Search results for "benthic"
showing 10 items of 350 documents
Ultraviolet radiation exposure of a high arctic lake in Svalbard during the Holocene
2014
Long-term fluctuations in lake-water optical properties were examined using a Holocene sediment sequence and multi-proxy palaeolimnological approach in Lake Einstaken, Nordaustlandet, Svalbard. UV-absorbance of sedimentary cladoceran remains provided information on underwater UV exposure and changes in lake-catchment coupling processes were inferred from sediment geochemistry. In addition, aquatic community succession was used as an indicator for lake-water bio-optical properties and a Holocene record of sun activity (sunspots) was utilized to evaluate long-term solar forcing. The results indicated that the UV-absorbance of cladoceran remains was highest (i.e. maximum UV-induced pigmentatio…
Modelling prey-predator interactions in Messina beachrock pools
2020
Abstract The Strait of Messina (Sicily, Italy) attracts the interest of marine ecologists for the presence of a large variety of habitat and mutually-interacting communities. Among them, beachrock formations, despite their wide geographic distribution, which also includes the Mediterranean area, have been poorly investigated from the biotic viewpoint. In this paper, the spatial and seasonal variability of benthic megafauna from the Messina microtidal beachrock is described. Combining in situ collected data (measurements of abiotic parameters and underwater visual census) with theoretical post-processing analyses (analysis of similarity percentages and cluster analysis), we deduced the possi…
East Weddell Sea echinoids from the JR275 expedition
2015
1 pages; International audience; Information regarding the echinoids in this dataset is based on the Agassiz Trawl (AGT) and epibenthic sledge (EBS) samples collected during the British Antarctic Survey cruise JR275 on the RRS James Clark Ross in the austral summer 2012. A total of 56 (1 at the South Orkneys and 55 in the Eastern Weddell Sea) Agassiz Trawl and 18 (2 at the South Orkneys and 16 in the Eastern Weddell Sea) epibenthic sledge deployments were performed at depths ranging from ~280 to ~2060 m. This presents a unique collection for the Antarctic benthic biodiversity assessment of an important group of benthic invertebrates. In total 487 specimens belonging to six families, 15 gene…
Do the ecological drivers of lake littoral communities match and lead to congruence between organism groups?
2020
AbstractLake littoral environments are heterogeneous, and different organisms typically show specific responses to this environmental variation. We examined local environmental and spatial factors affecting lake littoral biodiversity and the structuring of assemblages of phytoplankton, zooplankton and macroinvertebrates within and among three basins of a large lake system. We explored congruence of species composition and species richness among the studied organism groups to evaluate their general indicator potential to represent spatial variation in other groups. We expected that effects of water chemistry on plankton assemblages were stronger than effects of habitat characteristics. In co…
Meiofauna associated with vermetid reefs: the role of macroalgae in increasing habitat size and complexity
2018
We present the first dataset of meiofauna associated with vermetid reefs (biogenic constructions of Mediterranean intertidal habitat) in two areas along the northern coast of Sicily, Italy. The vermetid reefs are characterized by a horizontal extension from the shore towards the open sea and can be divided into three zones (the inner margin, the cuvette zone and the outer margin) which differ in hydrodynamic features. We studied the spatial distribution of meiofauna along the horizontal axis of the vermetid reefs, investigating the communities inhabiting the sediment inside cuvettes (shallow pools inside the “cuvette zone”) located between the inner and the outer margins of the reefs. We ob…
Temperature controls organic carbon sequestration in a subarctic lake
2016
AbstractWidespread ecological reorganizations and increases in organic carbon (OC) in lakes across the Northern Hemisphere have raised concerns about the impact of the ongoing climate warming on aquatic ecosystems and carbon cycling. We employed diverse biogeochemical techniques on a high-resolution sediment record from a subarctic lake in northern Finland (70°N) to examine the direction, magnitude and mechanism of change in aquatic carbon pools prior to and under the anthropogenic warming. Coupled variation in the elemental and isotopic composition of the sediment and a proxy-based summer air temperature reconstruction tracked changes in aquatic production, depicting a decline during a coo…
Extinction and recolonization of maritime Antarctica in the limpet Nacella concinna (Strebel, 1908) during the last glacial cycle: toward a model of …
2013
Quaternary glaciations in Antarctica drastically modified geographical ranges and population sizes of marine benthic invertebrates and thus affected the amount and distribution of intraspecific genetic variation. Here, we present new genetic information in the Antarctic limpet Nacella concinna, a dominant Antarctic benthic species along shallow ice-free rocky ecosystems. We examined the patterns of genetic diversity and structure in this broadcast spawner along maritime Antarctica and from the peri-Antarctic island of South Georgia. Genetic analyses showed that N. concinna represents a single panmictic unit in maritime Antarctic. Low levels of genetic diversity characterized this population…
Benthic mats offer a potential subsidy to pelagic consumers in tundra pond food webs
2014
We quantified the potential nutritional contribution of benthic mats to pelagic consumers in tundra ponds using three approaches. (1) We compared benthic and pelagic habitats based on their algal biomass and community composition and assessed the dietary quality in terms of fatty acid (FA) concentrations in both habitats. The algal community compositions differed significantly between habitats. Both benthic and pelagic habitats contained saturated and unsaturated FAs, but on average there were more FAs relative to carbon in the pelagic habitat (44 6 29 m gm g C21) than the benthic habitat (23 6 18 m gm g C21) across all studied ponds. (2) We quantified the contribution of benthic mats to th…
Periphyton support for littoral secondary production in a highly humic boreal lake
2016
Steep stratification and poor light penetration in highly humic lakes typically restrict oxygenated littoral areas to narrow lake margins. However, in some instances, surrounding floating vegetation mats can sustain highly productive periphyton and more diverse invertebrate communities than pelagic areas. Little is known about how these littoral food webs function or the extent to which the pelagic and littoral food webs are coupled. We added 15N-labeled ammonium nitrate to the floating moss mat surrounding the littoral zone of Mekkojärvi, a small highly humic and fishless lake in southern Finland. Our goal was to increase the δ15N values of periphyton to investigate the diets of littoral i…
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 (15 N) stable isotope tracer to compare basal resource treatments (thinned canopy vs. co…