Rivers receiving acid mine drainage (AMD) are frequently depauperate in fish and impacts may extend long distances downstream. AMD inputs may form chemical barriers for migratory species and isolate fish in unimpacted headwaters. We investigated the response of a diadromous fish, kōaro ( Galaxias brevipinnis ), to remediation of an AMD tributary in a 5th order river in New Zealand. A 2005 survey indicated limited recruitment o...

Steller sea lion ( Eumetopias jubatus ) young‐of‐the‐year ( YOY ) are nutritionally dependent upon their dam through the majority of their first year. Several indices of body condition were measured in YOY 1.5–9 mo of age captured in Southeast Alaska ( n = 122), the Gulf of Alaska ( n = 182), and the Aleutian Islands ( n = 38) to test the hypothesis that nutritional stress impacted the ability of adult female Steller sea lions...

Extreme variability in abundance of California salmon populations is often ascribed to ocean conditions, yet relatively little is known about their marine life history. To investigate which ocean conditions influence their distribution and abundance, we surveyed juvenile Chinook salmon ( Oncorhynchus tshawytscha ) within the California Current (central California [37°30′N) to Newport, Oregon (44°00′N]) for a 2‐week period over...

A series of 14 day experiments was conducted on five common New Zealand fish species (redfin bully Gobiomorphus huttoni , inanga Galaxias maculatus , brown trout Salmo trutta , longfin eel Anguilla dieffenbachii and koaro Galaxias brevipinnis ) to assess the effect of pH on survival and changes in body mass. No species survived in water of pH pH 4·5, G. maculatus larvae were also tested and had high mortality at this pH . Resu...

Heterothermy plays an important role in lowering the costs of thermoregulation in endotherms by reducing water and energy requirements. We tested predictions that birds in arid habitats should express fine‐scale variation in their thermoregulatory patterns as a function of prevailing climatic conditions. We assessed effects of air temperature ( T air ) and water vapor pressure deficit ( D ) on body temperature ( T b ) in free‐...

We assess the utility of bacterial community data for providing an indication of stream health in a recently ‘restored’ urban stream. A community DNA fingerprinting technique was used to characterise the bacterial community within Okeover Stream, and a lesser impacted, nearby stream. No significant differences in bacterial community structure were detected between streams. However, further investigation revealed highly elevate...

A regime shift is a large, sudden, and long‐lasting change in the dynamics of an ecosystem, affecting multiple trophic levels. There are a growing number of papers that report regime shifts in marine ecosystems. However, the evidence for regime shifts is equivocal, because the methods used to detect them are not yet well developed. We have collated over 300 biological time series from seven marine regions around the UK, coveri...

Integrative studies of genetics, neurobiology and behaviour indicate that polymorphism in specific genes contributes to variation observed in some complex social behaviours. The neuropeptide arginine vasopressin plays an important role in the regulation of a variety of social behaviours, including social attachment of males to females, through its action on the vasopressin 1a receptor (V1aR). In socially monogamous prairie vol...

Terrestrial ecosystems sequester 2.1 Pg of atmospheric carbon annually. A large amount of the terrestrial sink is realized by forests. However, considerable uncertainties remain regarding the fate of this carbon over both short and long timescales. Relevant data to address these uncertainties are being collected at many sites around the world, but syntheses of these data are still sparse. To facilitate future synthesis activit...