The various uses of copper or copper compounds in industrial, biocidal or pesticidal products lead to inputs of the metal into aquatic environments. To assess effects of copper ions on non-target organisms, the freshwater snail Theodoxus fluviatilis was used as test organism for a three-week laboratory experiment. Snails were exposed to four copper concentrations ranging from 4 to 39 µg Cu/L, and besides mortality, several sublethal parameters were evaluated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnalyzing food webs is essential for a better understanding of ecosystems. For example, food web interactions can undergo severe changes caused by the invasion of non-indigenous species. However, an exact identification of field predator-prey interactions is difficult in many cases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRapid Commun Mass Spectrom
October 2015
Rationale: Dietary sterol deficiencies can have severe life history consequences for consumers. Compound-specific stable isotope analysis (CSIA) was applied to the exploration of the sterol metabolic constraints and bioconversion capacities of the amphipod Gammarus roeselii. Evaluating structural sterol requirements has great potential to improve our understanding of the ecological relevance of sterols as limiting nutrients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTerrestrial inputs into freshwater ecosystems are a classical field of environmental science. Resource fluxes (subsidy) from aquatic to terrestrial systems have been less studied, although they are of high ecological relevance particularly for the receiving ecosystem. These fluxes may, however, be impacted by anthropogenically driven alterations modifying structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile recent research has provided evidence that the emergence of merolimnic insects (species with an aquatic larval stage) provides a considerable energy subsidy to riparian food webs, it has also shown that merolimnic insects may serve as a vector for contaminants. Therefore, riparian food webs may be at risk from either an aquatic-terrestrial transfer of contaminants or from the contaminant-driven reductions of emerging merolimnic insects. The objective of the present study was to develop an integrated stream mesocosms test design capable of identifying these inter-ecosystem boundary effects and to provide a comprehensive approach as a basis for ecotoxicological testing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInvasive species are considered as one of the major threats for biodiversity worldwide. The Ponto-Caspian species Dikerogammarus villosus, for instance, spread throughout continental Europe and was recorded for the first time also within Lake Constance in 2003. Although D.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMol Ecol Resour
January 2010
This article documents the addition of 238 microsatellite marker loci and 72 pairs of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) sequencing primers to the Molecular Ecology Resources Database. Loci were developed for the following species: Adelges tsugae, Artemisia tridentata, Astroides calycularis, Azorella selago, Botryllus schlosseri, Botrylloides violaceus, Cardiocrinum cordatum var. glehnii, Campylopterus curvipennis, Colocasia esculenta, Cynomys ludovicianus, Cynomys leucurus, Cynomys gunnisoni, Epinephelus coioides, Eunicella singularis, Gammarus pulex, Homoeosoma nebulella, Hyla squirella, Lateolabrax japonicus, Mastomys erythroleucus, Pararge aegeria, Pardosa sierra, Phoenicopterus ruber ruber and Silene latifolia.
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