The impacts of hydropower on freshwater macroinvertebrate richness: A global meta-analysis.

Hydroelectric dams and their reservoirs have been suggested to affect freshwater biodiversity. Nevertheless, studies investigating the consequences of hydroelectric dams and reservoirs on macroinvertebrate richness have reached opposite conclusions. We performed a meta-analysis devised to elucidate the effects of hydropower, dams and reservoirs on macroinvertebrate richness while accounting for the potential role played by moderators such as biomes, impact types, study designs, sampling seasons and gears.

Increased parasite load is associated with reduced metabolic rates and escape responsiveness in pumpkinseed sunfish.

Wild animals have parasites that can compromise their physiological and/or behavioural performance. Yet, the extent to which parasite load is related to intraspecific variation in performance traits within wild populations remains relatively unexplored. We used pumpkinseed sunfish (Lepomis gibbosus) and their endoparasites as a model system to explore the effects of infection load on host aerobic metabolism and escape performance.

Social Group Size and Shelter Availability Influence Individual Metabolic Traits in a Social Fish.

Group living is widespread among animal species and yields both costs and benefits. Presence of conspecifics can restrict or enhance the expression of individual behavior, and the recent social environment is thought to affect behavioral responses in later contexts, even when individuals are alone. However, little is known about how social group size influences the expression of individual physiological traits, including metabolic rates.

Does shelter influence the metabolic traits of a teleost fish?

Availability of shelter is an important component of habitat selection for animals as it can influence survival (protection against harsh physical conditions and predation) and growth (energy acquisition and expenditure). Few studies address the effect of shelter on metabolic expenditures associated with non-mechanical tasks (excluding station holding or movement). The main goal of this study was to investigate the influence of shelter use on metabolic traits of smallmouth bass (Micropterus dolomieu) from two populations (Kiamika River and Lake Long).

Mitochondrial thermo-sensitivity in invasive and native freshwater mussels.

Climate change is impacting many, if not all, forms of life. Increases in extreme temperature fluctuations and average temperatures can cause stress, particularly in aquatic sessile ectotherms such as freshwater mussels. However, some species seem to thrive more than others in face of temperature-related stressors.

Habitat-based polymorphism is common in stream fishes.

Morphological differences (size and shape) across habitats are common in lake fish where differences relate to two dominant contrasting habitats: the pelagic and littoral habitat. Repeated occurrence of littoral and pelagic morphs across multiple populations of several lake fish species has been considered as important evidence that polymorphism is adaptive in these systems. It has been suggested that these habitat-based polymorphic differences are due to the temporal stability of the differences between littoral and pelagic habitats.

Comparison between electrofishing and snorkeling surveys to describe fish assemblages in Laurentian streams.

We evaluated the relative performance of electrofishing and visual surveys (snorkeling) for estimating the abundance of combinations of fish species and size classes in rivers. We also assessed the effect of environmental conditions on potential differences between the results obtained using these two sampling methods. Sampling sites were distributed in the Laurentian region of Québec.

Relationships between species feeding traits and environmental conditions in fish communities: a three-matrix approach.

Understanding the relationships between species biological traits and the environment is crucial to predicting the effect of habitat perturbations on fish communities. It is also an essential step in the assessment of the functional diversity. Using two complementary three-matrix approaches (fourth-corner and RLQ analyses), we tested the hypothesis that feeding-oriented traits determine the spatial distributions of littoral fish species by assessing the relationship between fish spatial distributions, fish species traits, and habitat characteristics in two Laurentian Shield lakes.

Multiscale codependence analysis: an integrated approach to analyze relationships across scales.

The spatial and temporal organization of ecological processes and features and the scales at which they occur are central topics to landscape ecology and metapopulation dynamics, and increasingly regarded as a cornerstone paradigm for understanding ecological processes. Hence, there is need for computational approaches which allow the identification of the proper spatial or temporal scales of ecological processes and the explicit integration of that information in models. For that purpose, we propose a new method (multiscale codependence analysis, MCA) to test the statistical significance of the correlations between two variables at particular spatial or temporal scales.