Aquatic Biodiversity and Conservation Biology

Dear Colleagues,

At present, the available ecological information worldwide is dreadfully inadequate. In particular, some marine and freshwater environments are currently experiencing an alarming decline in the biodiversity of aquatic animals. On the other hand, conservation of aquatic animals requires a strong understanding of their environmental requirements, preferences, and species-associations to accompany existing tactics to improve physical and chemical conditions of sea and rivers. Therefore, the first step in conservation is to recognize a need and the interactions between the ecosystem and biodiversity.

Biodiversity is defined in the Convention on Biological Diversity as the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine, and other aquatic ecosystems, and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within the ecosystem, within species, and between species. That is to say, there are three levels of biodiversity, such as diversity of genetics, species, and ecosystem.

Conservation biology generally refers to the issues of species conservation, population ecology, reproductive biology, bioacoustics and behavior, and conservation genetics, in particular on the theoretical and practical issues of in situ, ex situ, and breeding conservation of endangered species. Likewise, conservation biology of aquatic animals includes studies on conservation biology of aquatic animals, with special emphasis on the biology of rare or endangered animals, the internal and external mechanisms behind endangered species, the theories and techniques of population dynamic monitoring, population biology and species recovery, and the endangered animal breeding.  

This Special Issue will mainly focus on the basic and pioneering studies of the origination and evolution of biodiversity, with the aim of finding out the origination and evolutionary regularities of aquatic organisms. The topic covers stock resources of the aquatic animals and fishery bio-techniques: theory basis and applied research of the fishery bio-techniques; preservation, conservation, and  resource utilization of the aquatic animals.

This Special Issue would put forward a theoretical framework and some counter measures for the conservation of some specially rare and endangered aquatic animals, and to provide strong evidence for the sustainable utilization of bio-resources in fishery.

Prof. Dr. Hongyan Xu
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Biology is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.