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showing 10 items of 408 documents
An invasive species, Carassius gibelio, alters the native fish community through trophic niche competition
2019
Carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses were used to determine isotopic niche width of the invasive fish species Carassius gibelio to help assess the niche overlap and potential impact of this species on the native fish fauna in the Karamenderes River, northwest Turkey. C. gibelio had the highest niche area of the coexisting species. The greatest overlap of isotopic niche was between C. gibelio and Mugil cephalus in the river mouth. The freshwater species displayed similar patterns when taking into consideration their relative abundance and isotopic overlap. While C. gibelio is likely to outcompete some species at some localities, the species was found co-occurring with others by maximu…
Biological control of potato soft rot caused by Dickeya solani and the survival of bacterial antagonists under cold storage conditions
2018
Dickeya and Pectobacterium are responsible for causing blackleg of plants and soft rot of tubers in storage and in the field, giving rise to losses in seed potato production. In an attempt to improve potato health, biocontrol activity of known and putative antagonists was screened using in vitro and in planta assays, followed by analysis of their persistence at various storage temperatures. Most antagonists had low survival on potato tuber surfaces at 4 °C. The population dynamics of the best low‐temperature tolerant strain and also the most efficient antagonist, Serratia plymuthica A30, along with Dickeya solani as target pathogen, was studied with TaqMan real‐time PCR throughout the stora…
The interplay of landscape composition and configuration: new pathways to manage functional biodiversity and agroecosystem services across Europe
2019
Managing agricultural landscapes to support biodiversity and ecosystem services is a key aim of a sustainable agriculture. However, how the spatial arrangement of crop fields and other habitats in landscapes impacts arthropods and their functions is poorly known. Synthesising data from 49 studies (1515 landscapes) across Europe, we examined effects of landscape composition (% habitats) and configuration (edge density) on arthropods in fields and their margins, pest control, pollination and yields. Configuration effects interacted with the proportions of crop and non-crop habitats, and species’ dietary, dispersal and overwintering traits led to contrasting responses to landscape variables. O…
Traits mediate niches and co‐occurrences of forest beetles in ways that differ among bioclimatic regions
2021
Aim The aim of this study was to investigate the role of traits in beetle community assembly and test for consistency in these effects among several bioclimatic regions. We asked (1) whether traits predicted species’ responses to environmental gradients (i.e. their niches), (2) whether these same traits could predict co-occurrence patterns and (3) how consistent were niches and the role of traits among study regions. Location Boreal forests in Norway and Finland, temperate forests in Germany. Taxon Wood-living (saproxylic) beetles. Methods We compiled capture records of 468 wood-living beetle species from the three regions, along with nine morphological and ecological species traits. Eight …
Cost-efficiency assessments of marine monitoring methods lack rigor—a systematic mapping of literature and an end-user view on optimal cost-efficienc…
2021
Global deterioration of marine ecosystems, together with increasing pressure to use them, has created a demand for new, more efficient and cost-efficient monitoring tools that enable assessing changes in the status of marine ecosystems. However, demonstrating the cost-efficiency of a monitoring method is not straightforward as there are no generally applicable guidelines. Our study provides a systematic literature mapping of methods and criteria that have been proposed or used since the year 2000 to evaluate the cost-efficiency of marine monitoring methods. We aimed to investigate these methods but discovered that examples of actual cost-efficiency assessments in literature were rare, contr…
Introduction of Mysis relicta (Mysida) reduces niche segregation between deep-water Arctic charr morphs
2019
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Hydrobiologia. The final authenticated version is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-019-3953-4. Niche diversification of polymorphic Arctic charr can be altered by multiple anthropogenic stressors. The opossum-shrimp (Mysis relicta) was introduced to compensate for reduced food resources for fish following hydropower operations in Lake Limingen, central Norway. Based on habitat use, stomach contents, stable isotopes (δ13C, δ15N) and trophically transmitted parasites, the zooplanktivorous upper water-column dwelling ‘normal’ morph was clearly trophically separated from two sympatric deep-water morphs…
Precision, Applicability, and Economic Implications: A Comparison of Alternative Biodiversity Offset Indexes
2021
AbstractThe rates of ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss are alarming and current conservation efforts are not sufficient to stop them. The need for new tools is urgent. One approach is biodiversity offsetting: a developer causing habitat degradation provides an improvement in biodiversity so that the lost ecological value is compensated for. Accurate and ecologically meaningful measurement of losses and estimation of gains are essential in reaching the no net loss goal or any other desired outcome of biodiversity offsetting. The chosen calculation method strongly influences biodiversity outcomes. We compare a multiplicative method, which is based on a habitat condition index develo…
Diet and trophic niche of the invasive signal crayfish in the first invaded Italian stream ecosystem.
2021
The occurrence of the signal crayfsh Pacifastacus leniusculus in the Valla Stream was the frst established population of this invasive species recorded in an Italian stream ecosystem. We evaluated the seasonality of diet and trophic niche of invasive signal crayfsh in order to estimate the ecological role and efects on native communities of the stream ecosystem. We studied the diferences in food source use between sexes, life stages and seasons using carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analyses. To supplement stable isotope analyses, we evaluated food source usage using traditional stomach content analysis. We tested the hypothesis that juveniles have a diferent diet, showing diferent trophi…
Environmental filtering and spatial effects on metacommunity organisation differ among littoral macroinvertebrate groups deconstructed by biological …
2018
We examined spatial and environmental effects on the deconstructed assemblages of littoral macroinvertebrates within a large lake. We deconstructed assemblages by three biological trait groups: body size, dispersal mode and oviposition behaviour. We expected that spatial effects on assemblage structuring decrease and environmental effects increase with increasing body size. We also expected stronger environmental filtering and weaker spatial effect on the assemblages of flying species compared with assemblages of non-flying species. Stronger effect of environmental filtering was expected on the assemblages with species attaching eggs compared with assemblages of species with free eggs. We u…
Ecological niche features override biological traits and taxonomic relatedness as predictors of occupancy and abundance in lake littoral macroinverte…
2018
The degree to which species ecological and biological traits determine their distribution and abundance has intrigued ecologists for a long time, and it has seen a revival in recent years. This topic is important because it provides information about the determinants of species rarity and their conservation implications. We examined the effects of niche breadth, niche position, biological traits and taxonomic relatedness on the interspecific occupancy–abundance relationship, as well as on occupancy and abundance, in lake littoral macroinvertebrates. We sampled 48 lakes in a boreal lake district, found altogether 155 species, and calculated regional occupancy (as the proportion of sites occu…