Search results for "Community composition"

Altered epiphyte community and sea urchin diet in Posidonia oceanica meadows in the vicinity of volcanic CO2 vents

2017

Ocean acidification (OA) predicted for 2100 is expected to shift seagrass epiphyte communities towards the dominance of more tolerant non-calcifying taxa. However, little is known about the indirect effects of such changes on food provision to key seagrass consumers. We found that epiphyte communities of the seagrass Posidonia oceanica in two naturally acidified sites (i.e. north and south sides of a volcanic CO2 vent) and in a control site away from the vent at the Ischia Island (NW Mediterranean Sea) significantly differed in composition and abundance. Such differences involved a higher abundance of non-calcareous crustose brown algae and a decline of calcifying polychaetes in both acidif…

Predicting pesticide biodegradation potential from microbial community composition: new tools for bioremediation

2022

Bioaugmentation is receiving increasing attention as a green technology to treat contaminatedareas by inoculating specific biodegrading microorganisms. However, our understanding of therole of microbial community composition and structure in the expression of contaminantdegradation potential is yet to improve. It could help making wise choice for microorganisms –community or specific strain – to be inoculated in contaminated soils with consideration to theirindigeneous microbiota.Here we tried to predict the microbial degradation of two herbicides, glyphosate andisoproturon by means of penalized regression and machine learning methods routinely used ingenomic selection. To this end, we cond…

Functional gene pyrosequencing reveals core proteobacterial denitrifiers in boreal lakes

2015

Denitrification is an important microbial process in aquatic ecosystems that can reduce the effects of eutrophication. Here, quantification and pyrosequencing of nirS, nirK, and nosZ genes encoding for nitrite and nitrous oxide reductases was performed in sediment samples from four boreal lakes to determine the structure and seasonal stability of denitrifying microbial populations. Sediment quality and nitrate concentrations were linked to the quantity and diversity of denitrification genes, the abundance of denitrifying populations (nirS and nosZ genes) correlated with coupled nitrificationdenitrification (Dn), and the denitrification of the overlying water NO3 − (Dw) correlated with the n…

Habitat quality is more important than matrix quality for bird communities in protected areas

2018

Protected areas are meant to preserve native local communities within their boundaries, but they are not independent from their surroundings. Impoverished habitat quality in the matrix might influence the species composition within the protected areas through biotic homogenization. The aim of this study was to determine the impacts of matrix quality on species richness and trait composition of bird communities from the Finnish reserve area network and whether the communities are being subject of biotic homogenization due to the lowered quality of the landscape matrix. We used joint species distribution modeling to study how characteristics of the Finnish forest reserves and the quality of t…

Recovery of plant communities after ecological restoration of forestry-drained peatlands

2017

Ecological restoration is expected to reverse the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Due to the low number of well-replicated field studies, the extent to which restoration recovers plant communities, and the factors underlying possible shortcomings, are not well understood even in medium term. We compared the plant community composition of 38 sites comprising pristine, forestry-drained, and 5 or 10 years ago restored peatlands in southern Finland, with special interest in understanding spatial variation within studied sites, as well as the development of the numbers and the abundances of target species. Our results indicated a recovery of community composition 5–10 years after re…

Experimental evidence of the long‐term effects of reindeer on Arctic vegetation greenness and species richness at a larger landscape scale

2019

1. Large herbivores influence plant community structure and ecosystem processes in many ecosystems. In large parts of the Arctic, reindeer (or caribou) are the only large herbivores present. Recent studies show that reindeer have the potential to mitigate recent warming-induced shrub encroachment in the Arctic and the associated greening of high-latitude ecosystems. This will potentially have large scale consequences for ecosystem productivity and carbon cycling. 2. To date, information on variation in the interactions between reindeer and plants across Arctic landscapes has been scarce. We utilized a network of experimental sites across a latitudinal gradient in the Scandinavian mountains …

Fighting carbon loss of degraded peatlands by jump-starting ecosystem functioning with ecological restoration

2015

Degradation of ecosystems is a great concern on the maintenance of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Ecological restoration fights degradation aiming at the recovery of ecosystem functions such as carbon (C) sequestration and ecosystem structures like plant communities responsible for the C sequestration function. We selected 38 pristine, drained and restored boreal peatland sites in Finland and asked i) what is the long-term effect of drainage on the peatland surface layer C storage, ii) can restoration recover ecosystem functioning (surface layer growth) and structure (plant community composition) and iii) is the recovery of the original structure needed for the recovery of ecosystem f…

Erratum for Piwosz et al., "Light and Primary Production Shape Bacterial Activity and Community Composition of Aerobic Anoxygenic Phototrophic Bacter…

2020

Metabolic coupling between phytoplankton and bacteria determines the fate of dissolved organic carbon in aquatic environments, and yet how changes in the rate of primary production affect the bacterial activity and community composition remains understudied. Here, we experimentally limited the rate of primary production either by lowering light intensity or by adding a photosynthesis inhibitor. The induced decrease had a greater influence on bacterial respiration than on bacterial production and growth rate, especially at an optimal light intensity. This suggests that changes in primary production drive bacterial activity, but the effect on carbon flow may be mitigated by increased bacteria…

The introduced signal crayfish and native noble crayfish have different effects on sublittoral macroinvertebrate assemblages in boreal lakes

2015

Fruit body based inventories in wood-inhabiting fungi: Should we replicate in space or time?

2016

We assessed the effect of survey design on the results when conducting fruit body surveys of wood-inhabiting fungi. Our results demonstrate that the optimal design depends on the ecological question to be addressed, as well as the group of fungal species under research. If the aim is to record the total species richness in a dead wood unit or to estimate the population size of a species, repeating the survey over time is generally necessary. However, if the aim is to estimate the total species richness in the forest or to assess how environmental covariates influence species richness or community composition, it is generally more efficient to increase the number of dead wood units than to r…