Movements of Marine Fish and Decapod Crustaceans: Process, Theory and Application

Practicing coastal seascape ecology

“…Although seascape ecology is on the verge of entering mainstream marine ecology, the level of familiarity is still comparable to that reported by terrestrial landscape ecologists in the 1980s, whereby 'ideas were new and were received with a mixture of skepticism and excitement' (Turner 2005). In part, this is due to the persistent limited exchange of perspectives and concepts between terrestrial ecologists and the coastal science community (Kneib 1994, Stergiou & Browman 2005 and the dominance of a relatively fine scale and single scale approach in estuarine and marine ecology (Pittman & McAlpine 2003). Furthermore, the interdisciplinary approach, spatial data types, tools and techniques used in landscape ecology are more typical of geographical sciences than those traditionally applied in coastal ecology, although quantitative spatial techniques are now being taught to the new generation of coastal ecologists (Wright et al 2007).…”

Home range dynamics of the American lobster,Homarus americanus

“…Small-scale daily movement patterns are indicative of habitat requirements, foraging needs, territoriality, predator-prey relationships and reproductive activities (Pittman and McAlpine 2003). One commonly used measure of the space utilized by an animal is its home range.…”

“…While the home ranges of terrestrial species have been rigorously measured by taking advantage of modern telemetry, GPS and ArcView technologies, our knowledge of the movement patterns and home ranges of mobile marine species is very limited, especially with respect to invertebrates (Hooge and Eichenlaub 1997;Pittman and McAlpine 2003). This gap in our understanding is primarily due to the challenges inherent in continuously observing marine species for long periods of time.…”

“…Based on these few studies it appears that decapod home ranges vary considerably, and that the relationship between animal size and home range size may be more complex than in terrestrial species (McNab 1963;Pittman and McAlpine 2003;Jetz et al 2004).…”

The Distribution and Abundance of Decapod and Fish Communities in Cleveland Bay, Australia

“…Spatial and temporal distributions of both groups are related to their life-cycle movement, such as eggs and larvae movement, settlement range movement, ontogenetic shift, relocation and migrations (nonspawning and spawning) (Pittman & McAlpine, 2003). The influences of large-scale physical oceanography also have impact to their population dynamics, due to their relatively long period of planktonic phase (Lalli & Parsons, 1997).…”