Ecosystem engineers affect ecological communities by physically modifying the environment. Understanding the factors determining the distribution of engineers offers a powerful predictive tool for community ecology. In this study, we examine whether the goldenrod bunch gall midge (Rhopalomyia solidaginis) functions as an ecosystem engineer in an old-field ecosystem by altering the composition o...

non-commercial fish species of shrimp trawls were studied monthly from october 2005 to september 2006 in mahshahr creeks (darvish, doragh, bihad, ghazaleh, ghanam, zangi and patil). the trawl nets had a cod-end mesh size of 24mm. total catch was 6431 individuals weighing 55.5kg, and included 14 species of non-commercial fish species belonging to 14 families. the caught shrimp species were from ...

Understanding local and global extinction is a fundamental objective of both basic and applied ecology. Island biogeography theory (IBT) and succession theory provide frameworks for understanding extinction in changing landscapes. We explore the relative contribution of fragment size vs. succession on species' declines by examining distributions of abundances for 18 plant species declining over...

To determine the composition and abundance of zooplankton assemblages in Eğirdir Lake-Turkey, monthly surveys were conducted from January to December 2010 at four stations. A total of 65 major zooplankton species were identified. Rotifera was the most abundant taxon dominated mainly by the species Polyarthra dolichoptera and Keratella cochlearis. Rotifers were recorded at the maximum abundance ...

Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiments have established that species richness and composition are both important determinants of ecosystem function in an experimental context. Determining whether this result holds for real-world ecosystem services has remained elusive, however, largely due to the lack of analytical methods appropriate for large-scale, associational data. Here, we use a ...

distribution and abundance of plants has been correlated with a variety of complex environmental gradients. environmental factors affect plants growth and need to be understood by ecosystem managers. this study was carried out to examine the relationships between site factors and different vascular and non-vascular plants in north of iran. for this purpose, vegetation and soil sampling was perf...