Adaptive evolution can occur over similar timescales as ecological processes such as community assembly, but its particular effects on community assembly and structure and their magnitude are poorly understood. In experimental evolution trials, Daphnia magna were exposed to varying environments (presence and absence of fish and artificial macrophytes) for 2 months. Then, in a common gardening e...

This study combined measurements from multiple platforms with acoustic instruments on moorings and on a ship and optics on a profiler and an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to examine the relationships between fluorescent, bioluminescent, and acoustically scattering layers in Monterey Bay during nighttime hours in July and August of 2006 and May of 2008. We identified thin bioluminescent la...

Chytridiomycosis is an emerging disease of amphibians that has led to global population declines and possible extinctions. Vectoring of the pathogen, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) by anthropogenic means is thought to be important in its spread. To limit further increase in the distribution of Bd, field biologists and amateur naturalists ought to disinfect their boots and materials. Howeve...

Toxic algal blooms are an important problem worldwide. The literature on toxic cyanobacteria blooms in inland waters reports widely divergent results on whether zooplankton can control cyanobacteria blooms or cyanobacteria suppress zooplankton by their toxins. Here we test whether this may be due to genotype × genotype interactions, in which interactions between the large-bodied and efficient g...

Plankton patchiness in homogeneous physical environments is studied in this paper assuming that all involved populations disperse diffusively. A recent but powerful sufficient condition for the emergence of spatial patterns in models with any number of species is systematically applied to all food chain and food web plankton models and the result is rather sharp: all models explicitly containin...

0079-6611/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. A doi:10.1016/j.pocean.2009.09.011 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +47 55238687. E-mail address: [email protected] (G. Huse). Marine ecosystem models often contain modules for two phytoplankton compartments (flagellates and diatoms) and two zooplankton groups (microand mesozooplankton). The models rarely include fish, not even as an agent in zooplank...

The first few months of life is the most vulnerable period for fish and their optimal hatching time with zooplankton prey is favored by natural selection. Traditionally, however, prey abundance (i.e., zooplankton density) has been considered important, whereas prey nutritional composition has been largely neglected in natural settings. High-quality zooplankton, rich in both essential amino acid...

Disturbances are expected to increase variability and/or decrease predictability in ecosystems, while dispersal (or immigration) may have positive or negative effects on ecosystem stability. We conducted a mesocosm experiment with pelagic zooplankton to examine the independent and interactive effects of a nutrient pulse and immigration from neighbouring lakes on (a) temporal variation in the me...

Zooplankton are considered good indicators for understanding how oceans are affected by climate change. While climate influence on zooplankton abundance variability is currently accepted, its mechanisms are not understood, and prediction is not yet possible. This paper utilizes the Genetic Programming approach to identify which environmental variables, and at which extent, can be used to expres...

The concentrations of 239þ240Pu and Cs in zooplankton and nekton in the Northwest Pacific and Southern Oceans were measured during the period 1993–1996. The object of the sampling was to assess the potential impacts of existing submerged anthropogenic-radioactive materials in the western North Pacific as well as the East China Sea. Samples from the Bransfield Strait of the Antarctic Ocean provi...