Search results for "Indicator"

Organic enrichment effects on a marine meiofauna community, with focus on Kinorhyncha

2016

Abstract Within the framework of a programme aimed at monitoring the impact of fish farming on the marine biota, we have had the opportunity to study the effect of the organic enrichment caused by the fish farm on meiofauna abundances and Kinorhyncha communities’ structure over two farming cycles. Up to now, studies on kinorhynchs have focussed mostly on the taxonomy, biogeography, and the ultrastructure, and, more recently, on the phylogenetic aspects of the taxon. Only few studies have dealt with the ecology of these creatures and studies focusing on the response of these animals to disturbances of anthropogenic origin are rare. The study took place in the Western Mediterranean and fauna …

Evaluating structural and compositional canopy characteristics to predict the light-demand signature of the forest understorey in mixed, semi-natural…

2020

Questions: Light availability at the forest floor affects many forest ecosystem processes, and is often quantified indirectly through easy-to-measure stand characteristics. We investigated how three such characteristics, basal area, canopy cover and canopy closure, were related to each other in structurally complex mixed forests. We also asked how well they can predict the light-demand signature of the forest understorey (estimated as the mean Ellenberg indicator value for light [“EIVLIGHT”] and the proportion of “forest specialists” [“%FS”] within the plots). Furthermore, we asked whether accounting for the shade-casting ability of individual canopy species could improve predictions of EIV…

Impact of sewage pollution on two species of sea urchins in the Mediterranean Sea (Cortiou, France): radial asymmetry as a bioindicator of stress.

2015

9 pages; International audience; BackgroundThe surroundings of the Cortiou sewage are among the most polluted environments of the French Mediterranean Sea (Marseilles, France). So far, no studies have precisely quantified the impact of pollution on the development of organisms in this area.MethodsWe used a fluctuating asymmetry (FA) measure of developmental instability (DI) to assess environmental stress in two species of radially symmetric sea urchins (Arbacia lixula and Paracentrotus lividus). For six sampling sites (Cortiou, Riou, Maire, East Maire, Mejean, and Niolon), levels of FA were calculated from continuous and discrete skeletal measures of ambulacral length, number of pore pairs …

Persistence of submerged macrophytes in a drying world: Unravelling the timing and the environmental drivers to produce drought-resistant propagules

2018

Perennial polypores as indicators of annual and red-listed polypores

2009

Abstract Many polypores are specialized in their requirements for substrate and environment, and they have been suggested to indicate the continuity of coarse woody debris or naturalness of a forest stand. However, the use of polypores as indicators of conservation value is restricted by the temporally limited appearance of annual fruit bodies. We studied whether the species richness of perennial polypores (perennials) can be used to predict the species richness of annual or annual red-listed polypores (annuals). Our data included 1471 separate datasets (sample plots or larger inventoried areas) in different parts of Finland and Russian Karelia, ranging from the southern to northern boreal …

Light availability and land‐use history drive biodiversity and functional changes in forest herb layer communities

2020

International audience; A central challenge of today's ecological research is predicting how ecosystems will develop under future global change. Accurate predictions are complicated by (a) simultaneous effects of different drivers, such as climate change, nitrogen deposition and management changes; and (b) legacy effects from previous land use. We tested whether herb layer biodiversity (i.e. richness, Shannon diversity and evenness) and functional (i.e. herb cover, specific leaf area [SLA] and plant height) responses to environmental change drivers depended on land-use history. We used resurvey data from 192 plots across nineteen European temperate forest regions, with large spatial variabi…

Risk assessment for Iberian birds under global change

2013

Conservation priority areas and programs are often established without consideration of future changes in species distributions. However, global change is expected to threaten the persistence of several species while offering opportunities for range expansion to others. In this study, building on previous work, we develop and implement an approach to classify bird species according to their degree of exposure and vulnerability to future climate and land-use change, including climatically driven changes in vegetation. To examine species exposure to environmental changes, we first fitted environmental envelope models and projected then into the future under scenarios of climate, land use and …

Macrophyte assessment in European lakes: Diverse approaches but convergent views of ‘good’ ecological status

2018

Graphical abstract

An Updated Checklist of the Sicilian Native Edible Plants: Preserving the Traditional Ecological Knowledge of Century-Old Agro-Pastoral Landscapes

2020

The traditional use of native wild food plants (NWFP) may represent a valuable supplementary food source for the present and future generations. In Sicily, the use of wild plants in the human diet dates back to very ancient times and still plays an important role in some rural communities. Moreover, in this regard, the natural and cultural inheritance of this island is wealthy and diversified for several reasons. First, Sicily hosts a rich vascular flora, with 3,000 native and 350 endemic plants. Second, due to its central position in the Mediterranean, the island has acted as a veritable melting pot for the ethnobotanical knowledge of the rural communities of the entire basin. We reviewed …

Vitality and growth of the threatened lichen Lobaria pulmonaria (L.) Hoffm. in response to logging and implications for its conservation in mediterra…

2020

Forest logging can be detrimental for non-vascular epiphytes, determining the loss of key components for ecosystem functioning. Legal logging in a Mediterranean mixed oak forest (Tuscany, Central Italy) in 2016 heavily impacted sensitive non-vascular epiphytes, including a large population of the threatened forest lichen Lobaria pulmonaria (L.) Hoffm. This event offered the background for this experiment, where the potential effects of logging in oak forests are simulated by means of L. pulmonaria micro-transplants (thallus fragments &lt