Genomics-enabled applications are becoming increasingly common in conjunction with research in marine ecology. In this Theme Section, we review the success of cases where techniques used to profile gene expression have been used to gain new insight into 3 areas of research: symbioses in marine invertebrates, physiological responses to environmental conditions, and examining the determinants of ...

This contribution, which serves as introduction to a special issue of Ecological Modelling briefly discusses some of the implication for research of the widely heard calls for a transition toward ecosystem-based management of fisheries. Notably, the case is made that the research required for this transition does not need, in order to be useful at all, to explicitly address the full complexity ...

Foundation species create complex habitats in which associated organisms find refuge from biological and physical stress; these foundation species are thus fundamental to the structure and resilience of terrestrial and marine ecosystems. In the present article, we develop an approach to understanding foundation species’ effects in communities that are maintained not by a single foundation speci...

R reviews describing human impacts on coastal and marine ecosystems in the Caribbean emphasize two major problems. First is the lack of information about processes controlling the productivity of diverse coastal ecosystems. Second is the potential long-term negative impact of human disturbances on the goods and services these ecosystems provide (Richards and Bohnsack 1990, Ogden 1997). The Cari...

The inability to directly observe the long distant movements of marine predators and the vast extent of their pelagic habitat has hindered our understanding of their movements, distribution, and foraging behavior. Recently these challenges have spurred the development of new methods to examine animal movements remotely, including advancements in electronic tags (Holland et al. 1990; Stewart and...

The Benguela Current Large Marine Ecosystem (BCLME) is situated off the west coast of Africa between 5-37oS, 0-26oE, and spans the three countries of Angola, Namibia and South Africa. It is one of the four major eastern boundary current upwelling systems of the world oceans (Hill et al. 1998), and although it has some similar characteristics to the other eastern boundary upwelling areas, a uniq...

Input of contaminants is an important pressure in most urbanized coastal areas, but establishing appropriate indicators of their presence and effects has been challenging. Such indicators would, at the very least, have to integrate chemical and biological data. One difficulty has arisen because the measurements provide information on different levels of biological organization (gene level up to...

We review the application of molecular methods to estimate biodiversity in the marine environment. All of the methods reviewed here, which are at the forefront of molecular research, can be applied to all organisms in all habitats, but the case studies used to illustrate the points are derived from marine photosynthetic eukaryotic protists. It has been accepted that we know less than 10% of the...

Mangrove ecosystem is well known for the productivity. Fungi play an important role in the nutritive cycle and support the mangrove ecosystem. In the present investigation the authors tries to elucidate marine fungi in selected mangrove ecosystem of North Malabar region of Kerala. 30 marine fungi including 19 Ascomycetes, 1 Basidiomycete and 10 Mitosporic fungi were encountered. Backwater suppo...