Declining metabolic scaling parallels an ontogenetic change from elongate to deep-bodied shapes in juvenile Brown trout.

Body shape and metabolic rate can be important determinants of animal performance, yet often their effects on influential traits are evaluated in a non-integrated way. This creates an important gap because the integration between shape and metabolism may be crucial to evaluate metabolic scaling theories. Here, we measured standard metabolic rate in 1- and 2-years old juvenile brown trout , and used a geometric morphometrics approach to extricate the effects of ontogeny and size on the link between shape and metabolic scaling.

Exploring longitudinal trends and recovery gradients in macroinvertebrate communities and biomonitoring tools along regulated rivers.

Flow regime alteration by dams has been recognized as a major impact factor for aquatic communities. Spain is currently the member state of the EU with the largest number of large reservoirs. With the broad objective of diminishing the ongoing river degradation trend through the management of environmental flows and the use of biomonitoring tools, we investigated the effects of dams on stream macroinvertebrates in several regulated rivers in Spain with contrasting environmental settings.

Phenotypic convergence of artificially reared and wild trout is mediated by shape plasticity.

Phenotypic plasticity can be viewed as the first level of defense of organism homeostasis against environmental stress and therefore represents the potential to deal with rapid environmental changes. Transitions between low complexity, artificial environments and complex, natural habitats can promote phenotypic plasticity. Here, we conducted an experimental introduction with juvenile brown trout to evaluate the plasticity of shape in response to a transition between contrasting environments.