About the Authors

Milton S. Love

Contributed equally to this work with: Milton S. Love, Mary M. Nishimoto, Scott Clark, Li Kui

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

love@lifesci.ucsb.edu

Affiliation Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America

Mary M. Nishimoto

Contributed equally to this work with: Milton S. Love, Mary M. Nishimoto, Scott Clark, Li Kui

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America

Scott Clark

Contributed equally to this work with: Milton S. Love, Mary M. Nishimoto, Scott Clark, Li Kui

Roles Data curation, Investigation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America

Li Kui

Contributed equally to this work with: Milton S. Love, Mary M. Nishimoto, Scott Clark, Li Kui

Roles Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology

Affiliation Marine Science Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara, California, United States of America

Azivy Aziz

Roles Funding acquisition

‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company, Spring, Texas, United States, United States of America

David Palandro

Roles Funding acquisition

‡ These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company, Spring, Texas, United States, United States of America

Competing Interests

This research was funded by an ExxonMobil Upstream Research Companycontract to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB),contract number EM11487.A. Aziz and D. Palandro are employees of ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company. M. Love, M. M. Nishimoto, S. Clark, and L. Kui were employed by UCSB under that contract. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare.  This does not alter our adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials