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Spatial Dynamics Of Vegetated Seascapes And The Influence On Fish And Crustaceans, Rolando O. Santos Corujo
Spatial Dynamics Of Vegetated Seascapes And The Influence On Fish And Crustaceans, Rolando O. Santos Corujo
Open Access Dissertations
My dissertation adopted concepts and spatial tools of seascape ecology, the marine counterpart of landscape ecology, to understand the broad-scale structural attributes that make submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) seascapes resilient to anthropogenic disturbances, drivers of fauna community structure, and productive fisheries habitats. My research was designed to address the relative and interrelated ecological effects of broad-scale changes in SAV habitat amount (habitat loss) and configuration (fragmentation). SAV seascapes in nearshore areas of Biscayne Bay have been subject to constant anthropogenic disturbances associated to freshwater pulses from canals over the last 50 years; thus, these seascapes served as a model system …
Ecosystem Fragmentation Drives Increased Diet Variation In An Endemic Livebearing Fish Of The Bahamas, Marcio S. Araujo, R. Brian Langerhans, Sean T. Giery, Craig A. Layman
Ecosystem Fragmentation Drives Increased Diet Variation In An Endemic Livebearing Fish Of The Bahamas, Marcio S. Araujo, R. Brian Langerhans, Sean T. Giery, Craig A. Layman
Department of Biological Sciences
One consequence of human-driven habitat degradation in general, and habitat fragmentation in particular, is loss of biodiversity. An often-underappreciated aspect of habitat fragmentation relates to changes in the ecology of species that persist in altered habitats. In Bahamian wetlands, ecosystem fragmentation causes disruption of hydrological connectivity between inland fragmented wetlands and adjacent marine areas, with the consequent loss of marine piscivores from fragmented sections. We took advantage of this environmental gradient to investigate effects of ecosystem fragmentation on patterns of resource use in the livebearing fish Gambusia hubbsi (Family Poeciliidae), using both population- and individual-level perspectives. We show that fragmentation-induced …