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98 results for “freshwater communities”
Data for: Invasion by an exotic grass species homogenises native freshwater plant communities
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Data from: What is there to gain and lose from plant-derived nano-enabled pesticides: Eugenol-loaded nanocarriers exert long-lived effects on non-target freshwater invertebrate communities
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Species identity and diversity effects on invasion resistance of tropical freshwater plant communities
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Measuring the contribution of evolution to community trait structure in freshwater zooplankton
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Data from: Multiple stressors affect function rather than taxonomic structure of freshwater microbial communities
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Data from: No effect of realistic concentrations of polyester microplastic fibers on freshwater zooplankton communities
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Data for: Photoperiod effects in a freshwater community: amphibian larvae develop faster and zooplankton abundance increases under an early-season photoperiod
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Dataset for: Cascading effects of freshwater salinization on plankton communities in the Sierra Nevada
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Freshwater macroinvertebrate community composition and diversity data from lagoons on Navarino Island, Chile
This study was carried out during the austral summer of 2015 (15 January to 15 February) and assessed freshwater macroinvertebrate diversity associated with lakes and ponds along the altitudinal gradient of the Róbalo river watershed, located in the Magellanic sub-Antarctic ecoregion. The latter has a steep elevational gradient, peaking at around 1000 m a.s.l., and marked changes in temperature and landscape composition can be observed over relatively short distances. Four lagoons were chosen, as they were located on different altitudinal levels, thus allowing for comparison between the different zones found within the gradient. Along with the physical description of each lagoon (temperature, pH and conductivity), the surrounding habitats were characterized. Within each lagoon, four different habitat types were identified based on substrate composition, and the presence/absence and type of vegetation (vascular or non-vascular).
Structure of small tropical islands freshwater fish and crustacean communities: a niche- or dispersal-based process?
Determining the relative importance of niche- and dispersal-based processes in the structuring of animal communities is central in ecology. Freshwater fish and crustacean communities of small tropical islands can bring new insights for understanding these processes as all their species present a pelagic larval stage which gives them important dispersal capacities. Consequently, we hypothesized that dispersal-based process maybe preponderant for structuring these communities from the regional- to the local, i.e. survey site, scales. Gradient forest analyses allowed us to model the effect of 12 environmental variables on freshwater taxa abundances in two southwestern Indian Ocean islands: Mayotte (26 taxa) and Reunion (21). A total of 153 surveys in Mayotte and 266 in Reunion were used for building the models. Despite the strong heterogeneity of environmental conditions between the two islands, the main factors structuring freshwater fish and crustacean communities in both islands were the elevation and the slope of the sites. The observed structure appeared more pronounced for predatory species than for primary consumers and omnivores. As predators generally have limited locomotor capacities, it is concluded that dispersal-based process structures these communities not only at large geographical scales but also at the intra-watershed scale, by limiting the inland penetration (or dispersion) of species in relation to their locomotor capacities. However, more knowledge concerning ecological traits and taxonomic status of many species is needed to confirm this assumption.
Data from: Spatial and temporal homogenization of freshwater macrofaunal communities in ditches
1. There is a widespread concern that we are witnessing an on-going homogenization of ecological communities. However, in contrast to human impacts on spatial patterns in biodiversity, human impacts on the temporal aspects of β-diversity have received little attention. Moreover, the interplay between spatial and temporal β-diversity is poorly understood. To address this knowledge gap, we assessed dissimilarity within freshwater macrofaunal communities of drainage ditches to determine spatiotemporal β-diversity as well as homogenization in relation to different types of land use. 2. We considered four distinct changes in community composition: spatial turnover, temporal turnover, spatial variation over time and temporal variation in space, as well as the combined effects of space and time on β-diversity. As a metric of dissimilarity, we calculated the taxonomic Hellinger distance between samples from different locations and time points and correlated these with distance in space and in time, as well as with three spatial variables, including land use type, and two temporal variables. We studied the effect of interactions between spatial and temporal variables on dissimilarity by applying a permutational analysis of variance. 3. Our results illustrate the importance of changes in community composition in time with respect to temporal turnover, spatial variation over time and temporal variation in space. While we did not find spatial turnover in community composition, both month and year had a considerable effect. Within a year, β-diversity decreased over the months, yet these assembly patterns differed between years. This suggests major effects of seasonal and year-to-year dynamics on β-diversity. Land use was also observed to be a main driver: ditches in nature conservation areas had higher β-diversity and temporal heterogeneity was lowest in ditches adjacent to the most intensive agricultural land use category, indicating agricultural practices can homogenizes biodiversity in both space and time. 4. By analyzing the spatial and temporal β-diversity patterns in freshwater macrofaunal communities in concert, we have shown that β-diversity is a sensitive and highly informative metric of both spatial and temporal changes in community composition.
Cascading effects of algal warming in a freshwater community
<p>1. Much of our research on the effects of ongoing climate warming on ecological communities is focused on how temperature affects resource quantity. However, resource quality is also affected by warming, and changes in resource quality can have meaningful effects on the productivity of higher trophic levels.</p> <p>2. Aquatic communities in particular are likely to affected by temperature-mediated shifts in resource quality because the nutritional value of algae is highly sensitive to temperature. For example, the production of healthful omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA) by algae often decreases with warming.</p> <p>3. Documented decreases in algal PUFAs with warming have led to the hypothesis that global warming should lead to an overall decrease in productivity in aquatic communities. However, this hypothesis: a) potentially oversimplifies the relationship between algal PUFAs and temperature, and b) assumes that the nutritional requirements of consumers are not affected by temperature warming. Here we test these assumptions using a freshwater community (Scenedesmus algae, Daphnia zooplankton, Chaoborus insects).</p> <p>4. We found that total algal PUFAs per unit cell size increased, but cell size decreased with warming, resulting no net effect of warming on PUFA per algal cell. We also found a negative relationship between algal neutral lipids and temperature. Daphnia fed 12˚C-reared algae maintained higher population sizes than those fed 20˚C or 28˚C-reared algae, but the effect of algal food type diminished with increasing Daphnia rearing temperature. The indirect effects of cold-reared algae on the growth rate of Chaoborus predators were minor.</p> <p>5. These data highlight the importance of investigating the effects of temperature on both resource quality and on the nutritional needs of consumers. Our results suggest that at warmer temperatures, consumer nutritional requirements may be reduced. We caution against broad claims that the negative relationship between some algal PUFAs and temperature should result in overall declines in aquatic productivity with ongoing climate warming.</p>
Data from: Next-generation freshwater bioassessment: eDNA metabarcoding with a conserved metazoan primer reveals species-rich and reservoir-specific communities
Freshwater habitats are of high conservation value and provide a wide range of ecosystem services. Effective management requires regular monitoring. However, conventional methods based on direct observation or specimen collection are so invasive, expensive and labour-intensive that frequent monitoring is uncommon. Here, we test whether the evaluation of environmental DNA (eDNA) from water based on a simple protocol can be used for assessing biodiversity. We use universal metazoan primers for characterizing water eDNA across horizontal and vertical spatial dimensions in two reservoirs with known species diversity for two key taxa. eDNA obtained directly from 42 samples × 15 ml water (total = 630 ml) per reservoir yielded DNA signatures for more than 500 metazoan species, of which 105 could be identified to species/genus based on DNA barcodes. We show that eDNA can be used to assign each water sample to its reservoir of origin, and that eDNA outperforms conventional survey methods in single-sample richness comparisons, while revealing evidence for hundreds of unknown species that are undetected by conventional bioassessment methods. eDNA also confirms the presence of a recently discovered invasive snail species and provides evidence for the continued survival of a rare native species of goby not sighted in that habitat since 2007. eDNA thus promises to be a useful addition to the bioassessment toolbox for freshwater systems.
Data from: Abundance inequality in freshwater communities has an ecological origin
The hollow-shaped species abundance distribution (SAD) and its allied rank abundance distribution (RAD)—showing that abundance is unevenly distributed among species—are some of the most studied patterns in ecology. To explain the nature of abundance inequality, I developed a novel framework identifying environmental favorability, which controls the balance between reproduction and immigration, as the ultimate source and species stress tolerance as a proximate factor. Thus, under harsh conditions, only a few tolerant species can reproduce, while some sensitive species can be present in low numbers due to chance immigration. This would lead to high abundance inequality between the two groups of species. Under benign conditions, both groups can reproduce and give rise to higher abundance equality. To test these ideas, I examined the variability in the parameters of a Poisson lognormal fit of the SAD and a square root fit of the RAD in diatom and fish communities across US streams. Indeed, as environmental favorability increased, more sensitive forms were able to establish large populations, diminishing the abundance disparity between locally common and rare species. Finally, it was demonstrated that in diatoms, the RAD belonged to the same family of relationships as those of population density with body size and regional distribution.
Beyond pairwise interactions: multispecies character displacement in Mexican freshwater fish communities
Competition has long been recognized as a central force in shaping evolution, particularly through character displacement. Yet research on character displacement is biased as it has focused almost exclusively on pairs of interacting species, while ignoring multispecies interactions. Communities are seldom so simple that only pairs of species interact, and it is not clear if inferences from pairwise interactions are sufficient to explain patterns of phenotypes in nature. Here we test for character displacement in a natural system of freshwater fishes in western Mexico that contains up to four congeneric species of the genus Poeciliopsis. We analyzed body shape differences between populations with different numbers of competitors while accounting for confounding environmental variables. Surprisingly, we found evidence for convergent character displacement in populations of P. prolifica, P. viriosa and P. latidens. We also found that the convergence in body shape was not consistently in the same direction, meaning that when three or more competitors co-occurred, we did not find more extreme body shapes compared to when there were only two competitors. Instead, when three or more competitors co-occur, body shape was intermediate to the shape found with a pair of species or no competitor present. This intermediate shape suggests that evolution in multispecies communities likely occurs in response to several competitors, rather than to simple pairwise interactions. Overall, our results suggest that competition among multiple species is more complex than simple pairwise competitive interactions.
Data from: Submerged macrophytes mitigate direct and indirect insecticide effects in freshwater communities
Understanding how ecological interactions mitigate the impacts of perturbations such as pesticides in biological communities is an important basic and applied question for ecologists. In aquatic ecosystems, new evidence from microcosm experiments suggests that submerged macrophytes can buffer cladocerans from pulse exposures to the widely used insecticide malathion, and that mitigation increases with macrophyte density. However, whether these results scale up to more complex aquatic communities where ecological interactions such as competition can alter toxicity is unknown. Further, macrophyte abilities to mitigate different insecticide exposure scenarios (i.e. single versus repeated pulses) have never been tested. To address these gaps, we performed a factorial mesocosm experiment examining the influence of four macrophyte treatments (0, 10, 50, or 100 Elodea Canadensis shoots planted per mesocosm) crossed with three malathion exposure scenarios (no insecticide, single pulse, repeated pulses) on aquatic communities containing zooplankton, phytoplankton, periphyton, two snail species, and larval amphibians. In the absence of macrophytes, single malathion pulses caused short-term declines in cladoceran abundance followed by their rapid recovery, which precluded any indirect effects (i.e. trophic cascades). However, repeated malathion pulses caused cladoceran extinctions, resulting in persistent phytoplankton blooms and reduced abundance of one snail species. In contrast, with macrophytes present, even at low density, malathion had no effect on any taxa. We also discovered novel effects of macrophytes on the benthic food web. In the two highest macrophyte treatments, we observed trends of reduced periphyton biomass, decreased abundance of one snail species, and decreased amphibian time to and mass at metamorphosis. To our knowledge, this is the first evidence of negative submerged macrophyte effects on amphibians, a taxa of global conservation concern. Our findings suggest that facilitating macrophytes could be an important strategy for buffering freshwater communities from insecticides, though consideration of their impacts on animal species is necessary.
Data from: Warming advances top-down control and reduces producer biomass in a freshwater plankton community
Global warming has been shown to affect ecosystems worldwide. Warming may, for instance, disrupt plant herbivore synchrony and bird phenology in terrestrial systems, reduce primary production in oceans, and promote toxic cyanobacterial blooms in freshwater lakes. Responses of communities will not only depend on direct species-specific temperature effects, but also on indirect effects related to bottom-up and top-down processes. Here, we investigated the impact of warming on freshwater phytoplankton community dynamics, and assessed the relative contribution of nutrient availability, fungal parasitism, and grazing therein. For this purpose, we performed an indoor mesocosm experiment following seasonal temperature dynamics of temperate lakes and a warmed (+4°C) scenario from early spring to late summer. We assessed phytoplankton biomass, C:N:P stoichiometry and community composition, dissolved nutrient availabilities, fungal parasite (i.e., chytrid) prevalence, and zooplankton abundance. Warming led to an overall reduction in phytoplankton biomass as well as lower C:P and N:P ratios, while phytoplankton community composition remained largely unaltered. Warming resulted in an earlier termination of the diatom spring bloom, and an epidemic of its fungal parasite ended earlier as well. Furthermore, warming advanced zooplankton phenology, leading to an earlier top-down control on phytoplankton in the period after the spring bloom. Linear model analysis showed that most of the observed variance in phytoplankton biomass was related to seasonal temperature dynamics in combination with zooplankton abundance. Our findings showed that warming advanced grazer phenology and reduced phytoplankton biomass, thereby demonstrating how bottom-up and top-down related processes may shape future phytoplankton dynamics.
Data from: A revision of the bioregionalisation of freshwater fish communities in the Australian Monsoonal Tropics
The Australian freshwater fish fauna is very unique, but poorly understood. In the Australian Monsoonal Tropics (AMT) biome of northern Australia, the number of described and candidate species has nearly doubled since the last attempt to analyse freshwater fish species composition patterns and determine a bioregionalisation scheme. Here, we utilise the most complete database of catchment‐scale freshwater fish distributions from the AMT to date to: (a) reanalyze spatial patterns of species richness, endemism and turnover of freshwater fishes; (b) propose a biogeographic regionalisation based on species turnover; (c) assess the relationship between species turnover and patterns of environmental change and historic drainage connectivity; and (d) identify sampling gaps. Biogeographic provinces were identified using an agglomerative cluster analysis of a Simpson's beta (βsim) dissimilarity matrix. A generalised dissimilarity model incorporating eighteen environmental variables was used to investigate the environmental correlates of species turnover. Observed and estimated species richness and endemism were calculated and inventory completeness was estimated based on the ratio of observed to estimated species richness. Three major freshwater fish biogeographic provinces and 14 subprovinces are proposed. These differ substantially from the current bioregionalisation scheme. Species turnover was most strongly influenced by environmental variables that are interpreted to reflect changes in terrain (catchment relief and confinement), geology and climate (runoff perenniality, stream density), and biotic responses to climate (net primary productivity). Past connectivity between rivers during low sea‐level events is also influential highlighting the importance of historical processes in explaining contemporary patterns of biodiversity in the AMT. The inclusion of 49 newly discovered species and candidate species only reinforced known focal points of species richness and endemism in the AMT. However, a number of key sampling gaps remain that need to be filled to fully characterise the proposed bioregionalisation.
Data from: CO2 alters community composition and response to nutrient enrichment of freshwater phytoplankton
Nutrients can limit the productivity of ecosystems and control the composition of the communities of organisms that inhabit them. Humans are causing atmospheric CO2 concentrations to reach levels higher than those of the past millions of years while at the same time propagating eutrophication through the addition of nutrients to lakes and rivers. We studied the effect of elevated CO2 concentrations, nutrient addition and their interaction in a series of freshwater mesocosm experiments using a factorial design. Our results highlight the important role of CO2 in shaping phytoplankton communities and their response to nutrient addition. We found that CO2 greatly magnified the increase in phytoplankton growth caused by the increased availability of nutrients. Elevated CO2 also caused changes in phytoplankton community composition. As predicted from physiology and laboratory experiments, the taxonomic group that was most limited by current day CO2 concentrations, chlorophytes, increased in relative frequency at elevated CO2. This predictable change in community composition with changes in CO2 is not altered by changes in the availability of other nutrients.
Data from: Intraspecific niche variation drives abundance-occupancy relationships in freshwater fish communities
A positive relationship between occupancy and average local abundance of species is found in a variety of taxa, yet the mechanisms driving this association between abundance and occupancy are still enigmatic. Here we show that freshwater fishes exhibit a positive abundance-occupancy relationship across 125 Swedish lakes. For a subset of 9 species from 11 lakes, we estimated species-specific diet breadth from stable isotopes, within-lake habitat breadth from catch data for littoral and pelagic nets, adaptive potential from genetic diversity, abiotic niche position, and dispersal capacity. Average local abundance was mainly positively associated with both within-lake habitat and diet breadth, that is, species with larger intraspecific variation in niche space had higher abundances. No measure was a good predictor of occupancy, indicating that occupancy may be more directly related to abundance or abiotic conditions than to niche breadth per se. This study suggests a link between intraspecific niche variation and a positive abundance-occupancy relationship and implies that management of freshwater fish communities, whether to conserve threatened or control invasive species, should initially be aimed at niche processes.
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Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.