Littoral habitat is an important organizing force in lacustrine food webs. Modification of littoral habitat directly impacts aquatic macroinvertebrates, which are important vectors between basal resources and higher trophic levels. Lakeshore residential development is a pervasive phenomenon often characterized by the loss of coarse woody habitat (CWH) from lakes, and the construction of artificial wooden structures (docks and...

For centuries, desalination, in one way or another, has helped alleviate water scarcity. Over time, desalination has gone through an evolutionary process influenced largely by available contemporary technology. This improvement, for the most part, was reflected in the energy efficiency and, in turn, in terms of the cost-effectiveness of this practice. Thanks to such advancements, by the 1960s, the desalination industry experie...

Extinction rates are expected to increase during the Anthropocene. Current extinction rates of plants and many animals remain unknown. We quantified extinctions among the vascular flora of the continental United States and Canada since European settlement. We compiled data on apparently extinct species by querying plant conservation databases, searching the literature, and vetting the resulting list with botanical experts. Bec...

Summary Chemolithoautotrophic bacteria from the genera Hydrogenovibrio, Thiomicrorhabdus and Thiomicrospira are common, sometimes dominant, isolates from sulfidic habitats including hydrothermal vents, soda and salt lakes and marine sediments. Their genome sequences confirm their membership in a deeply branching clade of the Gammaproteobacteria . Several adaptations to heterogeneous habitats are apparent. Their genomes include...

Animals can be important in modulating ecosystem‐level nutrient cycling, although their importance varies greatly among species and ecosystems. Nutrient cycling rates of individual animals represent valuable data for testing the predictions of important frameworks such as the Metabolic Theory of Ecology ( MTE ) and ecological stoichiometry ( ES ). They also represent an important set of functional traits that may reflect both...

High‐resolution analysis of growth increments, trace element chemistry and oxygen isotope ratios ( δ 18 O ) in otoliths were combined to assess larval and post‐larval habitat use and growth of Awaous stamineus , an amphidromous goby native to Hawai‘i. Otolith increment widths indicate that all individuals experience a brief period of rapid growth during early life as larvae and that the duration of this growth anomaly is negat...

Successful dispersal can enhance both individual fitness and population persistence, but the process of dispersal is often inherently risky. The interplay between the costs and benefits of dispersal are poorly documented for species with complex life histories due to the difficulty of tracking dispersing individuals. Here we investigate variability in dispersal histories of a freshwater fish, Awaous stamineus , across the spec...

A visual survey technique was employed to estimate the abundance and distribution of anglerfish Lophius spp. in areas where destructive sampling methods, such as trawling, are unacceptable. To enable visual surveying at depths of over 300 m, a deep towed vehicle was developed equipped with video, lights and other sensors and was towed at speeds of up to 1·5 m s −1 and altitudes of up to 10 m (from the seabed) to survey large a...