We have constructed a linear array of coupled, microscale patches of habitat. When bacteria are inoculated into this habitat landscape, a metapopulation emerges. Local bacterial populations in each patch coexist and weakly couple with neighbor populations in nearby patches. These spatially distributed bacterial populations interact through local extinction and colonization processes. We have fu...

The potential consequences of anthropogenic habitat fragmentation on species diversity and extinction have drawn considerable attention in recent decades. In many cases, traditional island biogeography theory has been applied to explain the observed patterns. Here, we propose that habitat fragmentation as a selective force can be traced in mammalian body length changes. By exploring historical ...

Freshwater populations of three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) in northern Germany are found as distinct lake and river ecotypes. Adaptation to habitat-specific parasites might influence immune capabilities of stickleback ecotypes. Here, naive laboratory-bred sticklebacks from lake and river populations were exposed reciprocally to parasite environments in a lake and a river habit...

An extensive area in Bristol Bay, Alaska, was proposed as a no-trawling zone to protect red king crab habitat from potential impacts. The Bristol Bay red king crab stock has remained at low abundance levels since a stock collapse in 1980. A literature review indicated that the proposed area encompassed all available habitat essential for red king crab juveniles of this stock. Published studies ...

Adapting and adopting River Habitat Survey: Problems and solutions for fluvial hydromorphological assessment in Portugal The Water Framework Directive (WFD), which established the use of hydromorphological quality elements to assess the ecological status of water bodies, has influenced the purpose and content of several European methods for characterizing physical structure and assessing habita...

Scientists have long assumed that the physical structure and condition of stream and river channels have pervasive effects on biological communities and processes, but specific tests are few. To investigate the influence of the stream-reach geomorphic state on in-stream habitat and aquatic macroinvertebrate communities, we compared measures of habitat conditions and macroinvertebrate community ...

wetlands in the lower reaches of songhua river (lrsr), northeast china, are rich in biodiversityand natural resources, which provide crucial staging and wintering habitats for various endangered species.however, in the past five decades, the size of this wetland area has decreased, and its quality has deteriorated because of increased natural and human activities. wetland restoration is critica...

under the contemporary scenario of global climate change and increasing coastal eutrophication, baseline studies of phytoplankton diversity and distribution in relation to habitat conditions constitute the first approach to evaluate potential shifts at the base of the food webs. here we present data of phytoplankton species composition and environmental variables in winter 2006 in a temperate ...

1. Tiger sharks Galeocerdo cuvier are important predators in a variety of nearshore communities, including the seagrass ecosystem of Shark Bay, Western Australia. Because tiger sharks are known to influence spatial distributions of multiple prey species, it is important to understand how they use habitats at a variety of spatial scales. We used a combination of catch rates and acoustic tracking...

In the northwestern Mediterranean Sea, sperm whales, pilot whales and Risso’s dolphins prey exclusively or preferentially on cephalopods. In order to evaluate their competition, we modelled their habitat suitability with the Ecological Niche Factor Analysis (ENFA) and compared their ecological niches using a discriminant analysis. We used a long term (1995–2005) small boat data set, with visual...