In the face of accelerated climate change, monitoring biodiversity has become a critical task for ecologists. Habitat loss is occurring at an alarming rate both in terrestrial and marine ecosystems, resulting in endangerment and extinction of species up to 1,000 times faster than natural rates. However, traditional biodiversity measurements are logistically and financially difficult, making bio...

This review covers the recent marine chemical ecology literature for phytoplankton, macroalgae, sponges and other benthic invertebrates; 249 references are cited.

The seston represents a highly dilute food source to potential consumers. Consequently, 3 general properties may be expected of sessile filter feeders: (1) high retention efficiency; (2) possession of a low-energy pump system in active filter feeders; and (3) consumption of seston fractions in proportion to availability (i.e. opportunistic feeding). Whereas the first 2 properties have been well...

In sexually reproducing organisms, conflicts of interest among family members are inevitable. The intensity of these conflicts depends upon the opportunities for parents and offspring to interact and the level of promiscuity. Despite the acknowledged role of family conflict in the evolutionary ecology of terrestrial organisms, its influence in the marine realm has largely been ignored. Neverthe...

This review covers the recent marine chemical ecology literature for macroalgae, sponges, octocorals and other benthic invertebrates; 332 references are cited.

A software was developed in the framework of the GEOWOW project for computing the mean of the output of an ensemble of climate change models from the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) Coupled Model Intercomparaison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). The ensemble mean for the time projections of the Sea Surface Temperature (SST) under climate change and the corresponding climatology were computed: t...

Chemical cues constitute much of the language of life in the sea. Our understanding of biotic interactions and their effects on marine ecosystems will advance more rapidly if this language is studied and understood. Here, I review how chemical cues regulate critical aspects of the behavior of marine organisms from bacteria to phytoplankton to benthic invertebrates and water column fishes. These...

Some of most used indicators in marine ecology are nucleic acid-derived indices. They can be divided by target levels in three groups: 1) at the organism level as ecophysiologic indicators, indicators such as RNA:DNA ratios, DNA:dry weight and RNA:protein, 2) at the population level, indicators such as growth rate, starvation incidence or fisheries impact indicators, and 3) at the community lev...