Predatory functional responses play integral roles in predator-prey dynamics, and their assessment promises greater understanding and prediction of the predatory impacts of invasive species. Other interspecific interactions, however, such as parasitism and higher-order predation, have the potential to modify predator-prey interactions and thus the predictive capability of the comparative functi...

Artificial light is gaining attention as a potential stressor to aquatic ecosystems. Artificial lights located near streams increase light levels experienced by stream invertebrates and we hypothesized light would depress night drift rates. We also hypothesized that the effect of light on drift rates would decrease over time as the invertebrates acclimated to the new light level over the course...

By sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and immunodiffusion, we identified paramyosin in two smooth invertebrate "catch" muscles (Mytilus anterior byssus retractor and Mercenaria opaque adductor) and five invertebrate striated muscles (Limulus telson levator, Homarus claw muscle, Balanus scutal depressor, Lethocerus air tube retractor, and Aequipecten striated adductor). We...

Ovaries and embryos from sexually mature Gammarus fossarum were sampled at different stages of the reproductive cycle. The soluble proteome was extracted for five biological replicates and samples were subjected to trypsin digestion. The resulting peptides were analyzed by high resolution tandem mass spectrometry with a LTQ-Orbitrap XL instrument. The MS/MS spectra were assigned with a previous...

Deciphering evolutionary processes occurring within contaminated populations is important for the ecological risk assessment of toxic chemicals. Whereas increased tolerance to contaminants is well documented in aquatic animal populations, whether such phenotypic changes occur through genetic adaptation is still debated. In that sense, several studies with the freshwater crustacean Gammarus conc...

Ovaries were taken from five sexually mature amphipods: Gammarus fossarum, Gammarus pulex, Gammarus roeseli, Hyallela azteca and Parhyale hawaiensis. The soluble proteome extracted from individual pair of ovaries from five biological replicates was trypsin digested and the resulting peptides were analyzed by high resolution tandem mass spectrometry. The spectra were assigned with four protein s...

concentration of heavy metals in aquatic ecosystems is considered as an important environmantal issue. in this study, the namrood river located in firoozkooh (tehran province, iran) was assessed for the existence of heavy metals. the namrood river is situated by the main road being by pollutants from tourism and recreational centers, gas stations, sewage of villages, agricultural wastewater and...

Copper is one of the most toxic metals for marine organisms. Biochemical changes occurring in the metabolically active tissues of gills (GL), hepatopancreas (HP) and muscles (MU) of the juvenile lobster, Panulirus homarus homarus on exposure to two sub-lethal doses (9.55 and 19.1 μg l) of copper were studied for 28 days of exposure (DoE). Sub-lethal doses of copper significantly (P<0.05) altere...