Many marine populations exhibit high variability in the recruitment of young into the population. While environmental cycles and oceanography explain some patterns of replenishment, the role of other growth-related processes in influencing settlement and recruitment is less clear. Examination of a 65-mo. time series of recruitment of a common coral reef fish, Stegastes partitus, to the reefs of...

Variation in density of early stages, that is, larvae and juveniles, is a major determinant of the distribution and abundance of the adult population of most marine invertebrates. These early stages thus play a key role in competitive interactions, and, more specifically, in invasion dynamics when biologically similar native and non-native species (NNS) come into contact in the same habitat. We...

Population growth involves demographic bottlenecks that regulate recruitment success during various early life-history stages. The success of each early life-history stage can vary in response to population density, interacting with intrinsic (e.g. behavioural) and environmental (e.g. competition, predation) factors. Here, we used the common reef-building coral Acropora millepora to investigate...

In the Central Red Sea, healthy coral reefs meet intense coastal development, but data on the effects of related stressors for reef functioning are lacking. This in situ study therefore investigated the independent and combined effects of simulated overfishing through predator/grazer exclusion and simulated eutrophication through fertilizer addition on settlement of reef associated invertebrate...

Archaeological settlement systems are usually analysed in terms of the relation between the rank of a settlement and its size (Zipf’s law). We argue that this approach is unreliable, and can be misleading, in application to archaeological data where the recovery rate of settlements can be low and their size estimates are often approximate at best. An alternative framework for the settlement dat...

Application of pile-raft foundations, which are known as “compound foundations”, is a suitable alternative in the case of heavy load structures. The interaction behavior of pile raft foundations makes these systems very complex to analyze. Different methods have been proposed to determine the bearing capacity of piled raft systems and distribution of loads between the components, i.e. pile grou...

In laboratory-based biofouling assays, the influence of physico-chemical surface characteristics on barnacle settlement has been tested most frequently using the model organism Balanus amphitrite (= Amphibalanus amphitrite). Very few studies have addressed the settlement preferences of other barnacle species, such as Balanus improvisus (= Amphibalanus improvisus). This study aimed to unravel th...

Most marine invertebrates have dispersive larvae and relatively immobile adults. These developmental stages are linked by a settlement event, which is often mediated by specific cues in bacterial biofilms. While larvae distinguish between biofilms from different environments, it remains unknown if they receive information from all, only a few or even just a single bacterial species in natural b...

Recent studies of municipal solid waste landfills have revealed the influence of biodegradation upon secondary settlement. Modern landfills, however, are designed with efficient containment systems which minimise moisture ingress and thereby reduce leachate and gas generation. The shortage of moisture means that these containment systems delay decomposition and stabilisation of waste. An altern...

Leachate recirculation (LR) in municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills operated as bioreactors offers significant economic and environmental benefits. The subsurface application method of vertical wells is one of the most common LR techniques. The objective of this study was to develop a novel two-dimensional model of leachate recirculation using vertical wells. This novel method can describe lea...