Forage is one of the main products of rangeland ecosystems, which is threatened by different anthropogenic disturbances. This study was conducted to assess the impact of urbanization, rural development, agriculture extension, road construction and industry on forage production in an arid and semiarid rangeland using InVEST habitat quality model in spring 2018. In 14 rangeland types, thirty 2×1m...

ecological study of behavior as essential elements of their ecosystems and habitat characteristics in order to find appropriate solutions to maintain, revise and revitalize this important part of the renewable natural resources. this present research is about autecology of lagochilus macracanthus fisch. & c. a. mey. study area is located in near of nodooshan, yazd, iran. selected sites were wit...

-Many reservoirs in arid regions experience highly variable water levels caused by seasonal inflow fluctuations and designated outflow requirements. At Shasta Lake, California, managers plant cerealgrain grass beds on exposed drawdown shorelines to increase juvenile fish habitat, localize productivity, and increase invertebrate fish prey. To determine the efficacy of these plantings, the abunda...

Previous research indicated that high predictive performance in species distribution modelling can be obtained by combining both biotic and abiotic habitat variables. However, models developed for fish often only address physical habitat characteristics, thus omitting potentially important biotic factors. Therefore, we assessed the impact of biotic variables on fish habitat preferences in four ...

Ecosystem engineers, organisms that modify the physical environment, are generally thought to increase diversity by facilitating species that benefit from engineered habitats. Recent theoretical work, however, suggests that ecosystem engineering could initiate cascades of trophic interactions that shape community structure in unexpected ways, potentially having negative indirect effects on abun...

Understanding and predicting species distribution in space and time and consequently community structure and dynamics is an important issue in ecology, and particularly in climate change research. A crucial factor determining the composition and dynamics of animal populations is habitat heterogeneity, i.e., the number of structural elements in a given locality. In the marine pelagic environment...

An individual’s sex, body size and colour pattern can influence its habitat use, and such partitioning can have important ecological and evolutionary consequences. We studied a system very different from those that have attracted previous research on this topic: sea snakes ( Emydocephalus annulatus ) in shallow-water coral-reef areas of New Caledonia. The snakes used habitats non-randomly in te...

The conversion of natural forest to oil palm plantation is a major current threat to the conservation of biodiversity in South East Asia. Most animal taxa decrease in both species richness and abundance on conversion of forest to oil palm, and there is usually a severe loss of forest species. The extent of loss varies significantly across both different taxa and different microhabitats within t...

This study focused on variation in fish mercury (Hg) concentrations in 185 Nile perch (Lates niloticus) samples collected across four different habitat types in Lake Nabugabo, Uganda, a tropical lake located proximate to Lake Victoria. We quantified the stomach contents of Nile perch using the % index of relative importance, as well as, nitrogen and carbon isotopic concentrations to assess the ...