Denise Oliver-Velez (@deniseoliver-velez.bsky.social)

Food chains in Caribbean coral reefs are getting shorter Some ancient fish in the Caribbean may have lost their lunch. Modern food chains on coral reefs off the coasts of the Dominican Republic and Panama are roughly 60 to 70 percent shorter than they were around 7,000 years ago, researchers report February 11 in Nature. Habitat loss and overfishing may have pushed more species to compete for fewer resources and repositioned some fish groups within the ecosystem’s food chain. The findings suggest fish could be less able to adapt if food sources suddenly become scarce, perhaps making today’s reefs even more vulnerable in an already changing environment. Sign up for our newsletter We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday. “Understanding the food webs helps us understand the health of the reef,” says Jessica Lueders-Dumont, a fisheries ecologist and geochemist at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Mass. “If we could go back, scuba dive on the same reefs a couple thousand years ago, what would they look like?” Rather than time travel, Lueders-Dumont and colleagues examined fossilized and modern fish ear stones called otoliths that are important for movement and hearing. Otolith shape depends on species, and the team measured the amount of a heavy form of nitrogen to... https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coral-reef-food-chain-caribbean