Subscribe:
RSS feed
Transfers of organic material from one aquatic environment to another (for example, through flood pulses or animal migrations) allow productive donor ecosystems to subsidise less productive habitats. However, there are big variations in the extent to which different animal species depend on production subsidies. To explore such differences, Australian researchers collected a wide array of […]
March 26, 2018
Although surveys of freshwater fish populations often rely on electrofishing, it’s difficult to use this technique in some habitats. An alternative sampling method is direct observation by snorkelling, an approach often applied in marine environments. While comparisons of the sampling efficiency of electrofishing and snorkelling have been carried out, most of them have been based […]
March 25, 2018
Rats, mice and other rodents can quickly learn to solve complex spatial problems such as mazes consisting of sequences of left-right turns. Although the spatial abilities of rodents may be the result of their burrow-dwelling existence, it’s also possible that such abilities are widely shared by other vertebrates. Fish are known to have well-developed spatial […]
March 25, 2018
The age at which an animal matures is a key life history trait with implications for ecology, evolution and population dynamics, but data on maturation can be costly to collect. However, in many animals growth occurs in two phases, with a change-point at maturity, which means that it’s sometimes possible to estimate the maturation age […]
December 21, 2017
Comments Off on Benefits and costs of habitat complexity
The fact that biodiversity tends to be higher in structurally complex habitats suggests that, on balance, the fitness-related advantages of habitat complexity outweigh the disadvantages. Possible advantages include a greater supply of locations where animals can hide from predators and conserve their energy, and higher abundances of potential prey. Also, in complex habitats less energy […]
December 21, 2017
Comments Off on Once more from the top
Top-down trophic cascades are population-level effects transmitted along food chains, from consumers down to primary producers. In a typical three-level food chain the loss of top predators (for example, as a result of human exploitation) allows herbivore populations to increase, which in turn reduces populations of algae or higher plants. However, few studies have considered […]
December 21, 2017
In a wide range of animal groups, maximum body sizes tend to be higher in temperate and polar species than in those living closer to the equator, and there’s been a lively debate about the underlying reasons for this trend. French and Bolivian scientists investigated possible explanations by using a family of freshwater fish (the […]
March 26, 2018
0