The North Pacific subtropical gyre is a large oceanic gyre bounded on the south by the North Equatorial Current, on the west by the Kuroshio Current, on the north by the Kuroshio Extension Current and the North Pacific Current, and on the east by the California Current (Pickard and Emery, 1990). Although low in primary productivity, the warm, vertically stratified oligotrophic waters of the sub...

The application of stable isotope analysis (SIA) has become a standard scientific approach in Agricultural and Ecological researches and, more in general, in several disciplines such as biology, botany, zoology, organic chemistry, climatology, and nutrition. The main objectives of this paper are (1) to provide a simple definition of stable isotopes and (2) to illustrate analytical measurement m...

The effects of two lubricating oils on the trophic diversity of a nematode community of a Tunisian lagoon were investigated in a microcosm experiment. Sediment from a pristine site in Ghar El Melh lagoon (Western Mediterranean) was treated with mineral oil (Mobil 20 W-50), a synthetic lubricant (Mobil 0 W-40), the same two lubricants after use in a vehicle. Univariate analysis showed significan...

Robert E. Ulanowicz,* Robert D. Holt and Michael Barfield Abstract Articulating what limits the length of trophic food chains has remained one of the most enduring challenges in ecology. Mere counts of ecosystem species and transfers have not much illumined the issue, in part because magnitudes of trophic transfers vary by orders of magnitude in powerlaw fashion. We address this issue by creati...

The bioaccumulations of metals Cu, Cd, Ni, Cr, Co, Mn, Zn and Fe were measured in bivalves, Cerastoderma glucaum, and four species of fishes including Alburnus chalcoides, Liza aurata, Rutilus frisii and Sander lucioperca from various trophic levels of the Caspian food web. The concentrations of Cd, Cr, Co and Ni in most samples of fish were below the detection limits; while the concentrations ...

In spinal cord injuries, direct trauma by edges of sublaxated or dislocated vertebrae and indirect ischemia as a result of vascular injury necrotize the neural tissue. After spinal cord injury, tissue loss appears as micro- or macrocavitation. Accumulations of non-neuronal cells substitute spared tissue and halts axon regrowth. Lack of supporting cells (secreting trophic factors and matrix) agg...

In order to elucidate the distribution of soil nematodes in coastal wetlands and the effect of different distance from the sea line on soil nematode communities, we investigated the community structure of soil nematodes in one wetland perpendicularly oriented from Bohai sea coastline. In June 2006, soil samples were collected from the Yellow River Delta wetlands, in Dongying city of Shandong Pr...

The present paper is an attempt to test the applicability of the trophic state index (TRIX) for scaling the eutrophication along the Bulgarian Black Sea coastal zone in concert with a number of chemical and biological descriptors aimed at selection of relevant indicators of marine coastal area ecological quality. The following environmental parameters have been considered: t(o), salinity, nutri...

The bioaccumulations of metals Cu, Cd, Ni, Cr, Co, Mn, Zn and Fe were measured in bivalves, Cerastoderma glucaum, and four species of fishes including Alburnus chalcoides, Liza aurata, Rutilus frisii and Sander lucioperca from various trophic levels of the Caspian food web. The concentrations of Cd, Cr, Co and Ni in most samples of fish were below the detection limits; while the concentrations ...