An analysis of eight microsatellite loci in 90 individuals was performed to define the genetic structure and variability of three estuarine populations of Coilia mystus: 30 individuals each  collected from ChangJiang River (Yangtze River) estuary-CJ, MinJiang River estuary-MJ, and ZhuJiang River (Pearl River) estuary-ZJ. The results showed polymorphic information contents (PIC) of 0.78, 0.77, a...

Long-term trends in the response of benthic macrofauna to hydrological conditions were examined in the Lavaca-Colorado Estuary, Texas. Four stations representing a range of salinities in the Lavaca-Colorado Estuary were sampled quarterly for benthic macrofauna and hydrography from April 1988 to October 2008. The relationship between climate variability and local salinity patterns and benthic po...

A central challenge of coastal ecology is sorting out the interacting spatial and temporal components of environmental variability that combine to drive changes in phytoplankton biomass. For 2 decades, we have combined sustained observation and experimentation in South San Francisco Bay (SSFB) with numerical modeling analyses to search for general principles that define phytoplankton population...

The family Ariidae, sea catfish of the order Siluriformes, is widely distributed throughout world, particularly in tropical and subtropical areas. three species Ariidae found on coasts estuaries West Africa are smoothmouth Carlarius heudelotii (Valenciennes 1840), rough-head latiscutatus (Günther 1864) Guinean parkii 1864). They have been increasingly exploited by artisanal industrial coastal f...

Brazilian biodiversity is recognized as one of the most expressive in the terrestrial biosphere and plays an important role to human well-being and health, providing basic products and ecosystem services. The products or goods from natural ecosystems include pharmaceutical material, food such as fishery, timber, and many others. Natural ecosystems also provide essential life-supporting services...

We investigated how recent changes in the distribution and abundance of a fouling organism affected the strength of interactions between a commercially important foundation species and a common predator. Increases in the abundance of boring sponges that bioerode the calcified shells of oysters and other shelled organisms have been attributed to increased salinization of estuarine ecosystems. We...

We present new theoretical and empirical results on the probability distributions of species persistence times in natural ecosystems. Persistence times, defined as the timespans occurring between species' colonization and local extinction in a given geographic region, are empirically estimated from local observations of species' presence/absence. A connected sampling problem is presented, gener...

Hippos transfer massive quantities of trophic resources from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems through defecation. The ramifications of the latter for the functioning of benthic ecosystems are unknown, but are dependent ultimately on rates of utilisation relative to inputs. Low input and high utilisation can strengthen bottom-up pathways and enhance consumer biomass and abundance. However, if i...