| 1. |
- Donis, Daphne, et al.
(författare)
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Stratification strength and light climate explain variation in chlorophyll a at the continental scale in a European multilake survey in a heatwave summer
- 2021
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Ingår i: Limnology and Oceanography. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0024-3590 .- 1939-5590. ; 66:12, s. 4314-4333
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- To determine the drivers of phytoplankton biomass, we collected standardized morphometric, physical, and biological data in 230 lakes across the Mediterranean, Continental, and Boreal climatic zones of the European continent. Multilinear regression models tested on this snapshot of mostly eutrophic lakes (median total phosphorus [TP] = 0.06 and total nitrogen [TN] = 0.7 mg L-1), and its subsets (2 depth types and 3 climatic zones), show that light climate and stratification strength were the most significant explanatory variables for chlorophyll a (Chl a) variance. TN was a significant predictor for phytoplankton biomass for shallow and continental lakes, while TP never appeared as an explanatory variable, suggesting that under high TP, light, which partially controls stratification strength, becomes limiting for phytoplankton development. Mediterranean lakes were the warmest yet most weakly stratified and had significantly less Chl a than Boreal lakes, where the temperature anomaly from the long-term average, during a summer heatwave was the highest (+4 degrees C) and showed a significant, exponential relationship with stratification strength. This European survey represents a summer snapshot of phytoplankton biomass and its drivers, and lends support that light and stratification metrics, which are both affected by climate change, are better predictors for phytoplankton biomass in nutrient-rich lakes than nutrient concentrations and surface temperature.
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| 2. |
- Fehlinger, Lena, et al.
(författare)
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The ecological role of permanent ponds in Europe : a review of dietary linkages to terrestrial ecosystems via emerging insects
- 2023
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Ingår i: Inland Waters. - : Taylor & Francis. - 2044-2041 .- 2044-205X. ; 13:1, s. 30-46
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Permanent ponds are valuable freshwater systems and biodiversity hotspots. They provide diverse ecosystem services (ESs), including water quality improvement and supply, food provisioning, and biodiversity support, despite significant pressure from multiple anthropogenic stressors and the impacts of ongoing global change. However, ponds are largely overlooked in management plans and legislation, and ecological research has focused on large freshwater ecosystems, such as rivers or lakes. Protection of ponds is often insufficient or indirectly provided via associated habitats such as wetlands. This situation is likely exacerbated by the lack of a full-scale understanding of the importance of ponds. In this review, we provide a detailed overview of permanent ponds across Europe, including their usages and the biodiversity they support. By discussing the concepts of pondscape and metacommunity theory, we highlight the importance of connectivity among and between ponds and identified fluxes of emerging insects as another ES of ponds. Those insects are rich in essential nutrients such as polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), delivered through them to the terrestrial environment; however, the extent and impact of this ES remains largely unexplored. Several potential stressors, especially related to ongoing global change, that influence pond diversity and integrity are discussed. We provide our insights on future pond management. Adaptive measures, taking into account the pond system per se within the pondscape, are the most promising to mitigate the loss of natural ponds and restore and conserve natural small waterbodies as refuges and diversity hotspots in increasingly urbanized landscapes.
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| 3. |
- Mantzouki, Evanthia, et al.
(författare)
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Temperature Effects Explain Continental Scale Distribution of Cyanobacterial Toxins
- 2018
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Ingår i: Toxins. - : MDPI. - 2072-6651 .- 2072-6651. ; 10:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Insight into how environmental change determines the production and distribution of cyanobacterial toxins is necessary for risk assessment. Management guidelines currently focus on hepatotoxins (microcystins). Increasing attention is given to other classes, such as neurotoxins (e.g., anatoxin-a) and cytotoxins (e.g., cylindrospermopsin) due to their potency. Most studies examine the relationship between individual toxin variants and environmental factors, such as nutrients, temperature and light. In summer 2015, we collected samples across Europe to investigate the effect of nutrient and temperature gradients on the variability of toxin production at a continental scale. Direct and indirect effects of temperature were the main drivers of the spatial distribution in the toxins produced by the cyanobacterial community, the toxin concentrations and toxin quota. Generalized linear models showed that a Toxin Diversity Index (TDI) increased with latitude, while it decreased with water stability. Increases in TDI were explained through a significant increase in toxin variants such as MC-YR, anatoxin and cylindrospermopsin, accompanied by a decreasing presence of MC-LR. While global warming continues, the direct and indirect effects of increased lake temperatures will drive changes in the distribution of cyanobacterial toxins in Europe, potentially promoting selection of a few highly toxic species or strains.
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| 4. |
- Reinl, Kaitlin L., et al.
(författare)
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Blooms also like it cold
- 2023
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Ingår i: Limnology and Oceanography Letters. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 2378-2242. ; 8:4, s. 546-564
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cyanobacterial blooms have substantial direct and indirect negative impacts on freshwater ecosystems including releasing toxins, blocking light needed by other organisms, and depleting oxygen. There is growing concern over the potential for climate change to promote cyanobacterial blooms, as the positive effects of increasing lake surface temperature on cyanobacterial growth are well documented in the literature; however, there is increasing evidence that cyanobacterial blooms are also being initiated and persisting in relatively cold-water temperatures (< 15 °C), including ice-covered conditions. In this work, we provide evidence of freshwater cold-water cyanobacterial blooms, review abiotic drivers and physiological adaptations leading to these blooms, offer a typology of these lesser-studied cold-water cyanobacterial blooms, and discuss their occurrence under changing climate conditions.
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| 5. |
- Arnott, Shelley E., et al.
(författare)
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Widespread variation in salt tolerance within freshwater zooplankton species reduces the predictability of community-level salt tolerance
- 2023
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Ingår i: Limnology and Oceanography Letters. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 2378-2242. ; 8:1, s. 8-18
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The salinization of freshwaters is a global threat to aquatic biodiversity. We quantified variation in chloride (Cl-) tolerance of 19 freshwater zooplankton species in four countries to answer three questions: (1) How much variation in Cl- tolerance is present among populations? (2) What factors predict intraspecific variation in Cl- tolerance? (3) Must we account for intraspecific variation to accurately predict community Cl- tolerance? We conducted field mesocosm experiments at 16 sites and compiled acute LC(50)s from published laboratory studies. We found high variation in LC(50)s for Cl- tolerance in multiple species, which, in the experiment, was only explained by zooplankton community composition. Variation in species-LC50 was high enough that at 45% of lakes, community response was not predictable based on species tolerances measured at other sites. This suggests that water quality guidelines should be based on multiple populations and communities to account for large intraspecific variation in Cl- tolerance.
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| 6. |
- Choudhury, Maidul I., et al.
(författare)
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Charophytes collapse beyond a critical warming and brownification threshold in shallow lake systems
- 2019
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Ingår i: Science of the Total Environment. - : Elsevier BV. - 0048-9697 .- 1879-1026. ; 661, s. 148-154
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Charophytes play a critical role for the functioning of shallow lake ecosystems. Although growth of charophytes can be limited by many factors, such as temperature, nutrients and light availability, our understanding about concomitant effects of climate warming and other large-scale environmental perturbations, e.g. increases in humic matter content (‘brownification’) is still limited. Here we conducted an outdoor mesocosm experiment during 71 days with a common charophyte species, Chara vulgaris, along an increasing gradient of temperature and brownification. We hypothesized the growth of C. vulgaris to increase with temperature, but to level off along the combined temperature and brownification gradient when reaching a critical threshold for light limitation via brownification. We show that C. vulgaris increases the relative growth rate (RGR), main and total shoot elongation, as well as number of lateral shoots when temperature and brownification increased by +2 °C and + 100%, respectively above today's levels. However, the RGR, shoot elongation and number of lateral shoots declined at further increment of temperature and brownification. Macrophyte weight-length ratio decreased with increased temperature and brownification, indicating that C. vulgaris allocate more resources or energy for shoot elongation instead of biomass increase at warmer temperatures and higher brownification. Our study shows that C. vulgaris will initially benefit from warming and brownification but will then decline as a future scenario of increased warming and brownification reaches a certain threshold level, in case of our experiment at +4 °C and a 2-fold increase in brownification above today's levels.
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| 7. |
- Cunillera-Montcusí, David, et al.
(författare)
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Freshwater salinisation : a research agenda for a saltier world
- 2022
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Ingår i: Trends in Ecology and Evolution. - : Elsevier BV. - 0169-5347 .- 1872-8383. ; 37:5, s. 440-453
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The widespread salinisation of freshwater ecosystems poses a major threat to the biodiversity, functioning, and services that they provide. Human activities promote freshwater salinisation through multiple drivers (e.g., agriculture, resource extraction, urbanisation) that are amplified by climate change. Due to its complexity, we are still far from fully understanding the ecological and evolutionary consequences of freshwater salinisation. Here, we assess current research gaps and present a research agenda to guide future studies. We identified different gaps in taxonomic groups, levels of biological organisation, and geographic regions. We suggest focusing on global- and landscape-scale processes, functional approaches, genetic and molecular levels, and eco-evolutionary dynamics as key future avenues to predict the consequences of freshwater salinisation for ecosystems and human societies.
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| 8. |
- Doubek, Jonathan P., et al.
(författare)
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The extent and variability of storm-induced temperature changes in lakes measured with long-term and high-frequency data
- 2021
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Ingår i: Limnology and Oceanography. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0024-3590 .- 1939-5590. ; 66:5, s. 1979-1992
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The intensity and frequency of storms are projected to increase in many regions of the world because of climate change. Storms can alter environmental conditions in many ecosystems. In lakes and reservoirs, storms can reduce epilimnetic temperatures from wind-induced mixing with colder hypolimnetic waters, direct precipitation to the lake's surface, and watershed runoff. We analyzed 18 long-term and high-frequency lake datasets from 11 countries to assess the magnitude of wind- vs. rainstorm-induced changes in epilimnetic temperature. We found small day-to-day epilimnetic temperature decreases in response to strong wind and heavy rain during stratified conditions. Day-to-day epilimnetic temperature decreased, on average, by 0.28 degrees C during the strongest windstorms (storm mean daily wind speed among lakes: 6.7 +/- 2.7 m s(-1), 1 SD) and by 0.15 degrees C after the heaviest rainstorms (storm mean daily rainfall: 21.3 +/- 9.0 mm). The largest decreases in epilimnetic temperature were observed >= 2 d after sustained strong wind or heavy rain (top 5(th) percentile of wind and rain events for each lake) in shallow and medium-depth lakes. The smallest decreases occurred in deep lakes. Epilimnetic temperature change from windstorms, but not rainstorms, was negatively correlated with maximum lake depth. However, even the largest storm-induced mean epilimnetic temperature decreases were typically <2 degrees C. Day-to-day temperature change, in the absence of storms, often exceeded storm-induced temperature changes. Because storm-induced temperature changes to lake surface waters were minimal, changes in other limnological variables (e.g., nutrient concentrations or light) from storms may have larger impacts on biological communities than temperature changes.
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| 9. |
- Ekvall, Mattias, et al.
(författare)
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Linking cascading effects of fish predation and zooplankton grazing to reduced cyanobacterial biomass and toxin levels following biomanipulation.
- 2014
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Ingår i: PLoS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 9:11
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Eutrophication has been one of the largest environmental problems in aquatic ecosystems during the past decades, leading to dense, and often toxic, cyanobacterial blooms. In a way to counteract these problems many lakes have been subject to restoration through biomanipulation. Here we combine 13 years of monitoring data with experimental assessment of grazing efficiency of a naturally occurring zooplankton community and a, from a human perspective, desired community of large Daphnia to assess the effects of an altered trophic cascade associated with biomanipulation. Lake monitoring data show that the relative proportion of Daphnia spp. grazers in June has increased following years of biomanipulation and that this increase coincides with a drop in cyanobacterial biomass and lowered microcystin concentrations compared to before the biomanipulation. In June, the proportion of Daphnia spp. (on a biomass basis) went from around 3% in 2005 (the first year of biomanipulation) up to around 58% in 2012. During months when the proportion of Daphnia spp. remained unchanged (July and August) no effect on lower trophic levels was observed. Our field grazing experiment revealed that Daphnia were more efficient in controlling the standing biomass of cyanobacteria, as grazing by the natural zooplankton community never even compensated for the algal growth during the experiment and sometimes even promoted cyanobacterial growth. Furthermore, although the total cyanobacterial toxin levels remained unaffected by both grazer communities in the experimental study, the Daphnia dominated community promoted the transfer of toxins to the extracellular, dissolved phase, likely through feeding on cyanobacteria. Our results show that biomanipulation by fish removal is a useful tool for lake management, leading to a top-down mediated trophic cascade, through alterations in the grazer community, to reduced cyanobacterial biomass and lowered cyanobacterial toxin levels. This improved water quality enhances both the ecological and societal value of lakes as units for ecosystem services.
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| 10. |
- Fervier, Veronica, et al.
(författare)
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Evaluating Nutrient Reduction, Grazing and Barley Straw as Measures Against Algal Growth
- 2020
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Ingår i: Wetlands (Wilmington, N.C.). - : SPRINGER. - 0277-5212 .- 1943-6246. ; 40:1, s. 193-202
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of our study was to experimentally investigate whether it is possible to reduce nuisance growth of filamentous algae in freshwater ecosystems. We used an experimental set-up mimicking a shallow pond system and performed a field investigation in the eutrophic moat of Krapperup castle (Southern Sweden), which exemplifies an extremely impaired ecosystem with ample growth of filamentous green algae. The indoor experiment tested three treatments: I) reduced nutrient concentrations, II) invertebrate grazers and III) addition of barley straw, which may constitute measures against filamentous algal growth and thereby improve the quality of the ecosystem services provided by water bodies. Our results show a decrease in cyanobacteria and diatom abundances in all mesocosms as filamentous algae biomass increased, suggesting that the microalgae suffered from nutrient and light competition with filamentous algae. A tendency for lower filamentous algae final biomass, as well as coverage, was observed in the treatment where the concentration of nutrients was reduced. Grazers treatment showed a tendency to inhibit filamentous algae growth on artificial macrophytes towards the end of the experiment, suggesting that snails initially fed on their preferred food source (diatoms), until it was almost depleted and then started to feed on filamentous algae. Interestingly, the barley straw treatment was the only treatment promoting macrophytes growth and enhancing diatom biomass, but this did not affect filamentous algae biomass. However, the ratio between filamentous algae and macrophyte final biomasses was significantly lower in the straw treatment. In a broader context, it is likely that in a long-term perspective the positive effect of barley straw on macrophyte growth will promote a shift from dominance by filamentous algae to macrophytes as main primary producer. Moreover, our experiment shows that barley straw may be effective in reducing cyanobacterial growth, which may lead to improved water quality and thereby ecosystem services, such as supporting and cultural ecosystem services, since cyanobacteria may produce potent toxins and pose a serious risk to human and animal health. Altogether, our experimental results have important implications for the challenge of reversing nuisance filamentous algal blooms in highly eutrophic systems.
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