Industrial pollution is a major driver of ecosystem degradation, but it can also act as a driver of contemporary evolution. As a result of intense mining activity during the Industrial Revolution, several rivers across the southwest of England are polluted with high concentrations of metals. Despite the documented negative impacts of ongoing metal pollution, brown trout ( Salmo trutta L.) survive and thrive in many of these me...

Aerobic metabolism generates 15–20 times more energy (ATP) than anaerobic metabolism, which is crucial in maintaining energy budgets in animals, fueling metabolism, activity, growth and reproduction. For ectothermic water‐breathers such as fishes, low dissolved oxygen may limit oxygen uptake and hence aerobic metabolism. Here, we assess, within a phylogenetic context, how abiotic and biotic drivers explain the variation in hyp...

Aim Comprehensive, global information on species' occurrences is an essential biodiversity variable and central to a range of applications in ecology, evolution, biogeography and conservation. Expert range maps often represent a species' only available distributional information and play an increasing role in conservation assessments and macroecology. We provide global range maps for the native ranges of all extant mammal spec...

Fishes are the dominant vertebrates in the ocean, yet we know little of their contribution to carbon export flux at regional to global scales. We synthesize the existing information on fish‐based carbon flux in coastal and pelagic waters, identify gaps and challenges in measuring this flux and approaches to address them, and recommend research priorities. Based on our synthesis of passive (fecal pellet sinking) and active (mig...

Exponentially rising CO 2 (currently ~400 μatm) is driving climate change and causing acidification of both marine and freshwater environments. Physiologists have long known that CO 2 directly affects acid–base and ion regulation, respiratory function and aerobic performance in aquatic animals. More recently, many studies have demonstrated that elevated CO 2 projected for end of this century (e.g. 800–1000 μatm) can also impac...

Management and technical approaches that achieve a sustainable level of fish production while at the same time minimizing or limiting the wider ecological effects caused through fishing gear contact with the seabed might be considered to be ‘best practice’. To identify future knowledge‐needs that would help to support a transition towards the adoption of best practices for trawling, a prioritization exercise was undertaken wit...