Assessing the potential for threatened species to persist and spread within fragmented landscapes requires the identification of core areas that can sustain resident populations and dispersal corridors that can link these core areas with isolated patches of remnant habitat. We developed a set of GIS tools, simulation methods, and network analysis procedures to assess potential landscape connect...

The remnants of primeval Norway spruce forests in the European temperate zone are crucial for maintaining forest biodiversity in high mountain landscapes. This paper presents results of a multidisciplinary research and evaluation project on the management practices for mountain spruce forests in the Natura 2000 site (National Nature Reserve Serak-Keprnik in the Hruby Jesenik Mountains, the Czec...

Past analyses of sequence diversity in high-resolution protein-encoding genes have identified putative ecological species of unicellular cyanobacteria in the genus Synechococcus, which are specialized to 60°C but not 65°C in Mushroom Spring microbial mats. Because these studies were limited to only two habitats, we studied the distribution of Synechococcus sequence variants at 1°C intervals alo...

This article is focused on definition and identification of optimal ecological flow for macrozoobenthos communities in small urban creeks affected by urban drainage using the Physical HABitat Simulation (PHABSIM) system. It describes the process of determination of ecological flows, from field measurement to determined values. Results show that combine sewer overflows and storm water drains neg...

The assessment of biotic responses to habitat disturbance and fragmentation generally has been limited to analyses at a single spatial scale. Furthermore, methods to compare responses between scales have lacked the ability to discriminate among patterns related to the identity, strength, or direction of associations of biotic variables with landscape attributes. We present an examination of the...

Methods Using neutral models and mid-domain effect models, we simulated species spread in a spatially explicit array of grid cells representing the Atlantic Forest domain. We compared empirical patterns of species richness and composition with predictions of the neutral and mid-domain effect models. We also modeled individual species responses to climatic conditions and forest integrity, a meas...

In local reef fish communities, species richness increases with increasing reef area. At Ishigaki Island, Japan, species richness is much lower on large reefs in the shallow back reef than that expected from random placement model simulations (RPMS). As three aggressive territorial herbivorous damselfish, Stegastes nigricans, Stegastes lividus and Hemiglyphidodon plagiometopon, coexist only on ...

Marine reserves are gaining attention around the world as a tool to both conserve ocean resources and improve the productivity of fisheries. Using simulation analysis, we investigate in a limited-entry fishery comprising nine subpopulations the inherent bioeconomic trade-offs associated with cost-effective designs of marine reserve networks—that is, the trade-offs between the degree of connecte...