RESUMO
The Northwest Atlantic cod stocks collapsed in the early 1990s and have yet to recover, despite the subsequent establishment of a continuing fishing moratorium. Efforts to understand the collapse and lack of recovery have so far focused mainly on the dynamics of commercially harvested species. Here, we use data from a 33-year scientific trawl survey to determine to which degree the signatures of the collapse and recovery of the cod are apparent in the spatial and temporal dynamics of the broader groundfish community. Over this 33-year period, the groundfish community experienced four phases of change: (i) a period of rapid, synchronous biomass collapse in most species, (ii) followed by a regime shift in community composition with a concomitant loss of functional diversity, (iii) followed in turn by periods of slow compositional recovery, and (iv) slow biomass growth. Our results demonstrate how a community-wide perspective can reveal new aspects of the dynamics of collapse and recovery unavailable from the analysis of individual species or a combination of a small number of species. Overall, we found evidence that such community-level signals should be useful for designing more effective management strategies to ensure the persistence of exploited marine ecosystems.
RESUMO
Understanding the mechanisms responsible for stability and persistence of ecosystems is one of the greatest challenges in ecology. Robert May showed that, contrary to intuition, complex randomly built ecosystems are less likely to be stable than simpler ones. Few attempts have been tried to test May's prediction empirically, and we still ignore what is the actual complexity-stability relationship in natural ecosystems. Here we perform a stability analysis of 116 quantitative food webs sampled worldwide. We find that classic descriptors of complexity (species richness, connectance and interaction strength) are not associated with stability in empirical food webs. Further analysis reveals that a correlation between the effects of predators on prey and those of prey on predators, combined with a high frequency of weak interactions, stabilize food web dynamics relative to the random expectation. We conclude that empirical food webs have several non-random properties contributing to the absence of a complexity-stability relationship.
RESUMO
When gametes and embryos are not available, cryobanking of somatic tissues is one possibility to keep a genetic record of fish valuables in a context of biodiversity conservation and animal breeding management. Cryopreservation of whole fin pieces would be more advantageous than the commonly used cryopreservation of cells after fin culture, as it would allow extensive sampling without immediate need for laboratory facilities. The objective of this work was to assess the cryopreservation ability of fin pieces from goldfish (Carassius auratus) and to test whether a laboratory procedure could be adapted to field conditions. Caudal fin explants were cryopreserved in culture medium with 125mM sucrose and 10% Me(2)SO. After 14days of culture, the frozen-thawed explants showed the same cell growth rate and grew the same somatic cell number as the fresh ones. Cells proliferated inside and around the explants as shown by BrdU labeling. Neither the size of the fin pieces nor the freezer type, -70 degrees C upright or -20 degrees C chest, influenced the outcome of cryopreservation. Fin pieces were stored 4days at 4 degrees C in dry conditions prior to cryopreservation without alteration of the fin explant culture success. This study demonstrated that field collecting of goldfish fin pieces is possible as whole fin pieces can be stored in standard fridge or be shipped at subzero temperature before they are frozen into a plain -20 degrees C chest freezer. After incorporation in cryobanks in liquid nitrogen, thawed fin pieces reliably produce somatic cells in cell culture conditions.
