Though reported capture fisheries are dominated by marine production, inland fish and fisheries make substantial contributions to meeting the challenges faced by individuals, society, and the environment in a changing global landscape. Inland capture fisheries and aquaculture contribute over 40% to the world's reported finfish production from less than 0.01% of the total volume of water on earth. These fisheries provide food for billions and livelihoods for millions of people worldwide. Herein, using supporting evidence from the literature, we review 10 reasons why inland fish and fisheries are important to the individual (food security, economic security, empowerment), to society (cultural services, recreational services, human health and well-being, knowledge transfer and capacity building), and to the environment (ecosystem function and biodiversity, as aquatic "canaries", the "green food" movement). However, the current limitations to valuing the services provided by inland fish and fisheries make comparison with other water resource users extremely difficult. This list can serve to demonstrate the importance of inland fish and fisheries, a necessary first step to better incorporating them into agriculture, land-use, and water resource planning, where they are currently often underappreciated or ignored.Key words: food security, freshwater ecosystems, importance of fish, inland fisheries.Résumé : Bien que la capture de poissons rapportée par les pêcheries soit dominée par la production marine, les poissons et les pêcheries de l'intérieur des terres apportent des contributions substantielles pour rencontrer les défis rencontrés par les individus, les sociétés et l'environnement dans un paysage en changement global. Les captures des pêcheries de l'intérieur et l'aquaculture contribuent à la hauteur de 40 % à la production mondiale rapportée pour les poissons à nageoires, à partir de moins de 0,01 % du volume total de l'eau sur terre. Ces pêcheries fournissent de la nourriture pour des milliards et un moyen de subsistance pour des millions de gens, partout au monde. Dans cette revue, en utilisant des preuves venant de la littérature, les auteurs examinent 10 raisons pour lesquelles, les pêcheries et les poissons de l'intérieur sont importants pour les individus (sécurité alimentaire, sécurité économique, l'autonomisation), pour la société (services culturels, services récréatifs, santé humaine et bien-être, transfert de connaissances et capacité à construire) et pour l'environnement (fonction écosystémique et biodiversité, comme « canaris » aquatiques, pour le mouvement « aliments verts »). Cependant, les limitations actuelles pour évaluer les services fournis par les poissons et les pêcheries intérieures rendent les comparaisons avec les autres utilisateurs de la ressource en eau extrêmement difficile. Cette liste peut servir à démontrer l'importance des poissons et des pêcheries de l'intérieur, une première étape essentielle pour mieux les incorporer avec l'agriculture, l'utilisation du territoire e...

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Ecologists increasingly recognize the need to understand how landscapes and food webs interact. Reservoir ecosystems are heavily subsidized by nutrients and detritus from surrounding watersheds, and often contain abundant populations of gizzard shad, an omnivorous fish that consumes plankton and detritus. Gizzard shad link terrestrial landscapes and pelagic reservoir food webs by consuming detritus, translocating nutrients from sediment detritus to the water column, and consuming zooplankton. The abundance of gizzard shad increases with watershed agriculturalization, most likely through a variety of mechanisms operating on larval and adult life stages. Gizzard shad have myriad effects on reservoirs, including impacts on nutrients, phytoplankton, zooplankton, and fish, and many of their effects vary with ecosystem productivity (i.e., watershed land use).Interactive feedbacks among watersheds, gizzard shad populations, and reservoir food webs operate to maintain dominance of gizzard shad in highly productive systems. Thus, effective stewardship of reservoir ecosystems must incorporate both watershed and food-web perspectives.

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The alewife Alosa pseudoharengus, an invader to the Laurentian Great Lakes from the Atlantic Ocean, has been blamed for causing major disruptions of Great Lakes fish communities during the past 50 years. We reviewed the literature and examined long‐term data on fish abundances in the Great Lakes to develop a new synthesis on the negative effects of alewives on Great Lakes fish communities. The results indicated that certain fish populations are substantially more vulnerable to the effects of alewives than others. More specifically, the effects of alewives on other fish populations appeared to follow a continuum—from such fishes as slimy sculpin Cottus cognatus, lake whitefish Coregonus clupeaformis, and bloater Coregonus hoyi, which were relatively unsusceptible—to Atlantic salmon Salmo salar, lake trout Salvelinus namaycush, and emerald shiner Notropis atherinoides, which were highly susceptible. Intermediate species in this continuum included yellow perch Perca flavescens, deepwater sculpin Myoxocephalus thompsonii, and burbot Lota lota. The predominant mechanism by which alewives exerted their negative effect appeared to be predation on the larvae of other fishes. The key factor in the extirpation of Atlantic salmon from Lake Ontario, however, was probably early mortality syndrome induced by a diet rich in alewives. We conclude that the degree of restoration of the native Great Lakes fish community depends in part on the degree of control of the alewife population.

Global climate change is altering freshwater ecosystems and affecting fish populations and communities. Underpinning changes in fish distribution and assemblage‐level responses to climate change are individual‐level physiological constraints. In this review, we synthesize the mechanistic effects of climate change on neuroendocrine, cardiorespiratory, immune, osmoregulatory, and reproductive systems of freshwater and diadromous fishes. Observed climate change effects on physiological systems are varied and numerous, including exceedance of critical thermal tolerances, decreased cardiorespiratory performance, compromised immune function, and altered patterns of individual reproductive investment. However, effects vary widely among and within species because of species, population, and even sex‐specific differences in sensitivity and resilience and because of habitat‐specific variation in the magnitude of climate‐related environmental change. Research on the interactive effects of climate change with other environmental stressors across a broader range of fish diversity is needed to further our understanding of climate change effects on fish physiology.

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