Impacts of human-induced environmental change in wetlands on aquatic animals

Abstract

Many wetlands harbour highly diverse biological communities and provide extensive ecosystem services; however, these important ecological features are being altered, degraded and destroyed around the world. Despite a wealth of research on how animals respond to anthropogenic changes to natural wetlands and how they use created wetlands, we lack a broad synthesis of these data. While some altered wetlands may provide vital habitat, others could pose a considerable risk to wildlife. This risk will be heightened if such wetlands are ecological traps – preferred habitats that confer lower fitness than another available habitat. Wetlands functioning as ecological traps could decrease both local a..