Abst r ac t —Understanding the interactions between kelp beds and nearshore fish is essential because anthropogenic changes and natural variability in these beds may affect available habitat for fishes. In this study fish communities were investigated in south-central Alaska kelp beds characterized by a range of substrate complexity and varying densities of both perennial understory kelps and a...

Wood Storks are federally and state-listed as Endangered in the southeastern United States. Since they are also wetland-dependent they are often an important consideration in permitting, and thus become key in development and management issues. Yet the information available for identifying and prioritizing stork colonies and feeding habitat is dated, and limited in type. Many colony sites have ...

The marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus) is a declining seabird that is well-known for nesting in coastal old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. Most studies of habitat selection have focused on modeling terrestrial nesting habitat even though marine habitat is believed to be a major contributor to population declines in some regions. To address this information gap, we conducted a...

The recruitment of wood from the riparian zone to rivers and streams provides a complex habitat for aquatic organisms and can influence both aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem function. The Daly River in the wet-dry tropics of northern Australia is a highly seasonal, perennially-flowing sand-bed river where surveys of river wood aggregations at the reach scale (~2 km) in 2008 and 2009 recorded ...

The ability of animals to gather information about their social and physical environment is essential for their ecological function. Odour cues are an important component of this information gathering across taxa. Recent laboratory studies have revealed the importance of flexible chemical cues in facilitating social recognition of fishes. These cues are known to be mediated by recent habitat ex...

Distributions of mobile animals have been shown to be heavily influenced by habitat and climate. We address the historical and contemporary context of fish habitats within a major zootone: the Recherche Archipelago, southern western Australia. Baited remote underwater video systems were set in nine habitat types within three regions to determine the species diversity and relative abundance of b...

The Laurentian Great Lakes are large dynamic aquatic ecosystems with a diversity of available habitats and associated fish communities. The increasing prevalence of invasive species has influenced habitat associations of native species and altered trophic relationships throughout the food webs. We sought to identify habitat and biotic relationships associated with common nearshore fish abundanc...

River flow regulations have great impact on the downstream aquatic ecosystem. It is important to investigate the response of target species to the changes in hydrological regimes so that we can explore possible remediation measures. Ecohydraulics models that integrate hydrodynamics processes and ecological processes have been shown to be efficient in achieving these objectives. This study devel...

Many lines of evidence suggest coral communities worldwide are changing rapidly. Responses of coral reef fish populations to such changes will, in part, depend upon how vital demographic rates of fish populations respond to changing coral communities. Our previous work on the reef fish Thalassoma hardwicke suggests the strength of density-dependent mortality (a measure of “site quality”) is het...

Loss and/or degradation of nearshore habitats have led to increased efforts to restore or enhance many of these habitats, particularly those that are deemed essential for marine fishes. Copper rockfish (Sebastes caurinus) and lingcod (Ophiodon enlongatus) are dominant members of the typical reef fish community that inhabit rocky and high-relief substrates along the Pacific Northwest. We used ac...