Global change ecology: Science to heal a damaged planet.

Humanity has drastically altered the biophysical systems that sustain life on Earth. We summarize progress and chart future directions in the emerging field of global change ecology, which studies interactions between organisms and their changing environment.

Zooplankton carcasses stimulate microbial turnover of allochthonous particulate organic matter.

Carbon turnover in aquatic environments is dependent on biochemical properties of organic matter (OM) and its degradability by the surrounding microbial community. Non-additive interactive effects represent a mechanism where the degradation of biochemically persistent OM is stimulated by the provision of bioavailable OM to the degrading microbial community. Whilst this is well established in terrestrial systems, whether it occurs in aquatic ecosystems remains subject to debate.

Effects of zooplankton carcasses degradation on freshwater bacterial community composition and implications for carbon cycling.

Non-predatory mortality of zooplankton provides an abundant, yet, little studied source of high quality labile organic matter (LOM) in aquatic ecosystems. Using laboratory microcosms, we followed the decomposition of organic carbon of fresh C-labelled Daphnia carcasses by natural bacterioplankton. The experimental setup comprised blank microcosms, that is, artificial lake water without any organic matter additions (B), and microcosms either amended with natural humic matter (H), fresh Daphnia carcasses (D) or both, that is, humic matter and Daphnia carcasses (HD).

Sex Determination Model in Pink Salmon Oncorhynchus gorbuscha (Walbaum, 1792) (Salmonidae, Osteichthyes) Controlled by Multi-Copy Genes Located in Sex Chromosomes.

This article is devoted to presenting the hypothesis explaining the fact of a considerable prevalence of phenotypic males among the triploid pink salmon as well as the regular occurrence of intersexes, which were revealed by us. This hypothesis also explains the large proportion (in some cases) in pink salmon populations of the individuals whose genetic sex does not match the phenotypic sex. We assume that the genes encoding the factors that contribute to the transformation of individuals into males (but not the marker sequences of the Y chromosome) are present not only in the Y chromosome of pink salmon but also in the X chromosome, although in smaller quantities.

Spatial biodiversity of bacteria along the largest Arctic river determined by next-generation sequencing.

The biodiversity of bacterial communities along the Yenisei River at section c. 1800 km was studied using next-generation sequencing of 16S rRNA genes and common biodiversity indices. Overall, 3022 unique operational taxonomic units were identified.