Mobile Organisms in the ‘Scape': Patterns, Consequences, and Challenges

An increasing body of empirical evidence illustrates that mobile organisms can view the aquatic environment through 'scape scale glasses. Consequently, the 'scape' perspective is central to the solution of many common population, community, and fisheries questions. However, operationalizing the ‘scape perspective in aquatic systems is challenging.  New technological advances in aquatic telemetry make fish an ideal taxa to explore these complex interactions among mobility, ‘scapes, and the theoretical / conceptual frameworks used in aquatic ecology / fisheries. Here, we review two examples of the system-wide distribution of mobile fish predators to illustrate the relevance of the ‘scape perspective to an array of research and management questions.  Striped bass (Morone saxatilis) in the Plum Island (MA) estuarine seascape are consistently concentrated at sites with high combined-source heterogeneity related to discontinuous physical features, including but not limited to confluences.  Similarly, blue catfish (Ictalurus furcatus) regularly move throughout an entire Great Plains reservoir, but consistently aggregate in a few hotspots characterized by reservoir-scale features and localized productivity.  Commonalities of these studies underscore the critical need to address the challenges of aquascape ecology and integrate a 'scape' approach into conventional ecological and fisheries questions.