Systematic Review of Fish Ecology and Anthropogenic Impacts in South American Estuaries: Setting Priorities for Ecosystem Conservation

Research on estuarine ecology in South America (SA) increased quali-quantitatively since the early 1980 in search of consistent recommendations for estuarine conservation. The most important ecological theory achieved is that the seasonal fluctuation of the salinity gradient creates an ecocline influenced by gradual changes between river-dominated to marine-like waters. Estuarine fish fauna adapts to these changeable abiotic characteristics, including the spatial, and seasonal bioavailability of dissolved oxygen and numerous pollutants. However, studies on the influence of the estuarine ecocline are still missing for key estuarine systems. This study provides an overview of fish ecology and anthropogenic impacts within estuarine systems of SA and discusses priorities for environmental conservation. Research on fish reached important conclusions regarding essential habitats and fish interaction with other biological and abiotic compartments over spatio-temporal settings, including conditions of severe anthropogenic impacts. These impacts are related to unplanned urban settlements, industrial estates, ports, damming of major rivers, dredging activities, and deforestation for extensive farming. Changes in estuarine morphology alter natural flows and lead to habitat losses, disrupting the ecocline and impairing fishes from moving among formerly connected habitats, especially earlier ontogenetic phases. In addition, industrial, urban, and farming activities often result in high loads of metals and persistent organic pollutants, organic enrichment and oxygen depletion. Moreover, plastic debris, a ubiquitous contaminant with sources on every human activity, including fishing, when fragmented into microplastics, become preferably concentrated in semi-enclosed environments, as estuaries. Metals, POPs and microplastics are actually asserted to be persistent. When in high concentrations, they become bioavailable to the estuarine trophic web through bioaccumulation, being biomagnified or biotransfered toward higher trophic level organisms, such as top predator fishes. Therefore, research on environmental quality and fish ecology must be based on robust sampling designs along the whole ecocline using long-term approaches. In addition, basic sanitation, co-management, an improved licensing system and scientifically-based risk assessments/monitoring for all sorts of enterprise are also urgent. These conservation priorities need to be in place before human-driven changes surpass the ecosystem's capacity to produce resources and maintain services

Editorial: Microplastics in the marine environment: Sources, distribution, biological effects and socio-economic impacts

inexistenteinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Levantamento das patologias e monitorização do arco-cruzeiro da Igreja da Misericórdia de Aveiro

O estado de conservação das construções tradicionais motiva para um crescente interesse na recuperação e manutenção deste património. Antes de mais, é importante obter uma visão geral da evolução temporal das construções permitindo assim a caracterização dos diversos aspectos estruturais e construtivos. Este trabalho foi desenvolvido com o objectivo de estudar as patologias associadas à nave principal da Igreja da Misericórdia de Aveiro e em particular as patologias associadas ao arco-cruzeiro que se encontra no interior desta, com o intuito de se estabelecer a melhor estratégia de monitorização a aplicar para controlo da evolução dos danos estruturais observados. Como resultado desta análise das patologias, foi proposto e implementado um plano de monitorização do arco-cruzeiro, com um sistema de instrumentação que permite monitorizar a evolução das deformações de forma não intrusiva, garantindo a reversibilidade e a eventual futura extensão do sistema de instrumentação. Foi ainda desenvolvido um modelo numérico em elementos finitos para interpretação das causas dos danos estruturais observados

Estratégia de monitorização de monumentos: caso de estudo: Arco-Cruzeiro da Igreja da Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Aveiro

O estado de conservação das construções tradicionais motiva para um crescente interesse na recuperação e manutenção do património construído. Antes de mais, é importante obter uma visão geral da evolução temporal das construções permitindo assim a caracterização dos diversos aspectos estruturais e construtivos. Este trabalho foi desenvolvido com o objectivo de estudar as patologias associadas à nave principal da Igreja da Misericórdia de Aveiro e em particular as patologias associadas ao Arco-Cruzeiro que se encontra no interior desta, com o intuito de se estabelecer a melhor estratégia de monitorização dos danos estruturais a aplicar. Como resultado desta análise foi proposto e implementado um plano de monitorização, com o desenvolvimento de meios de instrumentação, que permitem monitorizar o comportamento estrutural do arco, de forma não intrusiva, garantindo a reversibilidade e a eventual futura extensão da instrumentação. Foi ainda desenvolvido um modelo numérico que serviu de apoio à interpretação dos danos estruturais encontrados

Nonequilibrium Zaklan model on Apollonian Networks

The Zaklan model had been proposed and studied recently using the equilibrium Ising model on Square Lattices (SL) by Zaklan et al (2008), near the critica temperature of the Ising model presenting a well-defined phase transition; but on normal and modified Apollonian networks (ANs), Andrade et al. (2005, 2009) studied the equilibrium Ising model. They showed the equilibrium Ising model not to present on ANs a phase transition of the type for the 2D Ising model. Here, using agent-based Monte-Carlo simulations, we study the Zaklan model with the well-known majority-vote model (MVM) with noise and apply it to tax evasion on ANs, to show that differently from the Ising model the MVM on ANs presents a well defined phase transition. To control the tax evasion in the economics model proposed by Zaklan et al, MVM is applied in the neighborhood of the critical noise $q_{c}$ to the Zaklan model. Here we show that the Zaklan model is robust because this can be studied besides using equilibrium dynamics of Ising model also through the nonequilibrium MVM and on various topologies giving the same behavior regardless of dynamic or topology used here.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1204.0386 and arXiv:0910.196

Towards a unified eco-evolutionary framework for fisheries management: Coupling advances in next-generation sequencing with species distribution modelling

The establishment of high-throughput sequencing technologies and subsequent large-scale genomic datasets has flourished across fields of fundamental biological sciences. The introduction of genomic resources in fisheries management has been proposed from multiple angles, ranging from an accurate re-definition of geographical limitations of stocks and connectivity, identification of fine-scale stock structure linked to locally adapted sub-populations, or even the integration with individual-based biophysical models to explore life history strategies. While those clearly enhance our perception of patterns at the light of a spatial scale, temporal depth and consequently forecasting ability might be compromised as an analytical trade-off. Here, we present a framework to reinforce our understanding of stock dynamics by adding also a temporal point of view. We propose to integrate genomic information on temporal projections of species distributions computed by Species Distribution Models (SDMs). SDMs have the potential to project the current and future distribution ranges of a given species from relevant environmental predictors. These projections serve as tools to inform about range expansions and contractions of fish stocks and suggest either suitable locations or local extirpations that may arise in the future. However, SDMs assume that the whole population respond homogenously to the range of environmental conditions. Here, we conceptualize a framework that leverages a conventional Bayesian joint-SDM approach with the incorporation of genomic data. We propose that introducing genomic information at the basis of a joint-SDM will explore the range of suitable habitats where stocks could thrive in the future as a function of their current evolutionary potential

Levantamento das patologias e monitorização do Arco-Cruzeiro da Igreja da Misericórdia de Aveiro

O estado de conservação das construções tradicionais motiva para um crescente interesse na recuperação e manutenção do património construído. Antes de mais, é importante obter uma visão geral da evolução temporal das construções permitindo assim a caracterização dos diversos aspectos estruturais e construtivos. Este trabalho foi desenvolvido com o objectivo de estudar as patologias associadas à nave principal da Igreja da Misericórdia de Aveiro e em particular as patologias associadas ao Arco-Cruzeiro que se encontra no interior desta, com o intuito de se estabelecer a melhor estratégia de monitorização dos danos estruturais a aplicar. Como resultado desta análise foi proposto e implementado um plano de monitorização, com o desenvolvimento de meios de instrumentação, que permitem monitorizar o comportamento estrutural do arco, de forma não intrusiva, garantindo a reversibilidade e a eventual futura extensão da instrumentação. Foi ainda desenvolvido um modelo numérico em elementos finitos que serviu de apoio à interpretação das causas dos danos estruturais encontrados

Structural health monitoring of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia Church in Aveiro

This paper presents a reduced visual impact structural health monitoring system, based on fibre Bragg gratings. This sensing network was developed for the church of Santa Casa da Misericordia of Aveiro and comprises 19 displacement sensors and 5 temperature sensors. All the sensors were custom made, according to the monitoring points’ characteristics. The results obtained over the first year of monitoring are presente

Dynamics of marine debris ingestion by profitable fishes along the estuarine ecocline

The dynamics of microfilament (<5 mm) ingestion were evaluated in three species of snooks. The ingestion of different colours and sizes of microfilaments were strongly associated with the spatio-temporal estuarine use and ontogenetic shifts of snooks. Their feeding ecology was also analysed to assess dietary relationships with patterns of contamination. All species were highly contaminated with microfilaments. The highest ingestion of microfilaments occurred in the adults, when fishes became the main prey item and also during the peak of fishing activities, in the rainy season. This suggests that trophic transfer, in addition to periods of high availability of microfilaments are important pathways for contamination. The ingestion of microfilaments of different colours and sizes was likely influenced by input sources. Blue microfilaments were frequently ingested, and appear to have both riverine and estuarine inputs, since they were ingested in all seasons and habitats. Purple and red microfilaments were more frequently ingested in the lower estuarine habitats. The length of microfilaments was also associated with environmental variability. Longer microfilaments were ingested in habitats with greater riverine influence, the opposite was observed for shorter microfilaments. Therefore, microfilament contamination in snooks are a consequence of their ecological patterns of estuarine uses through different seasons and life history stages

Does early specialization provide an advantage in physical fitness development in youth basketball?

The present study examined the influence of the specialization onset on the magnitude and patterns of changes in basketball-specific physical fitness within a competitive season and developmental fitness trends between 11 and 17 years in young basketball players. Repeated measures of 181 young basketball players (female, n = 40; male, n = 141) were examined. Anthropometry, age, estimated maturity status, and basketball-specific physical fitness (assessed with the countermovement jump, line drill, and yo-yo intermittent recovery level-1 and fitness score) were considered. Players were grouped by the onset of specialization as related to biological maturation milestones (pre-puberty, mid-puberty, and late-puberty specialization). The within-season and developmental changes in physical fitness were fitted using multilevel modeling in a fully Bayesian framework. The fitness outcomes were similar between-player and within-player changes when grouped by specialization across a season. Fitness improvements across a season were apparent for female players, while male players maintained their performance levels. There was no variation in the patterns of physical fitness development between 11 and 17 years associated with the onset of specialization. Conditional on our data and models, the assumption that early sport specialization provides a physical fitness advantage for future athletic success does not hold