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Fisheries management to reduce contaminant consumption
This paper concludes that contaminants in Lake Michigan fishes are likely to remain above detectable levels for some time. Some interest groups have called for measures ranging from additional effluent controls to a ban on the industrial use of chlorine. Such measures, however well intended, are likely to have little impact on many of the contaminants of primary concern. PCBs, in particular, are largely the legacy of past activities and are not likely to be substantially affected by additional regulation. The authors review several options for reducing human exposure to PCBs, using relatively simple fisheries manipulations, although they do not propose that these measures are the ultimate solution to the contaminant problem. Of the options presented, the most promising is the replacement of lake trout with less-contaminated species, such as rainbow trout.
The disappearance of Guam's wildlife: New insights for herpetology, evolutionary ecology, and conservation
The wealth of data generated from intensive study of the brown tree snake as a result of the need to control introduced populations of this pest species allow several important conclusions. First, that the snakes on Guam are extraordinary in terms of their absolute abundance and in terms of their ability to exploit a broad prey base. Our data suggest an exceptionally high reproductive success on Guam for a snake with an otherwise unnoteworthy reproductive capability and life history (i.e. small clutch size, typical ontogenetic shift from small heterothermic prey to larger homeotherms). Especially important was the snakes versatility in taking advantage of extremely common prey on islands; population expansion was slow but survival was maximal, ultimately leading to high population levels. The brown tree snake shares many attributes with other snakes that could cause similar biodiversity crises in a wide variety of contexts in which they lack coevolutionary histories (especially formerly snake-free island environments). As opposed to their relatively poor history as over-water dispersers, snakes may be especially problematic as travelers in increasing ship and air traffic between widely separated geographic regions of the world.
Naturalization of the flood regime in regulated rivers the case of the upper Mississippi River
No abstract available.
Flooding to restore connectivity of regulated, large-river wetlands: Natural and controlled flooding as complementary processes along the lower Missouri River
You can always count on finding the Mississippi just where you left it last year. But the Missouri is a tawny, restless, brawling flood. It cuts corners, runs around at night, fills itself with snags and traveling sandbars, lunches on levees, and swallows islands and small villages for dessert. Its perpetual dissatisfaction with its bed is the greatest peculiarity of the Missouri.… It makes farming as fascinating as gambling. You never know whether you are going to harvest corn or catfish (Fitch 1907, p. 637).
Deliberate introductions of species: Research needs: Benefits can be reaped, but risks are high
No abstract available.
Food web dynamics in a seasonally varying wetland
A spatially explicit model is developed to simulate the small fish community and its underlying food web, in the freshwater marshes of the Everglades. The community is simplified to a few small fish species feeding on periphyton and invertebrates. Other compartments are detritus, crayfish, and a piscivorous fish species. This unit food web model is applied to each of the 10,000 spatial cells on a 100 x 100 pixel landscape. Seasonal variation in water level is assumed and rules are assigned for fish movement in response to rising and falling water levels, which can cause many spatial cells to alternate between flooded and dry conditions. It is shown that temporal variations of water level on a spatially heterogeneous landscape can maintain at least three competing fish species. In addition, these environmental factors can strongly affect the temporal variation of the food web caused by top-down control from the piscivorous fish.
Wading bird foraging on a wetland landscape: A comparison of two strategies
Tactile-feeding wading birds, such as wood storks and white ibises, require high densities of prey such as small fishes and crayfish to support themselves and their offspring during the breeding season. Prey availability in wetlands is often determined by seasonal hydrologic pulsing, such as in the subtropical Everglades, where spatial distributions of prey can vary through time, becoming heterogeneously clumped in patches, such as ponds or sloughs, as the wetland dries out. In this mathematical modeling study, we selected two possible foraging strategies to examine how they impact total energetic intake over a time scale of one day. In the first, wading birds sample prey patches without a priori knowledge of the patches' prey densities, moving from patch to patch, staying long enough to estimate the prey density, until they find one that meets a predetermined satisfactory threshold, and then staying there for a longer period. For this case, we solve for a wading bird's expected prey intake over the course of a day, given varying theoretical probability distributions of patch prey densities across the landscape. In the second strategy considered, it is assumed that the wading bird samples a given number of patches, and then uses memory to return to the highest quality patch. Our results show how total intake over a day is impacted by assumptions of the parameters governing the spatial distribution of prey among patches, which is a key source of parameter uncertainty in both natural and managed ecosystems. Perhaps surprisingly, the foraging strategy that uses a prey density threshold generally led to higher maximum potential prey intake than the strategy for using memory to return to the best patch sampled. These results will contribute to understanding the foraging of wading birds and to the management of wetlands.
Effects of initial vegetation heterogeneity on competition of submersed and floating macrophytes
Non-spatial models of competition between floating aquatic vegetation (FAV) and submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) predict a stable state of pure SAV at low total available limiting nutrient level, N , a stable state of only FAV for high N , and alternative stable states for intermediate N , as described by an S-shaped bifurcation curve. Spatial models that include physical heterogeneity of the waterbody show that the sharp transitions between these states become smooth. We examined the effects of heterogeneous initial conditions of the vegetation types. We used a spatially explicit model to describe the competition between the vegetation types. In the model, the FAV, duckweed ( L. gibba ), competed with the SAV, Nuttall's waterweed ( Elodea nuttallii ). Differences in the initial establishment of the two macrophytes affected the possible stable equilibria. When initial biomasses of SAV and FAV differed but each had the same initial biomass in each spatial cell, the S-shaped bifurcation resulted, but the critical transitions on the N -axis are shifted, depending on FAV:SAV biomass ratio. When the initial biomasses of SAV and FAV were randomly heterogeneously distributed among cells, the vegetation pattern of the competing species self-organized spatially, such that many different stable states were possible in the intermediate N region. If N was gradually increased or decreased through time from a stable state, the abrupt transitions of non-spatial models were changed into smoother transitions through a series of stable states, which resembles the Busse balloon observed in other systems.
Prairie wetland complexes as landscape functional units in a changing climate
The wetland complex is the functional ecological unit of the prairie pothole region (PPR) of central North America. Diverse complexes of wetlands contribute high spatial and temporal environmental heterogeneity, productivity, and biodiversity to these glaciated prairie landscapes. Climatewarming simulations using the new model WETLANDSCAPE (WLS) project major reductions in water volume, shortening of hydroperiods, and less-dynamic vegetation for prairie wetland complexes. The WLS model portrays the future PPR as a much less resilient ecosystem: The western PPR will be too dry and the eastern PPR will have too few functional wetlands and nesting habitat to support historic levels of waterfowl and other wetland-dependent species. Maintaining ecosystem goods and services at current levels in a warmer climate will be a major challenge for the conservation community.