The British Columbia Ministry of Forests is developing a practical classification system for British Columbia’s wetland and riparian ecosystems. The project has identified a diversity of wetland and riparian ecosystem types, in terms of environmental profiles, regional distribution, and habitat values. Urbanization, agricultural development, hydrological modification, livestock grazing, intensi...

Restoration of riparian areas is an important step towards improving water flow and water quality of the Rio Conchos in northern Mexico. To provide background data for restoration decisions we characterized the ecological integrity of a 40 km long riparian corridor along the middle Rio Conchos. The characterization consisted of determining dominant species of trees and shrubs, structure, and ri...

Watershed land use in suburban areas can affect stream biota through degradation of instream habitat, water quality, and riparian vegetation. By monitoring stream biotic communities in various geographic regions, we can better understand and conserve our watershed ecosystems. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between watershed land use and the integrity of benthic inve...

Introduced exotic species can dominate communities and replace native species that should be better adapted to their local environment, a paradox that is usually explained by the absence of natural enemies and by habitat alteration resulting from anthropogenic disturbance. Additionally, introduced species can enhance their invasion success and impact on native species by modifying selection pre...

The loss of biodiversity following fragmentation and degradation of habitat is a major issue in conservation biology. As competition for resources increases following habitat loss and fragmentation, severe population declines may occur even in common, highly mobile species; such demographic decline may cause changes within the population structure of the species. The regent honeyeater, Anthocha...

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...

Coastal habitats that serve as nursery grounds for numerous marine species are badly degraded, yet the traditional means of modeling populations of exploited marine species handle spatiotemporal changes in habitat characteristics and life history dynamics poorly, if at all. To explore how nursery habitat degradation impacts recruitment of a mobile, benthic species, we developed a spatially expl...

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...

The fragmentation of habitat is a major cause of biodiversity loss. However, while numerous studies have suggested that reducing the size of populations and isolating them on fragments leads ultimately to the extinction of a species (small isolated populations are extinction prone), the evidence has been rather conjectural. This is because dispersal is so difficult to measure and isolation diff...

We assessed the taxonomic diversity, geographic distributions, life history, ecology and fisheries of tarpons, ladyfishes and bonefishes (members of the subdivision Elopomorpha), which share many life history and habitat use characteristics that make them vulnerable to environmental and anthropogenic stresses in coastal environments. This assessment of Red List status for the International Unio...