Trophic Position In Aquatic Food Webs

'Aquatic Food Webs' provides a current synthesis of theoretical and empirical food web research. The textbook is suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers in community, ecosystem, and theoretical ecology, in aquatic ecology, and in conservation biology.

Biologists have made significant advances in our understanding of the Earth's shallow subtidal marine ecosystems, but the findings on these disparate regions have never before been documented and gathered in a single volume. Now, in Food Webs and the Dynamics of Marine Reefs, Tim R. McClanahan and George M. Branch fill this lacuna with a comparative and comprehensive collection of nine essays written by experts on specific aquatic regions. Each essay focuses on the food webs of a respective ecosystem and the factors affecting these communities, from the intense and direct pressure of human influence on fisheries to the multi-vector contributors to climate change. The book covers nine shallow water marine ecosystems from selected areas throughout the world: four coral reef systems, three hard bottom systems, and two kelp systems. In summarizing their organization, human influence on them, and recent developments in these ecosystems, the authors contribute to our understanding of their ecological organization and management. Food Webs and the Dynamics of Marine Reefs will be a useful tool for all benthic marine investigators, providing an expert, comparative view of these aquatic regions.

'Aquatic Food Webs' provides a current synthesis of theoretical and empirical food web research. The textbook is suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers in community, ecosystem, and theoretical ecology, in aquatic ecology, and in conservation biology.

Food webs describe the structure of communities and their energy flows, and they represent interactions between species in ecosystems. Recently, we have witnessed rapid development of techniques for both experimental studies and theoretical/computational studies on food webs as well as species interactions. This reprint book is focused on food chains and food webs in aquatic ecosystems, with seven papers published in the corresponding Special Issue of Applied Sciences. The topics include empirical studies on food chains and food webs as well as effects of environmental factors on organisms in aquatic ecosystems.

"How can we increase the production and harvest of living marine resources in the new millennium? Bridging potentials and environmental constraints". This was the theme of the 1st Maricult Conference arranged in Trondheim, Norway in June 2000 in connection with termination of the Norwegian research programme Maricult (1996-2000; www.maricult.org). The intention for the conference was not only to present a state of the art overview of the research conducted as part of the programme, but also to describe other experiences and to discuss the ideas and the scientific status of the programme with the international scientific community. A total of 50 oral communications and 8 posters were presented at the conference. Sixteen of them are included in the present volume. They deal with such topics as strategies for improving marine harvest, underlying mechanisms for marine productivity, new concepts of mariculture with emphasize on mussels, and nutrient supply and environmental impact.

Recent scientific literature has raised many concerns about whether fisheries have caused more extensive changes to marine populations and ecosystems than previously realized or predicted. In many cases, stocks have been exploited far beyond management targets, and new analyses indicate that fishing has harmed other species—including marine mammals, seabirds, sea turtles, and sea grasses—either directly through catch or habitat damage, or indirectly through changes in food-web interactions. At the request of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Research Council conducted an independent study to weigh the collective evidence for fishery-induced changes to marine ecosystems and the implications of the findings for U.S. fisheries management. Dynamic Changes in Marine Ecosystems provides comprehensive information in regard to these findings.

Squid, cuttlefish and octopuses, which form the marine mollusc group the cephalopods, are of great and increasing interest to marine biologists, physiologists, ecologists, environmental biologists and fisheries scientists. Cephalopods: ecology and fisheries is a thorough review of this most important animal group. The first introductory section of the book provides coverage of cephalopod form and function, origin and evolution, Nautilus, and biodiversity and zoogeography. The following section covers life cycles, growth, physiological ecology, reproductive strategies and early life histories. There follows a section on ecology, which provides details of slope and shelf species, oceanic and deep sea species, population ecology, trophic ecology and cephalopods as prey. The final section of the book deals with fisheries and ecological interactions, with chapters on fishing methods and scientific sampling, fisheries resources, fisheries oceanography and assessment and management methods. This scientifically comprehensive and beautifully illustrated book is essential reading for marine biologists, zoologists, ecologists and fisheries managers. All libraries in universities and research establishments where biological sciences and fisheries are studied and taught should have multiple copies of this landmark publication on their shelves.

'Aquatic Food Webs' provides a current synthesis of theoretical and empirical food web research. The textbook is suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers in community, ecosystem, and theoretical ecology, in aquatic ecology, and in conservation biology.