Selected publications

Using a comprehensive set of long-term data, the authors show that shipping has contributed to a significant loss of biodiversity of fish and macroinvertebrates in European rivers in recent decades – and that the animal communities are becoming increasingly homogeneous and river-typical species are being lost. Invasive species, on the other hand, are significantly increasing. 

The research team estimates that recreational fishing in lakes and rivers accounts for more than 11 per cent of the annually reported catches in inland fisheries worldwide. The analyzed total consumption value of harvested fish is around 10 billion US dollars per year. Due to climate change and direct human impacts on freshwater ecosystems, the productivity of important fish species is declining.

The paper offers an introduction to novel methods of high-resolution positional telemetry that provide guidance to practioners. It presents a summary of all techniques for fine-scale positioning of the movements of fish.

The study investigated the impact of COVID on recreational fisheries across the globe.The authors found COVID to increase local recreational fisheries participation but to reduce touristic recreational fisheries where travel restrictions were in place.

Weirs and other transverse structures in rivers not only impede migratory fish on their way to spawning grounds, but even if they are able to pass, many of them die in the turbines of hydroelectric power plants. The authors present a recommendation on how to facilitate effective passage and even promote sturgeon with bypass channels at dams that can serve as additional habitat.

The authors detected great concentrations of source hotspots on the northern regions associated to lentic ecosystems, main European rivers acting as ecological corridors for all freshwaters, and a mixed distribution of connectivity hotspots in southern and Mediterranean ecoregions.

The authors studied the needs and knowledge of stakeholders who own, work, research, or benefit from pondscapes in 8 countries. Using the analytic hierarchy process, this study shows that in general stakeholders in the European and Turkish demo-sites prefer environmental benefits, while stakeholders in the Uruguayan demo-sites rank the economic benefits higher.

The mosquitofish Gambusia affinis, globally introduced to fight mosquitos, is a threat for freshwater ecosystems and a model for sex chromosome evolution. Cyto-/genomics reveals a neocentromere to shield parts of its evolutionary young female sex chromosome (W) that actively differentiates by expansion of transcribed transposons, while major sequence divergence or gene decay are missing.