Crustacean Zooplankton Ingestion of Potentially Toxic : In Situ Estimation Using Gene Gut Content Detection in a Large Temperate Eutrophic Lake.

Grazing by zooplankton can regulate bloom-forming cyanobacteria but can also transfer toxin-producing cells, as well as toxic metabolites, to the food web. While laboratory investigations have provided extensive knowledge on zooplankton and toxic cyanobacteria interactions, information on zooplankton feeding on toxin-producing cyanobacteria in natural water bodies remains scarce. In this study, we quantified -specific synthase genes from the gut contents of various cladoceran and copepod taxa to assess the in situ crustacean community and taxon-specific ingestion of potentially toxic in Lake Peipsi, a large eutrophic lake in Estonia, Northern Europe.

Beekeepers' perceptions toward a new omics tool for monitoring bee health in Europe.

Pressures on honey bee health have substantially increased both colony mortality and beekeepers' costs for hive management across Europe. Although technological advances could offer cost-effective solutions to these challenges, there is little research into the incentives and barriers to technological adoption by beekeepers in Europe. Our study is the first to investigate beekeepers' willingness to adopt the Bee Health Card, a molecular diagnostic tool developed within the PoshBee EU project which can rapidly assess bee health by monitoring molecular changes in bees.

Great Tit () Nestlings Have Longer Telomeres in Old-Growth Forests Than in Young Forests.

Modification and deterioration of old-growth forests by industrial forestry have seriously threatened species diversity worldwide. The loss of natural habitats increases the concentration of circulating glucocorticoids and incurs chronic stress in animals, influencing the immune system, growth, survival, and lifespan of animals inhabiting such areas. In this study, we tested whether great tit () nestlings grown in old-growth unmanaged coniferous forests have longer telomeres than great tit nestlings developing in young managed coniferous forests.

Moth flies (Diptera, Psychodidae) of Estonia.

A fundamental prerequisite for understanding and protecting biodiversity is the construction of a high-quality faunal database. The primary objective of this study was to address knowledge gaps in the biodiversity of the family Psychodidae in Estonia. Faunistic data on 45 species of moth flies (Diptera: Psychodidae) from Estonia are presented, including 30 new country-records.

Azoxystrobin hides the respiratory failure of low dose sulfoxaflor in bumble bees.

Pollinators are exposed to multiple pesticides during their lifetime. Various pesticides are used in agriculture and thus not all mixtures have been tested against each other and little is known about them. In this article, we investigate the impact of sulfoxaflor, a novel sulfoximine insecticide, and azoxystrobin, a widely used strobilurin fungicide, on bumble bee Bombus terrestris worker survival and physiological functions.

Haplotype diversity and phylogeny within Alternaria alternata and A. arborescens species complexes from tomatoes.

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is an economically important vegetable susceptible to various fungal diseases, including leaf spot caused by Alternaria spp. from the section Alternaria.

Phylogenetic Diversity of Plant and Insect Communities on Islands.

Interactions between plants and insects have long fascinated scientists. While some plants rely on insects for pollination and seed dispersal, insects rely on plants for food or as a habitat. Despite extensive research investigating pair-wise species interactions, few studies have characterized plant and insect communities simultaneously, making it unclear if diverse plant communities are generally associated with diverse insect communities.

Honey production in the south by the Legal Amazon: a study on the potential contamination of mercury in apiaries.

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (MAPEOs) are considered to be one of the main sources of mercury release into the environment. Considering the gold mining activities, this study evaluated the Hg concentration in 27 apiaries (Apis spp.) in the South of the Legal Amazon, Mato Grosso State, Brazil.

Macroecology of Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Woody Plants of the Northern Hemisphere: Tolerance Biomes and Polytolerance Hotspots.

Understanding the main ecological constraints on plants' adaptive strategies to tolerate multiple abiotic stresses is a central topic in plant ecology. We aimed to uncover such constraints by analysing how the interactions between climate, soil features and species functional traits co-determine the distribution and diversity of stress tolerance strategies to drought, shade, cold and waterlogging in woody plants of the Northern Hemisphere. Functional traits and soil fertility predominantly determined drought and waterlogging/cold tolerance strategies, while climatic factors strongly influenced shade tolerance.

Wheat field earthworms under divergent farming systems across a European climate gradient.

Earthworms are a key faunal group in agricultural soils, but little is known on how farming systems affect their communities across wide climatic gradients and how farming system choice might mediate earthworms' exposure to climate conditions. Here, we studied arable soil earthworm communities on wheat fields across a European climatic gradient, covering nine pedo-climatic zones, from Mediterranean to Boreal (S to N) and from Lusitanian to Pannonian (W to E). In each zone, 20-25 wheat fields under conventional or organic farming were sampled.

Distribution and evidence of co-infection of the two microsporidian parasites and in complex in Northern and Central Italy.

complex is an endangered freshwater crayfish species in Europe and the assessment of the health status of its wild populations is essential for conservation purposes. The two microsporidia and have been reported to cause in complex a chronic parasitic infection, known as ‘porcelain disease’, which reduces population fitness and leads the host to death. Due to the similar macroscopic signs produced, molecular biology analyses are required to unambiguously distinguish between these microsporidia.

Ecological intensification index: reducing global footprint of agriculture.

Because of the growing human population, increasing agricultural yields is becoming increasingly more important. However, various environmental crises have led society to demand a reduction in the environmental damage caused by agriculture. Until now, the economic and ecological aspects of plant cultivation have developed largely independently.

Improvement in photosynthesis under different light intensities is highly linked to domestication stages in cotton.

Domestication has dramatically increased crop size and biomass, reflecting the enhanced accumulation of photosynthates. However, we still lack solid empirical data on the impacts of domestication on photosynthetic rates at different light intensities and on leaf anatomy, and of the relationships of photosynthesis with aboveground biomass. In this study, we measured the photosynthetic rate at three photosynthetic photon flux densities of 2000 (high), 1000 (moderate) and 400 μmol m sec (low light intensity), dark respiration, relative chlorophyll content (SPAD), leaf morphology, and aboveground biomass in 40 wild, 91 semiwild, and 42 domesticated cotton genotypes.

Native accumulator plants with a differential mercury phytoremediation potential in a region in Southern Amazon.

Mercury (Hg) is a non-essential trace metal, toxic to living beings and complex to quantify and mitigate in the environment. In this study, 25 plant species native to an Amazon-Cerrado transition area were tested for use in Hg remediation. Species identification, Hg quantification in plant biomass and soil at each sampling point, and evaluation of Hg compartmentalization in each plant were carried out.

Extremely thin but very robust: Surprising cryptogam trait combinations at the end of the leaf economics spectrum.

Leaf economics spectrum (LES) describes the fundamental trade-offs between leaf structural, chemical, and physiological investments. Generally, structurally robust thick leaves with high leaf dry mass per unit area (LMA) exhibit lower photosynthetic capacity per dry mass ( ). Paradoxically, "soft and thin-leaved" mosses and spikemosses have very low , but due to minute-size foliage elements, their LMA and its components, leaf thickness (LT) and density (LD), have not been systematically estimated.

Reduced mesophyll conductance under chronic O exposure in poplar reflects thicker cell walls and increased subcellular diffusion pathway lengths according to the anatomical model.

Ozone (O) is one of the most harmful and widespread air pollutants, affecting crop yield and plant health worldwide. There is evidence that O reduces the major limiting factor of photosynthesis, namely CO mesophyll conductance (g), but there is little quantitative information of O-caused changes in key leaf anatomical traits and their impact on g. We exposed two O-responsive clones of the economically important tree species Populus × canadensis Moench to 120 ppb O for 21 days.

Modelling Alternative Economic Incentive Schemes for Semi-Natural Grassland Conservation in Estonia.

Semi-natural grasslands (SNGLs) in Estonia are threatened by abandonment. This threat is leading to concerns about the degradation of biodiversity within grassland communities. Despite the high relevance of economic incentives in this context, how such incentives influence land managers' decision-making regarding the agricultural use of SNGLs has not been investigated.