Search results for "eko"
showing 10 items of 5765 documents
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…
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…
Quantifying and addressing the prevalence and bias of study designs in the environmental and social sciences
2020
Building trust in science and evidence-based decision-making depends heavily on the credibility of studies and their findings. Researchers employ many different study designs that vary in their risk of bias to evaluate the true effect of interventions or impacts. Here, we empirically quantify, on a large scale, the prevalence of different study designs and the magnitude of bias in their estimates. Randomised designs and controlled observational designs with pre-intervention sampling were used by just 23% of intervention studies in biodiversity conservation, and 36% of intervention studies in social science. We demonstrate, through pairwise within-study comparisons across 49 environmental da…
Ecological dependencies make remote reef fish communities most vulnerable to coral loss
2021
Ecosystems face both local hazards, such as over-exploitation, and global hazards, such as climate change. Since the impact of local hazards attenuates with distance from humans, local extinction risk should decrease with remoteness, making faraway areas safe havens for biodiversity. However, isolation and reduced anthropogenic disturbance may increase ecological specialization in remote communities, and hence their vulnerability to secondary effects of diversity loss propagating through networks of interacting species. We show this to be true for reef fish communities across the globe. An increase in fish-coral dependency with the distance of coral reefs from human settlements, paired with…
Invasion triple trouble : environmental fluctuations, fluctuation-adapted invaders and fluctuation-mal-adapted communities all govern invasion success
2017
AbstractIt has been suggested that climate change will lead to increased environmental fluctuations, which will undoubtedly have evolutionary consequences for all biota. For instance, fluctuations can directly increase the risk of invasions of alien species into new areas, as these species have repeatedly been proposed to benefit from disturbances. At the same time increased environmental fluctuations may also select for better invaders. However, selection by fluctuations may also influence the resistance of communities to invasions, which has rarely been tested. We tested eco-evolutionary dynamics of invasion with bacterial clones, evolved either in constant or fluctuating temperatures, an…
Late-Holocene variability in chironomid functional assemblages and carbon utilization in a tundra lake food web
2020
AbstractHigh latitude freshwater systems are facing changes in catchment-mediated allochthonous input, as well as physical and chemical controls triggered by on-going climate change, which may alter their carbon processing and ecological characteristics. To explore changes in chironomid functional responses and carbon utilization in relation to long-term environmental change, we studied a sediment core covering ca. 2000 years from a tundra lake in northern Finland, which was analysed for sediment geochemistry, isotopic composition of chironomid remains and their functional assemblages. We aimed to relate changes in chironomid functional feeding assemblages and resource utilization, based on…
Stratification strength and light climate explain variation in chlorophyll a at the continental scale in a European multilake survey in a heatwave su…
2021
The authors acknowledge COST Action ES 1105 "CYANOCOST Cyanobacterial blooms and toxins in water resources: Occurrence impacts and management" and COST Action Global Change Biology ES 1201 NETLAKE -Networking Lake Observatories in Europe" for contributing to this study through networking and knowledge sharing with European experts in the field. We acknowledge the members of the Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON) for their collaborative spirit and enthusiasm that inspired the grassroots effort of the EMLS. E.M. was supported by a grant from the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation to Bas Ibelings and by supplementary funding from University of Geneva…
Contributions of terrestrial organic carbon to northern lake sediments
2017
Abstract Sediments of northern lakes sequester large amounts of organic carbon (OC), but direct evidence of the relative importance of their sources is lacking. We used stable isotope ratios of nonexchangeable hydrogen (δ2Hn) in topsoil, algae, and surface sediments in order to measure the relative contribution of terrestrial OC in surface sediments of 14 mountainous arctic and lowland boreal lakes in Sweden. The terrestrial contribution to the sediment OC pool was on average 66% (range 46–80) and similar between arctic and boreal lakes. Proxies for the supply of terrestrial and algal OC explained trends in the relative contribution of terrestrial OC across lakes. However, the data suggest …
Ecological mechanisms can modify radiation effects in a key forest mammal of Chernobyl
2019
International audience; Nuclear accidents underpin the need to quantify the ecological mechanisms which determine injury to ecosystems from chronic low-dose radiation. Here, we tested the hypothesis that ecological mechanisms interact with ionizing radiation to affect natural populations in unexpected ways. We used large-scale replicated experiments and food manipulations in wild populations of the rodent, Myodes glareolus, inhabiting the region near the site of the Chernobyl disaster of 1986. We show linear decreases in breeding success with increasing ambient radiation levels with no evidence of any threshold below which effects are not seen. Food supplementation of experimental populatio…
Priorities for research in soil ecology
2017
The ecological interactions that occur in and with soil are of consequence in many ecosystems on the planet. These interactions provide numerous essential ecosystem services, and the sustainable management of soils has attracted increasing scientific and public attention. Although soil ecology emerged as an independent field of research many decades ago, and we have gained important insights into the functioning of soils, there still are fundamental aspects that need to be better understood to ensure that the ecosystem services that soils provide are not lost and that soils can be used in a sustainable way. In this perspectives paper, we highlight some of the major knowledge gaps that shoul…