Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center
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Willson, M. F., S. M. Gende and B. H. Marston (1998). Fishes and the forest. Bioscience. 48:455-462.
In this article, we argue that anadromous and inshore-spawning marine fish provide a rich, seasonal food resource that directly affects the biology of both aquatic and terrestrial consumers and indirectly affects the entire food web that knits the water and land together. In addition, we suggest that the presence of a seasonally abundant food resource has helped to shape the evolution of aquatic and terrestrial consumers and that predators have probably exerted reciprocal evolutionary pressures on their prey, potentially influencing the life history and morphology of these fishes. Finally, we suggest that anadromous and inshore-spawning fishes constitute such an important prey base for terrestrial wildlife that conventional ecological and management dogmas need to be revised. Interactions between anadromous fishes and wildlife have been recognized as having some general ecological importance, but only recently have the ramifications of these interactions and their potential magnitude begun to be explored. Because many of the nuts and bolts of the ecological links still need to be described and quantified, we concentrate on sketching an outline of the interactions, documenting the effects where possible but also noting effects that seem probable, subject to future research.