Search results for " dynamic"

Interannual memory effects for spring NDVI in semi-arid South Africa

2008

[1] Almost 20 years of Normalized Difference Vegetative Index (NDVI) and precipitation (PPT) data are analysed to better understand the interannual memory effects on vegetation dynamics observed at regional scales in Southern Africa (SA). The study focuses on a semi-arid region (25°S–31°S; 21°E–26°E) during the austral early summer (September–December). The memory effects are examined using simple statistical approaches (linear correlations and regressions) which require the definition of an early summer vegetation predictand (December NDVI minus September NDVI) and a consistent set of potential predictors (rainfall amount, number of rainy days, rainfall intensity, NDVI and Rain-Use-Efficie…

Effects of mowing on fungal endophytes and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi in subalpine grasslands

2013

International audience; In French subalpine grasslands, cessation of mowing promotes dominance of Festuca paniculata, which alters plant diversity and ecosystem functioning. One of the mechanisms underpinning such effects may be linked to simultaneous changes in the abundance of fungal symbionts such as endophytes and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. In field conditions, mowing reduced the abundance of the endophyte Neotyphodium sp. in leaves of F. paniculata by a factor of 6, and increased mycorrhizal densities by a factor of 15 in the soil. In greenhouse experiments, the mycorrhizal colonization of Trifolium pratense and Allium porrum increased 3- fold and 3.8- fold respectively in mown vs u…

Comparative host–parasite population structures: disentangling prospecting and dispersal in the black-legged kittiwake Rissa tridactyla

2005

Although much insight is to be gained through the comparison of the population genetic structures of parasites and hosts, there are, at present, few studies that take advantage of the information on vertebrate life histories available through the consideration of their parasites. Here, we examined the genetic structure of a colonial seabird, the black-legged kittiwake ( Rissa tridactyla ) using seven polymorphic microsatellite markers to make inferences about population functioning and intercolony dispersal. We sampled kittiwakes from 22 colonies across the species’ range and, at the same time, collected individuals of one of its common ectoparasites, the tick Ixodes uriae . Parasites were …

Detection and Characterization of Wolbachia Infections in Natural Populations of Aphids: Is the Hidden Diversity Fully Unraveled?

2011

Copyright © 2011 Augustinos et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Aphids are a serious threat to agriculture, despite being a rather small group of insects. The about 4,000 species worldwide engage in highly interesting and complex relationships with their microbial fauna. One of the key symbionts in arthropods is Wolbachia, an a-Proteobacterium implicated in many important biological processes and believed to be a potential tool for biological control. Aphids were thought not to harbour W…

Local Recruitment in the Greater Flamingo: A New Approach Using Capture- Mark-Recapture Data

1997

International audience; Although the establishment of new individuals in the breeding component of a population is an essential feature of population regulation, only a few attempts have been made to test biological hypotheses about recruitment. Most previous studies rely on ad hoc calculations or are flawed with unwarranted assumptions about survival. We use a recently developed approach, based on capture-mark-recapture, in which analysis of local recruitment is similar to a time-reversed analysis of survival. The basic data set consists of capture histories viewed in reverse order, with initial capture at year of birth, and subsequent observations corresponding to years when the animal ha…

Spatial and temporal variation of community composition and species cover following dune restoration in the Devesa de Albufera (Valencia, Spain).

2015

Plant populations were reintroduced to the coastal dune bar of the Devesa de Albufera from 1988 to 2004; different coastline sections received different species composition and cover. With the aim to detect spatial and temporal variation of floristic diversity, we compared current species composition and cover across the length of the Devesa and across the dune bar with those imposed at the time of restoration. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) detected significant differences both across the dune faces and across the coast sections. Differences across the dune faces reflect the sea-inland ecological gradient and resulted from a spatial rearrangement of plant populations: Calystegi…

Fishing triggers trophic cascade in terms of variation, not abundance, in an allometric trophic network model

2022

Trophic cascade studies often rely on linear food chains instead of complex food webs and are typically measured as biomass averages, not as biomass variation. We study trophic cascades propagating across a complex food web including a measure of biomass variation in addition to biomass average. We examined whether different fishing strategies induce trophic cascades and whether the cascades differ from each other. We utilized an allometric trophic network (ATN) model to mechanistically study fishing-induced changes in food web dynamics. Different fishing strategies did not trigger traditional, reciprocal trophic cascades, as measured in biomass averages. Instead, fishing triggered a varia…

2017

When foraging in a social group, individuals are faced with the choice of sampling their environment directly or exploiting the discoveries of others. The evolutionary dynamics of this trade-off have been explored mathematically through the producer-scrounger game, which has highlighted socially exploitative behaviours as a major potential cost of group living. However, our understanding of the tight interplay that can exist between social dominance and scrounging behaviour is limited. To date, only two theoretical studies have explored this relationship systematically, demonstrating that because scrounging requires joining a competitor at a resource, it should become exclusive to high-rank…

Exploring individual and population eco-evolutionary feedbacks under the coupled effects of fishing and predation

2020

Intensive fishing that selects for large and old individuals can have pervasive effects on traits directly associated with the fecundity and survival of the target species. The observed reduction in fish body size can result in earlier sexual maturity at a smaller body size, leading to a lower individual reproductive output and population productivity in the long term. In addition, increased predation can induce similar responses in age and size at maturity due to the release of intraspecific competition and the lower population density. Thus, the combined impact of fisheries and predation is more difficult to predict due to their competition for fish, ultimately limiting and directing the …

Lake restoration influences nutritional quality of algae and consequently Daphnia biomass

2020

AbstractFood quality is one of the key factors influencing zooplankton population dynamics. Eutrophication drives phytoplankton communities toward the dominance of cyanobacteria, which means a decrease in the availability of sterols and long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (EPA and DHA). The effects of different restoration measures on the nutritional quality of the phytoplankton community and subsequent impacts on zooplankton biomass have rarely been considered. We analyzed the nutritional quality of phytoplankton in the eutrophic Lake Vesijärvi in southern Finland over a 37-year period, and studied the impacts of two restoration measures, biomanipulation and hypolimnetic aeration, on th…