The increase of anthropogenic CO2 during this century is expected to cause warming of large regions of the ocean. Microbes lead the biological role in the CO2 balance of marine ecosystems, their activity is known to be influenced by temperature, and it is important to constrain and quantify these effects on bacterial carbon use. Furthermore, if warming were to enhance the carbon demand (product...

Since the Rio Summit in 1992 the public has become increasingly aware that coastal ecosystems are under significant threat from poilution, overexploitation, and habitat loss. However, little Progress has been made in sustained global actions to reverse their degraded state. It has been no smail feat for the world cornrnunity to come to agreement on international instruments identifying environm...

Invasions of ecosystems by non-indigenous species (NIS) are occurring at increasing rates globally (Gollasch, 2006; Ricciardi, 2007; Hulme, 2009). Proactive efforts to reduce invasions are the most cost-effective management option (e.g. Leung et al., 2002; Finnoff et al., 2007), although managers may be unwilling to ‘risk’ a preventative approach because of the high uncertainty inherent in prev...

From 2006 to 2009, the Chaloupe project, focused on analysing the interactions between global change, the dynamics of exploited marine biodiversity, and the viability of fisheries in three regional systems. An important outcome of the project was to reinforce collaboration between fisheries ecologists, economists, mathematicians and computer scientists to advance an integrated approach to marin...

Corsica Island is a sub-basin of the Northwestern Mediterranean Sea, with hydrological features typical of both oligotrophic systems and eutrophic coastal zones. Phytoplankton assemblages in two coastal ecosystems of Corsica (the deep Bay of Calvi and the shallow littoral of Bastia) show contrasting patterns over a one-year cycle. In order to determine what drives these variations, seasonal cha...

Shallow coastal ecosystems are the interface between the terrestrial and marine environment. The physical and biological composition and distribution of benthic habitats within these ecosystems determines their contribution to ecosystem services and biodiversity as well as their connections to neighbouring terrestrial and marine ecosystem processes. The capacity to accurately and consistently m...

We compared several large marine ecosystems in terms of species numbers of fishes, sea birds, marine mammals, and cephalopods. We examined how these numbers were distributed by trophic level, from herbivores to top predators. We created group-specific trophic signatures as plots of number of species by trophic level, and used these to identify similarities and discrepancies between taxonomic gr...

The recent increase in interest about effects of trawling and dredging on seafloor ecosystems and their fisheries can be understood by examining three phases in the history of conservation thinking. The primary focus in nonmarine conservation thinking and management worldwide is on maintaining biodiversity, while marine managers are still focused mainly on use of marine life. Marine conservatio...

Perspective A series of prominent and controversial papers about the state of marine ecosystems has occupied the pages of high-profile journals over the last decade [1–7]. While some might quarrel with the specific conclusions of these papers, there is no dispute that managers of ocean and coastal habitats confront a growing diversity of very serious challenges [8] that, if left unattended, thr...

A study of ancient marine algae has found that climate change affected their growth and skeleton structure, which has potential significance for today’s equivalent microscopic organisms that play an important role in the world’s oceans. Coccolithophores, a type of marine algae, are prolific in the ocean today and have been for millions of years. These single-celled plankton produce calcite skel...