This study provides a baseline measure of pelagic fish species diversity around fish aggregating devices (FADs) in the Western Indian Ocean. Using data from visual censuses made by SCUBA divers around drifting FADs we (1) analysed 11 diversity indices describing 4 main components of pelagic diversity: number of species, evenness, taxonomic diversity and rarity and (2) discussed the viability of...

Small pelagic fishes particularly anchovy (Encrasicholina punctifer) and sardine (Sardinella sindensis) have an important role to support the Iranian fisheries, and are distributed along the entire length of the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea coastal waters. Using small pelagic fisheries logbook, a GIS-based environmental modelling approach was applied to investigate the presence and abundance of an...

Genetic data suggest that the littoral and pelagic forms of brook charr Salvelinus fontinalis in Lake Bondi are two populations with partial reproductive isolation and non-random mating. Genetic differentiation between the two groups was supported by differences in allele frequencies and by deviation from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium when the two groups were pooled; no such deviation was observed...

Camouflage is exceptionally challenging in pelagic environments because of their featureless nature. Thus, it is perhaps no surprise that pelagic species have evolved highly sophisticated cryptic strategies, three of which-transparency, mirrors, and counter illumination-are rare or absent in other habitats. Pelagic visual systems are equally complex, and several visual capabilities, including U...

The existence of ancient deep-water lakes provides an opportunity to study the independent adaptation of aquatic organisms to pelagic, benthic, and rocky shore habitats. With improving resolution of their phylogenetic relationships, the many cichlid fish species endemic to the African Great Lakes Malawi, Tanganyika, and Victoria provide a significant resource for the comparative study of such e...

1.1 This guide covers procedures for measuring the bioac,cumulation of sediment-associatid contaminants by infaunal .invertebrates. Marine, estuarine, and freshwater sediments are a major sink for chemicals that sorb preferentially to particles, 'such as organic compounds with high octanol-waterpartitioning coefficients (KO,) (for example, polychlorinated ,biphenyls (PCBs) and dichlorodiphenylt...

This review provides an overview of prey preferences of seven core Arctic marine mammal species (AMM) and four non-core species on a pan-Arctic scale with regional examples. Arctic marine mammal species exploit prey resources close to the sea ice, in the water column, and at the sea floor, including lipid-rich pelagic and benthic crustaceans and pelagic and ice-associated schooling fishes such ...

Tropical transpacific fishes occur on both sides of the world’s largest deep-water barrier to the migration of marine shore organisms, the 4,000to 7,000-km-wide Eastern Pacific Barrier (EPB). They include 64 epipelagic oceanic species and 126 species of shore fishes known from both the tropical eastern Pacific (TEP) and the central and West Pacific. The broad distributions of 19 of 39 circumglo...

Contents 1. Introduction 2. The pelagic food web 2.1 The structure of the pelagic food web. 2.2 Phytoplankton community structure. 2.2.1 Bottom up determinants of phytoplankton size structure. 2.2.2 Top-down determinants of phytoplankton size structure. 2.3 Zooplankton of marine pelagic food webs 2.3.1 Protozoa. 2.3.2 Copepoda. 2.3.3 Tunicata. 2.3.4 Mesozooplankton feeding selectivity. 2.3.5 He...

Zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) can be used to provide a baseline stable isotope signature, time-integrated with primary production. However, since zebra mussels are uncommon in pelagic zones, their potential as reference species in pelagic water columns has not been fully explored. By investigating mussels growing suspended on a single vertical cable in Lake Constance, we were able to doc...