Fish and jellyfish: using the isolated marine lakes of Mljet Island, Croatia, to explore larger marine ecosystem complexities and ecosystem-based management approaches.

GRAHAM W.; CHIAVERANO L.; D'AMBRA I.; MIANZAN H. W.; ALVAREZ COLOMBO G.; ACHA E. M.; MALEJ A.; COSTELLO J.H.; ONOFRI V.; BENOVIC A.

Annales, Series Historia Naturalis

Scientific and Research Center of the Republic of Slovenia

Lugar: Koper, Eslovenia; Año: 2009 vol. 19 p. 39 - 48

1408-533x

The marine "lakes" of Mljet Island, southern Croatia, provide an interesting ecological setting for investigating strucutre and function of marine exosystems outside the lakes. This paper synthesizes some of the historical and ongoing reserah projects involving the lakes, with special attention given to recent studies on the isolated lake population of the scyphozoan Aurelia sp. 5. This species appears to be geographically isolated within and evolutionarily limited to the lakes of Mljet Island. As such, we are utilizing the lakes as a tool to better understand the ecological relationship between jellyfish and a diverse community of fish species that also inhabit the lakes. We promote future studies to parameterize an ecosystem model of the lakes as a test-bed system for and ecosystem-based management approach using similar models outside the lakes.