Coping with stress: Salt type, concentration, and exposure history limit life history tradeoffs in response to road salt salinization.

Substantial increases in the salinity of freshwater ecosystems has occurred around the globe from causes such as climate change, industrial operations, and the application of road deicing salts. We know very little about how plastic responses in life history traits or rapid evolution of new traits among freshwater organisms could promote stability in ecological communities affected by salinization. We performed a cohort life history analysis from birth to death with 180 individuals of a ubiquitous freshwater zooplankter to understand how life history traits are affected by exposure to two common salt types causing salinization-sodium chloride (NaCl) and calcium chloride (CaCl)-across two environmentally relevant concentrations.

Water velocity shapes fish movement behavior.

Stream and river ecosystems present fluvial fishes with a dynamic energy landscape because moving water generates heterogeneous flow fields that are rarely static in space and time. Fish movement behavior should be consistent with conserving energy in these dynamic flowing environments, but little evidence supporting this hypothesis exists. Here, we tested experimentally whether three general movement behaviors-against the current, with the current, or holding position (i.

Personal relevance affects the perceived immorality of politically-charged threats.

Personal similarities to a transgressor makes one view the transgression as less immoral. We investigated whether personal relevance might also affect the perceived immorality of politically-charged threats. We hypothesized that increasing the personal relevance of a threat would lead participants to report the threat as more immoral, even for threats the participant might otherwise view indifferently.

Freshwater salinization reduces vertical movement rate and abundance of Daphnia: Interactions with predatory stress.

Contaminants in human-dominated landscapes are changing ecological interactions. The global increase in freshwater salinity is likely to change predator-prey interactions due to the potential interactive effects between predatory stress and salt stress. We conducted two experiments to assess the interactions between the non-consumptive effects of predation and elevated salinity on the abundance and vertical movement rate of a common lake zooplankton species (Daphnia mendotae).

Impacts of water hardness and road deicing salt on zooplankton survival and reproduction.

Rising salinity from road deicing salts threatens the survival and reproduction of freshwater organisms. We conducted two experiments to address how Daphnia pulex survival and reproduction were affected by road salt concentration (control, 120, 640 and 1200 mg Cl/L) crossed with three concentrations of water hardness (20, 97, 185 mg CaCO /L). D.