Using Basin Area Stream Survey (BASS) data from the United States Forest Service, we evaluated how timber harvesting influenced patterns of variation in physical stream features and regional fish and macroinvertebrate assemblages. Data were collected for three years (1990-1992) from six hydrologically variable streams in the Ouachita Mountains, Arkansas, USA that were paired by management regim...

The structure and dynamics of ecological communities can be determined by both top-down (e.g., predation) and bottom-up (e.g., energy inputs) processes, which can act synergistically and across spatial and temporal scales. Here we aimed at understanding the role of multiple controls in a Mediterranean rocky sublittoral marine community that harbors a diverse algal community and strongly interac...

Environmental changes and human activities can have strong impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. This study investigates how, from a quantitative point of view, simultaneously both environmental and anthropogenic factors affect species composition and abundance of exploited groundfish assemblages (i.e. target and non-target species) at large spatio-temporal scales. We aim to invest...

Connectivity is now a common consideration in conservation planning, but we need further empirical evidence for the role of connectivity in catalyzing reserve function. We examined whether connectivity improved reserve performance by investigating how isolation between coral reefs and mangroves influenced fish assemblages inside and outside a reserve in Moreton Bay, Australia. Connectivity grea...

Desert springs, which harbor diverse and endemic invertebrate assemblages, are often used as refuge habitats for protected fish species. Additionally, many of these springs have been colonized by invasive fish species. However, the potential impacts of recently established fish populations on invertebrate communities in desert springs have been relatively unexplored. We conducted a mesocosm exp...

Small dams for hydropower have caused widespread alteration of Central American rivers, yet much of recent development has gone undocumented by scientists and conservationists. We examined the ecological effects of a small hydropower plant (Doña Julia Hydroelectric Center) on two low-order streams (the Puerto Viejo River and Quebradon stream) draining a mountainous area of Costa Rica. Operation...

Marine reserves are a spatial approach to marine management and conservation aimed at protecting and restoring multispecies assemblages and the structure and function of marine ecosystems. We used meta-analyses of published data to address the questions of how and over what time frames marine assemblages change within no-take marine reserves as they recover from fishing and other human uses. We...

a r t i c l e i n f o Numerous biological and chemical paleorecords have been used to infer paleoclimate, lake level fluctuation and faunal composition from the drill cores obtained from Lake Malawi, Africa. However, fish fossils have never been used to examine changes in African Great Lake vertebrate aquatic communities nor as indicators of changing paleolimnological conditions. Here we presen...

Aim The goal of our study was to test fundamental predictions of biogeographical theories in tropical reef fish assemblages, in particular relationships between fish species richness and island area, isolation and oceanographic variables (temperature and productivity) in the insular Caribbean. These analyses complement an analogous and more voluminous body of work from the tropical Indo-Pacific...

The ongoing loss of predators is changing the composition of food webs, with largely un known consequences. In particular, the effects of multiple fish predators on food webs are difficult to predict due to the prevalence of omnivory and intra guild predation. At the same time, many ecosystems experience high nutrient loads that fuel food webs from the bottom up. To test the combined effects of...