Search results for "INVERTEBRATES"

Assessment of possibilities of the biotic index application in the biological monitoring of the running water quality

2003

Niche position drives interspecific variation in occupancy and abundance in a highly-connected lake system

2019

Highlights • We studied interspecific variation in occupancy and abundance of freshwater species. • Occupancy and abundance correlated positively for both diatoms and macroinvertebrates. • Niche position had clearest effects on variation in occupancy and abundance. • The more marginal the niche position, the rarer a species is. We examined how niche position, niche breadth, biological traits and taxonomic relatedness affect interspecific variation in occupancy and abundance of two commonly-used biological indicator groups, i.e. diatoms and macroinvertebrates. We studied 291 diatom and 103 macroinvertebrate species that occupied the littoral zones of a large (305 km2) highly-connected freshw…

Predictive models in assessment of macroinvertebrates in boreal rivers

2009

Jukka Aroviita tutki väitöskirjassaan jokien ja purojen biologisen tilan mittaamismenetelmiä. Aroviita osoitti, että ihmistoiminnan aiheuttamat biologiset muutokset voivat jäädä havaitsematta, jos eliöyhteisöjen luonnollista taustavaihtelua ei oteta kunnolla huomioon.- Tällöin vesistöjen saatetaan arvioida olevan paremmassa kunnossa kuin ne todellisuudessa ovatkaan. Muutosten tunnistamistarkkuuden tulisi olla mahdollisimman hyvä, sillä tila-arvioilla on myös juridisesti määräytyviä yhteiskunnallisia ja taloudellisia seuraamuksia, Aroviita toteaa. Vielä 1990-luvulla järvien ja jokien tilaa arvioitiin suurelta osin ihmisen näkökulmasta ja veden kemian perusteella. Nykylainsäädäntö edellyttää …

Fish introductions and light modulate food web fluxes in tropical streams : a whole-ecosystem experimental approach

2016

Decades of ecological study have demonstrated the importance of top-down and bottom-up controls on food webs, yet few studies within this context have quantified the magnitude of energy and material fluxes at the whole-ecosystem scale. We examined top-down and bottom-up effects on food web fluxes using a field experiment that manipulated the presence of a consumer, the Trinidadian guppy Poecilia reticulata, and the production of basal resources by thinning the riparian forest canopy to increase incident light. To gauge the effects of these reach-scale manipulations on food web fluxes, we used a nitrogen (15N) stable isotope tracer to compare basal resource treatments (thinned canopy vs. con…

Parasite avoidance behaviours in aquatic environments

2018

Parasites, including macroparasites, protists, fungi, bacteria and viruses, can impose a heavy burden upon host animals. However, hosts are not without defences. One aspect of host defence, behavioural avoidance, has been studied in the terrestrial realm for over 50 years, but was first reported from the aquatic environment approximately 20 years ago. Evidence has mounted on the importance of parasite avoidance behaviours and it is increasingly apparent that there are core similarities in the function and benefit of this defence mechanism between terrestrial and aquatic systems. However, there are also stark differences driven by the unique biotic and abiotic characteristics of terrestrial …

Improving statistical classification methods and ecological status assessment for river macroinvertebrates

2016

Aquatic ecosystems are facing a growing number of human-induced stressors and the need to implement more biomonitoring to assess the ecological status of water bodies is eminent. This dissertation aims at providing tools to reduce the costs and improve the accuracy of freshwater benthic macroinvertebrate biomonitoring. To improve the cost-e ciency, we consider automated classi cation and develop a novel classi er suitable for complex macroinvertebrate image data. To enhance the accuracy of macroinvertebrate biomonitoring, we study the statistical properties of the Percent Model A nity index crucial to current Finnish biomonitoring and the factors a ecting these statistics. Finally, we perfo…

Benthic foodweb structure in a large shallow lake studied by stable isotope analysis

2014

The benthic foodweb structure of Lake Võrtsjärv, a large (270 km2), shallow, and turbid Estonian lake, was evaluated based on C and N stable-isotope signatures (δ13C, δ15N). Variation in δ13C between sampling sites was not related to site proximity to the littoral zone or the more vegetated southern part of the lake, but rather appeared to be influenced by in-situ site peculiarities. δ13C was stable temporally and between functional feeding groups, a result implying that the whole benthic food web of the lake relies largely on the same C source admixture, essentially particulate organic matter (POM). Thus, the foodweb composition of Lake Võrtsjärv is remarkably homogeneous given the lake’s …

Author Correction: Evaluation of three methods for biomass estimation in small invertebrates, using three large disparate parasite species as model o…

2018

Invertebrate biomass is considered one of the main factors driving processes in ecosystems. It can be measured directly, primarily by weighing individuals, but more often indirect estimators are used. We developed two indirect and non-destructive approaches to estimate biomass of small invertebrates in a simple manner. The first one was based on clay modelling and the second one was based on image analysis implemented with open-source software. Furthermore, we tested the accuracy of the widely used geometric approximation method (third method). We applied these three different methods to three morphologically disparate model species, an acanthocephalan worm, a crustacean and a flatworm. To …

Environmental drivers of lake profundal macroinvertebrate community variation : implications for bioassessment

2011

Assessing the conservation priority of freshwater lake sites based on taxonomic, functional and environmental uniqueness

2022

Aim We propose a novel approach that considers taxonomic uniqueness, functional uniqueness and environmental uniqueness and show how it can be used in guiding conservation planning. We illustrate the approach using data for lake biota and environment. Location Lake Puruvesi, Finland. Methods We sampled macrophytes and macroinvertebrates from the same 18 littoral sites. By adapting the original “ecological uniqueness” approach, we used distance-based methods to calculate measures of taxonomic (LCBD–t), functional (LCBD–f) and environmental (LCEH) uniqueness for each site. We also considered the numbers and locations of the sites needed to protect up to 70% of total variation in taxonomic, fu…