most of the other co‐occurring copepod species, are limited in their abundance by food availability, or, better said, are ‘living on the edge’ in relation to food abundance.

No abstract

Globally, movements of commercial vessels can facilitate the spread of marine non-indigenous species (NIS) beyond their current biogeographic ranges. Authorities at potential destination locations employ a number of biosecurity risk assessment strategies to estimate threat levels from potential origin locations, vulnerability levels of specific destination regions, or the consequences of successful establishment of particular NIS species. Among the many factors and processes that have an influence on the probability that NIS will survive transport and establish successfully at new locations, vessel type has been identified as an important risk factor. Different vessel types have different structural and operational characteristics that affect their overall level of marine biosecurity risk. Several recent studies have examined subsets of vessel types or vessel characteristics for their ability to spread NIS. While high-quality information is available via these endeavors, it is fragmented and not readily available as an integrated resource to support biosecurity regulators or other end-users. In this study, we synthesize available empirical data on a wide range of vessel types and characteristics to develop a framework that allows systematic quantification of the relative risk of NIS transfer by common commercial vessel types. We explain our approach for constructing the framework, from selection of key risk factors for inclusion, to selection of which datasets to use for those risk factors. The framework output is a set of risk scores which denote the relative biosecurity risk of common commercial vessel types. To demonstrate a potential application of our framework, we applied the risk scores to vessel visit data for commercial ports around New Zealand and assigned a relative risk level per port based on the arrival frequencies of different vessel types. The resulting per-port risk levels matched closely with the results of a prior benchmark study that employed state-of-the-art risk modeling approaches. Our framework is based on globally relevant data, is simple to implement, and is adaptable as new empirical information arises. It can serve as a simple tool to determine the relative levels of vessel-related biosecurity risk associated with geographic shipping hubs, or it can be used as a vessel-specific “risk mask” for maritime transport models. It can be applied to any scientific or policy question that requires information on vessel type differences in relation to marine biosecurity risk.