Vibrio parahaemolyticus is the leading cause of seafood-related infections with illnesses undergoing a geographic expansion. In this process of expansion, the most fundamental change has been the transition from infections caused by local strains to the surge of pandemic clonal types. Pandemic clone sequence type 3 (ST3) was the only example of transcontinental spreading until 2012, when ST36 was detected outside the region where it is endemic in the U.S. Pacific Northwest causing infections along the U.S. northeast coast and Spain. Here, we used genome-wide analyses to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the V. parahaemolyticus ST36 clone over the course of its geographic expansion during the previous 25 years. The origin of this lineage was estimated to be in similar to 1985. By 1995, a new variant emerged in the region and quickly replaced the old clone, which has not been detected since 2000. The new Pacific Northwest (PNW) lineage was responsible for the first cases associated with this clone outside the Pacific Northwest region. After several introductions into the northeast coast, the new PNW clone differentiated into a highly dynamic group that continues to cause illness on the northeast coast of the United States. Surprisingly, the strains detected in Europe in 2012 diverged from this ancestral group around 2000 and have conserved genetic features present only in the old PNW lineage. Recombination was identified as the major driver of diversification, with some preliminary observations suggesting a trend toward a more specialized lifestyle, which may represent a critical element in the expansion of epidemics under scenarios of coastal warming. IMPORTANCE Vibrio parahaemolyticus and Vibrio cholerae represent the only two instances of pandemic expansions of human pathogens originating in the marine environment. However, while the current pandemic of V. cholerae emerged more than 50 years ago, the global expansion of V. parahaemolyticus is a recent phenomenon. These modern expansions provide an exceptional opportunity to study the evolutionary process of these pathogens at first hand and gain an understanding of the mechanisms shaping the epidemic dynamics of these diseases, in particular, the emergence, dispersal, and successful introduction in new regions facilitating global spreading of infections. In this study, we used genomic analysis to examine the evolutionary divergence that has occurred over the course of the most recent transcontinental expansion of a pathogenic Vibrio, the spreading of the V. parahaemolyticus sequence type 36 clone from the region where it is endemic on the Pacific coast of North America to the east coast of the United States and finally to the west coast of Europe.
Camp, E. F.; Smith, D. J.; Evenhuis, C.; Enochs, I.; Manzello, D.; Woodcock, S.; Suggett, D. J.;
Published Date:
2016
Source:
Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, 283(1831), 20160442.
Description:
Corals are acclimatized to populate dynamic habitats that neighbour coral reefs. Habitats such as seagrass beds exhibit broad diel changes in temperature and pH that routinely expose corals to conditions predicted for reefs over the next 50-100 years...
Gintert, B. E.; Manzello, D. P.; Enochs, I. C.; Kolodziej, G.; Carlton, R.; Gleason, A. C. R.; Gracias, N.;
Published Date:
2018
Source:
Coral Reefs, 37(2), 533-547.
Description:
Annual coral bleaching events, which are predicted to occur as early as the next decade in the Florida Keys, are expected to cause catastrophic coral mortality. Despite this, there is little field data on how Caribbean coral communities respond to an...
Cyronak, T.; Andersson, A. J.; Langdon, C.; Albright, R.; Bates, N. R.; Caldeira, K.; Carlton, R.; Corredor, J. E.; Dunbar, R. B.; Enochs, I.; Erez, J.; Eyre, B. D.; Gattuso, J. P.; Gledhill, D.; Kayanne, H.; Kline, D. I.; Koweek, D. A.; Lantz, C.; Lazar, B.; Manzello, D.; McMahon, A.; Melendez, M.; Page, H. N.; Santos, I. R.; Schulz, K. G.; Shaw, E.; Silverman, J.; Suzuki, A.; Teneva, L.; Watanabe, A.; Yamamoto, S.;
Published Date:
2018
Source:
Plos One, 13(1), 17.
Description:
Worldwide, coral reef ecosystems are experiencing increasing pressure from a variety of anthropogenic perturbations including ocean warming and acidification, increased sedimentation, eutrophication, and overfishing, which could shift reefs to a cond...
Because surface wind speeds within tropical cyclones are important for operational and research interests, it is vital to understand surface wind structure in relation to various storm and environmental influences. In this study, global rain-correcte...
This study reconstructs a century-long South Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (SAMOC) index. The reconstruction is possible due to its covariability with sea surface temperature (SST). A singular value decomposition (SVD) method is applied...
Internal gravity waves are continuously generated by deep moist convection around the globe. Satellite images suggest that tropical cyclones produce short-wavelength, high-frequency waves that radiate outward, with the wave fronts wrapped into tight ...
Manzello, D. P.; Enochs, I. C.; Kolodziej, G.; Carlton, R.; Valentino, L.;
Published Date:
2018
Source:
Marine Biology, 165(6), 11.
Description:
The persistence of coral reef frameworks requires that calcium carbonate (CaCO3) production by corals and other calcifiers outpaces CaCO3 loss via physical, chemical, and biological erosion. Coral bleaching causes declines in CaCO3 production, but th...
Kubryakov, A. A.; Stanichny, S. V.; Volkov, D. L.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Ocean Science, 13(3), 443-452.
Description:
Satellite altimetry measurements show that the magnitude of the Black Sea sea level trends is spatially uneven. While the basin-mean sea level rise from 1993 to 2014 was about 3.15 mm yr(-1), the local rates of sea level rise varied from 1.5-2.5 mm y...
Putrasahan, D. A.; Kamenkovich, I.; Le Henaff, M.; Kirtman, B. P.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Geophysical Research Letters, 44(12), 6352-6362.
Description:
Mesoscale variability of currents in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) can affect oceanic heat advection and air-sea heat exchanges, which can influence climate extremes over North America. This study is aimed at understanding the influence of the oceanic mes...
Goes, M.; Babcock, E.; Bringas, F.; Ortner, P.; Goni, G.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 34(9), 1947-1961.
Description:
Expendable bathythermograph (XBT) data provide one of the longest available records of upper-ocean temperature. However, temperature and depth biases in XBT data adversely affect estimates of long-term trends of ocean heat content and, to a lesser ex...
During a routine penetration into Hurricane Felix late on 2 September 2007, NOAA42 encountered extreme turbulence and graupel, flight-level horizontal wind gusts of over 83ms(-1), and vertical wind speeds varying from 10 ms (1) downward to 31ms (1) u...
Dong, S. F.; Volkov, D.; Goni, G.; Lumpkin, R.; Foltz, G. R.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, 122(7), 5952-5969.
Description:
Three surface drifters equipped with temperature and salinity sensors at 0.2 and 5 m depths were deployed in April/May 2015 in the subtropical South Pacific with the objective of measuring near-surface salinity differences seen by satellite and in si...
Kourafalou, V.; Androulidakis, Y.; Le Henaff, M.; Kang, H.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, 122(10), 7897-7923.
Description:
Mesoscale anticyclonic eddies along the northern Cuban coast (CubANs) have been identified in the Straits of Florida, associated with the northward shift of the Florida Current (FC) and the anticyclonic curvature of the Loop Current (LC) at the weste...
Aksoy, A.; Zhang, J. A.; Klotz, B. W.; Uhlhorn, E. W.; Cione, J. J.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 9(7), 2672-2695.
Description:
A new vortex-scale initialization scheme is presented for idealized coupled hurricane simulations. The atmospheric scheme involves construction of azimuthally averaged kinematic and thermodynamic initial fields based on historical composite data sets...
Increased ice discharge in the North Atlantic is thought to cause a weakening, or collapse, of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) during Heinrich events. Paleoclimate records indicate that these periods were marked by severe tropi...
Lindstrom, E. J.; Shcherbina, A. Y.; Rainville, L.; Farrar, J. T.; Centurioni, L. R.; Dong, S. F.; D'Asaro, E. A.; Eriksen, C.; Fratantoni, D. M.; Hodges, B. A.; Hormann, V.; Kessler, W. S.; Lee, C. M.; Riser, S. C.; St Laurent, L.; Volkov, D. L.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Oceanography, 30(2), 38-48.
Description:
The Salinity Processes in the Upper-ocean Regional Study ( SPURS) aims to understand the patterns and variability of sea surface salinity. In order to capture the wide range of spatial and temporal scales associated with processes controlling salinit...
Lee, S. K.; Volkov, D. L.; Lopez, H.; Cheon, W. G.; Gordon, A. L.; Liu, Y. Y.; Wanninkhof, R.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans, 122(5), 4413-4430.
Description:
Since late 1978, Antarctic sea-ice extent in the East Pacific has retreated persistently over the Amundsen and Bellingshausen Seas in warm seasons, but expanded over the Ross and Amundsen Seas in cold seasons, while almost opposite seasonal trends ha...
Alaka, G. J.; Zhang, X. J.; Gopalakrishnan, S. G.; Goldenberg, S. B.; Marks, F. D.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Weather and Forecasting, 32(3), 1253-1271.
Description:
The Hurricane Weather Research and Forecasting (HWRF) Model is a dynamical model that has shown annual improvements in its tropical cyclone (TC) track forecasts as a result of various modifications. This study focuses on an experimental version of HW...
Zhang, J. A.; Cione, J. J.; Kalina, E. A.; Uhlhorn, E. W.; Hock, T.; Smith, J. A.;
Published Date:
2017
Source:
Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, 34(6), 1333-1349.
Description:
This study highlights infrared sensor technology incorporated into the global positioning system (GPS) dropsonde platforms to obtain sea surface temperature (SST) measurements. This modified sonde (IRsonde) is used to improve understanding of air-sea...