Understanding the biotic and abiotic factors that influence the susceptibility of a community to invasion is beneficial for the prediction and management of invasive species and the conservation of native biodiversity. However, the relationships between factors and invasibility of a community have not been fully confirmed, and the factors most associated with the susceptibility of a community t...

All animals have an effect on the environment, but some key species – called ecosystem engineers – can have a particularly large influence. Their impact can be positive, by creating and maintaining habitats and increasing biodiversity, but they can also be negative, by destroying habitats and reducing biodiversity. Interestingly, the magnitude of the effect that an ecosystem engineer has on the...

Water resources especially lotic ecosystems drain diverse landscapes with their peculiar climatic regime, making them extremely diverse in terms of establishment of complex network of biotic communities, one such component are benthic macroinvertebrates or zoobenthos which are integral components of freshwater systems. They are represented by insects, molluscans, crustaceans, annelids and nemat...

Insects and other small invertebrates are ubiquitous components of all terrestrial and freshwater food webs, but their cumulative biomass is small relative to plants and microbes. As a result, it is often assumed that these animals make relatively minor contributions to ecosystem processes. Despite their small sizes and cumulative biomass, we suggest that these animals may commonly have importa...

To assess the potential impacts of agricultural pesticides on tropical freshwater ecosystems, the present study developed temperature-specific, freshwater species protection concentrations (i.e., ecotoxicity threshold values) for 8 pesticides commonly detected in Australia's tropical freshwaters. Because relevant toxicity data for native tropical freshwater species to assess the ecological risk...

Aquatic insects contribute significantly to freshwater ecosystems, forming food for many organisms, particularly in the food webs associated with wetland environments. Many fishes, amphibians, shorebirds, waterfowl, and other animals forage heavily on both the aquatic and terrestrial stages of aquatic insects, which are essential to their survival. It is estimated that about 3 % of the total in...

Understanding spatial distributions, synergies, and tradeoffs of multiple ecosystem services (benefits people derive from ecosystems) remains challenging. We analyzed the supply of 10 ecosystem services for 2006 across a large urbanizing agricultural watershed in the Upper Midwest of the United States, and asked the following: (i) Where are areas of high and low supply of individual ecosystem s...

Freshwater habitats occupy ,1% of the Earth’s surface, yet are hotspots that support ,10% of all known species, and ,M of vertebrate species. Fresh waters also are hotspots for human activities that have led to widespread habitat degradation, pollution, flow regulation and water extraction, fisheries overexploitation, and alien species introductions. These impacts have caused severe declines in...

We ask 3 questions that bear on the ability of aquatic scientists to influence public perceptions and public policy related to important environmental issues: 1) Why should scientists become better communicators? 2) What can we do to promote effective communication? 3) How can scientific societies help scientists meet this communication challenge? Shareholders in the environment include watersh...

1. In the face of continuing anthropogenic stressors to freshwater systems worldwide , the natural resilience and resistance of the freshwater ecosystems that enables them to cope with or recover rapidly from certain levels of perturbation is under significant threat. In many systems, the changes brought about through human activities have significantly altered the physical habitat and ecologic...