Systematic distortions in world fisheries catch trends.

Over 75% of the world marine fisheries catch (over 80 million tonnes per year) is sold on international markets, in contrast to other food commodities (such as rice). At present, only one institution, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) maintains global fisheries statistics. As an intergovernmental organization, however, FAO must generally rely on the statistics provided by member countries, even if it is doubtful that these correspond to reality. Here we show that misreporting by countries with large fisheries, combined with the large and widely fluctuating catch of species such as the Peruvian anchoveta, can cause globally spurious trends. Such trends influence unwise investment decisions by firms in the fishing sector and by banks, and prevent the effective management of international fisheries.     

Towards sustainability in world fisheries

Fisheries have rarely been 'sustainable'. Rather, fishing has induced serial depletions, long masked by improved technology, geographic expansion and exploitation of previously spurned species lower in the food web. With global catches declining since the late 1980s, continuation of present trends will lead to supply shortfall, for which aquaculture cannot be expected to compensate, and may well exacerbate. Reducing fishing capacity to appropriate levels will require strong reductions of subsidies. Zoning the oceans into unfished marine reserves and areas with limited levels of fishing effort would allow sustainable fisheries, based on resources embedded in functional, diverse ecosystems.     

Transient dynamics of an altered large marine ecosystem

Overfishing of large-bodied benthic fishes and their subsequent population collapses on the Scotian Shelf of Canada's east coast and elsewhere resulted in restructuring of entire food webs now dominated by planktivorous, forage fish species and macroinvertebrates. Despite the imposition of strict management measures in force since the early 1990s, the Scotian Shelf ecosystem has not reverted back to its former structure. Here we provide evidence of the transient nature of this ecosystem and its current return path towards benthic fish species domination. The prolonged duration of the altered food web, and its current recovery, was and is being governed by the oscillatory, runaway consumption dynamics of the forage fish complex. These erupting forage species, which reached biomass levels 900% greater than those prevalent during the pre-collapse years of large benthic predators, are now in decline, having outstripped their zooplankton food supply. This dampening, and the associated reduction in the intensity of predation, was accompanied by lagged increases in species abundances at both lower and higher trophic levels, first witnessed in zooplankton and then in large-bodied predators, all consistent with a return towards the earlier ecosystem structure. We conclude that the reversibility of perturbed ecosystems can occur and that this bodes well for other collapsed fisheries.     

南海北部大陆架海洋生态系统Ecopath模型的应用与分析

过度捕捞和环境恶化导致渔业资源和海洋生态系统逆向发展。采用EwE5.1软件,对南海北部大陆架建立Ecopath(生态通道模型)模型。通过各级流量、生物量、生产量、捕捞量、系统总流量以及生态位和混和营养效应等方面的分析,得出营养流通主要有2种途径,肉食鱼类间饵料竞争非常激烈,低值鱼类间具相似的捕食压力,顶级捕食者对大部分鱼类负效应不明显。系统受过度捕捞渔业影响很大,并存在营养级I利用效率低和渔业资源小型化、低值化等不稳定的幼态特征。     

山东省近海主要海洋捕捞经济鱼类资源变动分析

根据山东省1996—2017年渔业统计数据,对山东省11种主要经济海洋鱼类捕捞量的变动与鱼种结构进行分析,并结合捕捞方式,讨论4个优势种捕捞量变化的原因。结果表明:山东近海主要经济鱼类的捕捞总量在1996—1999年保持增长态势,之后下降明显;鱼种结构的多样性与均匀性不断增加;经多年捕捞利用,蓝点马鲛、带鱼衰退明显,个体趋于小型化;鳀鱼在2003年以后虽然出现衰退现象,但生殖力明显增大。总之,山东近海主要经济鱼类资源总量整体呈下降趋势,蓝点马鲛、带鱼、鳀鱼仍处于衰退状态,需要加强保护。     

南海北部大陆架海洋生态系统Ecosim模型的动态模拟

为了确定最佳的渔业政策,采用EwE 5.1软件,对南海北部大陆架海洋生态系统构建了1987-1998年Ecosim(时间动态)模型。Ecosim模型包含了32个功能组,初始参数来源于20世纪80年代末期静态平衡的Ecopath模型。通过营养关系,分析了渔业捕捞对主要经济鱼类的动态影响。结果显示1998年系统总输出、总生物量都有不同程度的增加,而总捕捞量则有所降低;强化的捕捞压力导致了低值小型鱼类被捕食压力的间接缓解,大中型高价值鱼类的生物量发生明显下降;说明了生态系统呈现出逆向发育的主要原因在于过度捕捞所产生的从上而下(top-down)的控制作用。     

Predator diversity dampens trophic cascades

Food web complexity is thought to weaken the strength of terrestrial trophic cascades in which strong impacts of natural enemies on herbivores cascade to influence primary production indirectly. Predator diversity can enhance food web complexity because predators may feed on each other and on shared prey. In such cases, theory suggests that the impact of predation on herbivores relaxes and cascading effects on basal resources are dampened. Despite this view, no empirical studies have explicitly investigated the role of predator diversity in mediating primary productivity in a natural terrestrial system. Here we compare, in a coastal marsh community, impacts of arthropod predators on herbivores and plant productivity between a simple food web with a single predator species and a complex food web with a diverse predator assemblage. We show that enhancing predator diversity dampens enemy effects on herbivores and weakens trophic cascades. Consequently, changes in diversity at higher trophic levels can significantly alter ecosystem function in natural systems.     

Bottom-up effects of plant diversity on multitrophic interactions in a biodiversity experiment

Biodiversity is rapidly declining, and this may negatively affect ecosystem processes, including economically important ecosystem services. Previous studies have shown that biodiversity has positive effects on organisms and processes across trophic levels. However, only a few studies have so far incorporated an explicit food-web perspective. In an eight-year biodiversity experiment, we studied an unprecedented range of above- and below-ground organisms and multitrophic interactions. A multitrophic data set originating from a single long-term experiment allows mechanistic insights that would not be gained from meta-analysis of different experiments. Here we show that plant diversity effects dampen with increasing trophic level and degree of omnivory. This was true both for abundance and species richness of organisms. Furthermore, we present comprehensive above-ground/below-ground biodiversity food webs. Both above ground and below ground, herbivores responded more strongly to changes in plant diversity than did carnivores or omnivores. Density and richness of carnivorous taxa was independent of vegetation structure. Below-ground responses to plant diversity were consistently weaker than above-ground responses. Responses to increasing plant diversity were generally positive, but were negative for biological invasion, pathogen infestation and hyperparasitism. Our results suggest that plant diversity has strong bottom-up effects on multitrophic interaction networks, with particularly strong effects on lower trophic levels. Effects on higher trophic levels are indirectly mediated through bottom-up trophic cascades.     

Ecosystem consequences of species richness and composition in pond food webs

Resolving current concerns about the role of biodiversity on ecosystems calls for understanding the separate roles of changes in species numbers and of composition. Recent work shows that primary productivity often, but not always, saturates with species richness within single trophic levels. However, any interpretation of such patterns must consider that variation in biodiversity is necessarily associated with changes in species composition (identity), and that changes in biodiversity often occur across multiple trophic levels. Here we present results from a mesocosm experiment in which we independently manipulated species richness and species composition across multiple trophic levels in pond food webs. In contrast to previous studies that focused on single trophic levels, we found that productivity is either idiosyncratic or increases with respect to species richness, and that richness influences trophic structure. However, the composition of species within richness levels can have equally or more marked effects on ecosystems than average effects of richness per se. Indirect evidence suggests that richness and associated changes in species composition affect ecosystem attributes through indirect effects and trophic interactions among species, features that are highly characteristic of natural, complex ecosystems.     

Ecosystem-level patterns of primary productivity and herbivory in terrestrial habitats

Ecosystems are structurally organized as food webs within which energy is transmitted between trophic levels and dissipated into the environment. Energy flow between two trophic levels is given by the amount of production at the lower level and by the proportion of production that is consumed, assimilated and respired at the higher level. Considerable evidence indicates that food-web structure varies predictably in different habitats, but much less is known about quantitative relationships among food web fluxes. Many of the energetic properties of herbivores in African game parks are associated with rainfall and, by inference, with net primary productivity. Respiratory costs per unit production at the consumer trophic level are higher for homeotherms than for heterotherms. Plant secondary chemicals affect herbivore dietary choices and the allocation of plant resources to those chemicals varies with resource availability. How these phenomena are translated into ecosystem fluxes is unknown. We present evidence that herbivore biomass, consumption and productivity are closely correlated with plant productivity, suggesting that the latter is a principal integrator and indicator of functional processes in food webs.     

Structural asymmetry and the stability of diverse food webs

Untangling the influence of human activities on food-web stability and persistence is complex given the large numbers of species and overwhelming number of interactions within ecosystems. Although biodiversity has been associated with stability, the actual structures and processes that confer stability to diverse food webs remain largely unknown. Here we show that real food webs are structured such that top predators act as couplers of distinct energy channels that differ in both productivity and turnover rate. Our theoretical analysis shows that coupled fast and slow channels convey both local and non-local stability to food webs. Alarmingly, the same human actions that have been implicated in the loss of biodiversity also directly erode the very structures and processes that we show to confer stability on food webs.     

Fishing elevates variability in the abundance of exploited species

The separation of the effects of environmental variability from the impacts of fishing has been elusive, but is essential for sound fisheries management. We distinguish environmental effects from fishing effects by comparing the temporal variability of exploited versus unexploited fish stocks living in the same environments. Using the unique suite of 50-year-long larval fish surveys from the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations we analyse fishing as a treatment effect in a long-term ecological experiment. Here we present evidence from the marine environment that exploited species exhibit higher temporal variability in abundance than unexploited species. This remains true after accounting for life-history effects, abundance, ecological traits and phylogeny. The increased variability of exploited populations is probably caused by fishery-induced truncation of the age structure, which reduces the capacity of populations to buffer environmental events. Therefore, to avoid collapse, fisheries must be managed not only to sustain the total viable biomass but also to prevent the significant truncation of age structure. The double jeopardy of fishing to potentially deplete stock sizes and, more immediately, to amplify the peaks and valleys of population variability, calls for a precautionary management approach.     

Allometric degree distributions facilitate food-web stability

In natural ecosystems, species are linked by feeding interactions that determine energy fluxes and create complex food webs. The stability of these food webs enables many species to coexist and to form diverse ecosystems. Recent theory finds predator-prey body-mass ratios to be critically important for food-web stability. However, the mechanisms responsible for this stability are unclear. Here we use a bioenergetic consumer-resource model to explore how and why only particular predator-prey body-mass ratios promote stability in tri-trophic (three-species) food chains. We find that this 'persistence domain' of ratios is constrained by bottom-up energy availability when predators are much smaller than their prey and by enrichment-driven dynamics when predators are much larger. We also find that 97% of the tri-trophic food chains across five natural food webs exhibit body-mass ratios within the predicted persistence domain. Further analyses of randomly rewired food webs show that body mass and allometric degree distributions in natural food webs mediate this consistency. The allometric degree distributions hold that the diversity of species' predators and prey decreases and increases, respectively, with increasing species' body masses. Our results demonstrate how simple relationships between species' body masses and feeding interactions may promote the stability of complex food webs.     

Simple rules yield complex food webs

Several of the most ambitious theories in ecology describe food webs that document the structure of strong and weak trophic links that is responsible for ecological dynamics among diverse assemblages of species. Early mechanism-based theory asserted that food webs have little omnivory and several properties that are independent of species richness. This theory was overturned by empirical studies that found food webs to be much more complex, but these studies did not provide mechanistic explanations for the complexity. Here we show that a remarkably simple model fills this scientific void by successfully predicting key structural properties of the most complex and comprehensive food webs in the primary literature. These properties include the fractions of species at top, intermediate and basal trophic levels, the means and variabilities of generality, vulnerability and food-chain length, and the degrees of cannibalism, omnivory, looping and trophic similarity. Using only two empirical parameters, species number and connectance, our 'niche model' extends the existing 'cascade model and improves its fit ten-fold by constraining species to consume a contiguous sequence of prey in a one-dimensional trophic niche.     

Mass-balance ecosystem model of the East China Sea

Using the Ecopath mass-balance trophodynamic model, this paper analyzed the trophic levels, flows, food web structure and ecosystem maturity of the East China Sea, and identified ecologically important functional groups in the ecosystem. The model is based on fishery resource surveys of the East China Sea in 2000, studies on diet composition and global databases such as FishBase and the Sea Around Us Project Database. The results showed that trophic levels of the functional groups are between 2.86 and 4.37, with an average of 3.32. Anchocy (Engraulis japonicus), small fishes and benthic crustaceans such as shrimps and crabs are important groups in terms of the trophic structure and flow dynamics in the East China Sea. Energy flows of most groups are between specific trophic levels, except file fish (Thamnaconus spp.), pomfret (Pampus spp.) and cephalopods. Trophic transfer efficiency of levels II, III, IV and more than V are 11.8%, 21.1%, 17.4% and 22.1–22.5%, respectively. Effects of fishery – the largest ‘consumer’ of the ecosystem – are much stronger than those exerted by biological groups in the system. The model suggests that the current fishery can further reduce the complexity of the ecosystem. Evaluations of the system indices suggest that maturity of the ecosystem is low. The conclusion of this model indicates that it was the overfishing that caused the ecosystem of the East China Sea declined, which should be taken into account as a critical reference for fisheries management in the future.     

Tracking apex marine predator movements in a dynamic ocean

Pelagic marine predators face unprecedented challenges and uncertain futures. Overexploitation and climate variability impact the abundance and distribution of top predators in ocean ecosystems. Improved understanding of ecological patterns, evolutionary constraints and ecosystem function is critical for preventing extinctions, loss of biodiversity and disruption of ecosystem services. Recent advances in electronic tagging techniques have provided the capacity to observe the movements and long-distance migrations of animals in relation to ocean processes across a range of ecological scales. Tagging of Pacific Predators, a field programme of the Census of Marine Life, deployed 4,306 tags on 23 species in the North Pacific Ocean, resulting in a tracking data set of unprecedented scale and species diversity that covers 265,386 tracking days from 2000 to 2009. Here we report migration pathways, link ocean features to multispecies hotspots and illustrate niche partitioning within and among congener guilds. Our results indicate that the California Current large marine ecosystem and the North Pacific transition zone attract and retain a diverse assemblage of marine vertebrates. Within the California Current large marine ecosystem, several predator guilds seasonally undertake north-south migrations that may be driven by oceanic processes, species-specific thermal tolerances and shifts in prey distributions. We identify critical habitats across multinational boundaries and show that top predators exploit their environment in predictable ways, providing the foundation for spatial management of large marine ecosystems.     

Symbiotic fungal endophytes control insect host-parasite interaction webs

Symbiotic microorganisms that live intimately associated with terrestrial plants affect both the quantity and quality of resources, and thus the energy supply to consumer populations at higher levels in the food chain. Empirical evidence on resource limitation of food webs points to primary productivity as a major determinant of consumer abundance and trophic structure. Prey quality plays a critical role in community regulation. Plants infected by endophytic fungi are known to be chemically protected against herbivore consumption. However, the influence of this microbe-plant association on multi-trophic interactions remains largely unexplored. Here we present the effects of fungal endophytes on insect food webs that reflect limited energy transfer to consumers as a result of low plant quality, rather than low productivity. Herbivore-parasite webs on endophyte-free grasses show enhanced insect abundance at alternate trophic levels, higher rates of parasitism, and increased dominance by a few trophic links. These results mirror predicted effects of increased productivity on food-web dynamics. Thus 'hidden' microbial symbionts can have community-wide impacts on the pattern and strength of resource-consumer interactions.     

气候变化对陆地生物多样性影响研究的若干进展

气候变化对生物多样性影响的研究日益受到重视。文章总结了有关气候变化对基因多样性、物种多样性和生态系统多样性影响研究的趋势，并对存在的问题进行了讨论。目前，气候变化对生物多样性影响的研究总体上还不深入，研究需要加强。     

北部湾生态通道模型和保护区效应的模拟

 作为一种有效的养护海洋资源和生态系统的工具,海洋保护区正逐步得到世界各国的普遍认同。在20世纪90年代EwE模型的基础上,以20 a为周期,利用空间化模块Ecospace模拟了不同的管理情景（禁渔、伏季休渔、共同渔区、<30 m沿岸水域）对北部湾海洋生态系统功能组的生物量和渔获量的影响。结果表明,缺乏管理和渔民合作的禁渔制度和伏季休渔制度对资源的养护作用不显著,大型鱼类和真鲨类等高营养级生物量继续衰退。在北部湾沿岸和中南部海域设立大型的非渔业活动区都可有效地降低捕捞强度和恢复渔业资源,提高渔获质量。研究结果表明,海洋保护区对栖息地养护和渔业管理上有重要作用。从北部湾渔业管理的角度来看,将30 m等深线内的沿岸水域划为非渔业保护区更有利于生态系统的养护和渔业资源的恢复。     

Effects of biodiversity on the functioning of trophic groups and ecosystems

Over the past decade, accelerating rates of species extinction have prompted an increasing number of studies to reduce species diversity experimentally and examine how this alters the efficiency by which communities capture resources and convert those into biomass. So far, the generality of patterns and processes observed in individual studies have been the subjects of considerable debate. Here we present a formal meta-analysis of studies that have experimentally manipulated species diversity to examine how it affects the functioning of numerous trophic groups in multiple types of ecosystem. We show that the average effect of decreasing species richness is to decrease the abundance or biomass of the focal trophic group, leading to less complete depletion of resources used by that group. At the same time, analyses reveal that the standing stock of, and resource depletion by, the most species-rich polyculture tends to be no different from that of the single most productive species used in an experiment. Of the known mechanisms that might explain these trends, results are most consistent with what is called the 'sampling effect', which occurs when diverse communities are more likely to contain and become dominated by the most productive species. Whether this mechanism is widespread in natural communities is currently controversial. Patterns we report are remarkably consistent for four different trophic groups (producers, herbivores, detritivores and predators) and two major ecosystem types (aquatic and terrestrial). Collectively, our analyses suggest that the average species loss does indeed affect the functioning of a wide variety of organisms and ecosystems, but the magnitude of these effects is ultimately determined by the identity of species that are going extinct.