Search results for "Water"
showing 10 items of 9348 documents
Interannual variation and long-term trends in proportions of resident individuals in partially migratory birds
2016
Partial migration - a part of a population migrates and another part stays resident year-round on the breeding site - is probably the most common type of migration in the animal kingdom, yet it has only lately garnered more attention. Theoretical studies indicate that in partially migratory populations, the proportion of resident individuals (PoR) should increase in high latitudes in response to the warming climate, but empirical evidence exists for few species. We provide the first comprehensive overview of the environmental factors affecting PoR and the long-term trends in PoR by studying 27 common partially migratory bird species in Finland. The annual PoR values were calculated by divid…
Do invasive alien plants really threaten river bank vegetation? : a case study based on plant communities typical for Chenopodium ficifolium : an ind…
2018
Riparian zones are very rich in species but subjected to strong anthropogenic changes and extremely prone to alien plant invasions, which are considered to be a serious threat to biodiversity. Our aim was to determine the spatial distribution of Chenopodium ficifolium, a species demonstrating strong confinement to large river valleys in Central Europe and an indicator of annual pioneer nitrophilous vegetation developing on river banks, which are considered to be of importance to the European Community. Additionally, the habitat preferences of the species were analysed. Differences in the richness and abundance of species diagnostic for riverside habitats, as well as the contribution of resi…
An Empirical Evaluation of the Utility of Convex Hull and Standard Ellipse Areas for Assessing Population Niche Widths from Stable Isotope Data
2013
Stable isotope analyses are increasingly employed to characterise population niche widths. The convex hull area (TA) in a δ¹³C–δ¹⁵N biplot has been used as a measure of isotopic niche width, but concerns exist over its dependence on sample size and associated difficulties in among-population comparisons. Recently a more robust method was proposed for estimating and comparing isotopic niche widths using standard ellipse areas (SEA), but this approach has yet to be tested with empirical stable isotope data. The two methods measure different kind of isotopic niche areas, but both are now widely used to characterise isotopic niche widths of populations. We used simulated data and an extensive e…
The role of fish life histories in allometrically scaled food‐web dynamics
2019
Body size determines key ecological and evolutionary processes of organisms. Therefore, organisms undergo extensive shifts in resources, competitors, and predators as they grow in body size. While empirical and theoretical evidence show that these size‐dependent ontogenetic shifts vastly influence the structure and dynamics of populations, theory on how those ontogenetic shifts affect the structure and dynamics of ecological networks is still virtually absent. Here, we expand the Allometric Trophic Network (ATN) theory in the context of aquatic food webs to incorporate size‐structure in the population dynamics of fish species. We do this by modifying a food web generating algorithm, the nic…
Characterization of eight microsatellite loci for the sea urchin Meoma ventricosa (Spatangoida, Brissidae) through Next Generation Sequencing.
2015
Eight microsatellite loci were characterized for Meoma ventricosa (Lamarck, 1816), a burrowing sea urchin that can be afflicted by a bacterial disease causing localized mass mortality. For the analyzed population (29 individuals from St. Croix, US Virgin Islands), we observed 8.125 mean number of alleles, 0.640 mean observed heterozygosity (Ho) and 0.747 mean expected heterozygosity (He). Two loci showed significant deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Overall, the described loci were characterized by a moderately highlevel of polymorphism suggesting that these markers are useful for a population genetic studyin the Caribbean Sea.
Fine-Scale Population Differences in Atlantic Cod Reproductive Success: A Potential Mechanism for Ecological Speciation in a Marine Fish
2018
Abstract Successful resource‐management and conservation outcomes ideally depend on matching the spatial scales of population demography, local adaptation, and threat mitigation. For marine fish with high dispersal capabilities, this remains a fundamental challenge. Based on daily parentage assignments of more than 4,000 offspring, we document fine‐scaled temporal differences in individual reproductive success for two spatially adjacent (<10 km) populations of a broadcast‐spawning marine fish. Distinguished by differences in genetics and life history, Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) from inner‐ and outer‐fjord populations were allowed to compete for mating and reproductive opportunities. After …
Are the effects of an invasive crayfish on lake littoral macroinvertebrate communities consistent over time?
2016
Management of invasive species requires assessment of their effects on recipient ecosystems. However, impact assessment of invasive species commonly lacks a long-term perspective which can potentially lead to false conclusions. We examined the effects of the invasive signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus Dana) on the stony littoral macroinvertebrate communities of a large boreal lake and assessed the extent to which the patterns observed in previous short-term studies were stable over time. We used temporal macroinvertebrate data collected in five consecutive years from a site with a well-established crayfish population, a site with no crayfish and a site where crayfish had been recentl…
Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and brown trout (Salmo trutta) differ in their suitability as hosts for the endangered freshwater pearl mussel (Margari…
2017
European populations of the freshwater pearl mussel (FPM, Margaritifera margaritifera) have collapsed across much of the species’ geographic range and, despite many types of conservation intervention, the number of successful restoration efforts has been low. The goal of this study was to determine whether there were population-specific differences in the suitability of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and brown trout (S. trutta) as hosts for the parasitic glochidium larvae of FPM. We predicted that such differences would depend on the historical occurrence of these salmonid species in FPM habitats. We studied the potential host specificity both in the field and in laboratory by exposing salmo…
Cold water reduces the severity of parasite-inflicted damage : support for wintertime recuperation in aquatic hosts
2019
The reduction in host fitness caused by parasite infections (virulence) depends on infection intensity and the degree of damage caused per parasite. Environmental conditions can shape both virulence components, but in contrast to infection intensity, environmental impacts on per-parasite damage are poorly understood. Here, we studied the effect of ambient temperature on per-parasite damage, which is jointly determined by the ability of parasites to induce harm (per-parasite pathogenicity) and the ability of hosts to limit damage (tolerance). We experimentally exposed two salmonid species, Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and sea trout (Salmo trutta), to replicated genotypes of the eye fluke Di…
Short-term response of the slow growing seagrass Posidonia oceanica to simulated anchor impact
2007
Experimental evaluations about the impact of anchors of small vessels have previously shown that each anchoring can on average damage up to six shoots of Posidonia oceanica, removing small amount of biomass and, at the same time, interrupting continuity among shoots. The aim of the paper was to investigate the response of P. oceanica to different damage intensity at two levels of substrata compactness. Three treatments were considered: control (no damage); low damage (simulated anchor damage by three strokes of a hoe); and high damage (six strokes). Disturbance was higher where the substratum was highly penetrable and after one year significant variation was observed among treatments for bo…