Aim Body size often plays a significant role in community assembly through its impacts on the life history and ecological attributes of species. Insight into the importance of size in structuring communities can be gained by examining the distribution of sizes of individuals [i.e. the individual size distribution (ISD) or size spectrum] in a community. ISDs have been studied extensively in aqua...

We present a unified formulation for describing the dynamics of a new class of aquatic multi-body soft robots. This formulation accounts for the continuum hyperelastic nature of the vehicles and for the interaction with the dense fluid across which they dwell. We start by introducing the highly unconventional design concept of a soft underwater vehicle inspired by the octopus capable of swimmin...

Aspects of the Biogeochemistry of Carbohydrates in Aquatic Environments

Generations of microbiologists have pondered over the issue of bacterial activity and whether most bacteria in the environment are “active,” “inactive,” or “dormant” (Stevenson 1978). This is a question with clear practical implications, in terms of food, sanitary, and clinical microbiology, as well as profound ecological implications. The issue started to be debated in earnest within the aquat...