BES-AG Meeting July 2014 – Charles Darwin House, London
Information Document
A) INFORMATION, CONTACTS AND HELPERS
Details of registration, contact points, instructions etc.
B) TIMETABLE
Mon: Early Career Researchers Workshops; Tue: Horizon-scanning; Wed-Fri: Detrital Dynamics
(Sat: “Silfest” – see point E!)
C) ORAL ABSTRACTS
100-word abstracts for talks on Tue-Fri, inc.
D) POSTERS
Details on hardcopy and e-posters
E) SOCIAL (Monday – Friday + Saturday)
Evening mixers and local pub venue + Saturday “Silfest” at Imperial College’s Silwood Park Campus
F) APPENDIX: DOCUMENT FOR DISCUSSION SESSIONS
Document produced as a draft, with a view to submission to NERC to direct future strategic funding
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British Ecological Society Aquatic Ecology Group
A) INFORMATION, SESSON CHAIRS, CONTACTS AND HELPERS
Please sign in at the registration desk in the morning that you arrive – if you arrive after the desk has closed, ask for one of the helpers in the table below. The people listed below will be helping out as local points of contact at the registration desk and for the evening mixers etc.
Name of Helper e-mail contact Mobile number
Joe Huddart [email protected] 07969374483
Marie-Claire Danner [email protected] 07835263486
Manon [email protected] 07749246135
Stessy Nepert [email protected] 07858901812
Xueke Lu [email protected] 07598498997
Gavin Williams [email protected]
Lydia Bach [email protected]
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B) TIMETABLE (Monday – Friday)
British Ecological Society Aquatic Ecology Group Early Career Researcher Training Day
Date: Monday 21st July 2014
Time: 10:00 – 17:30
Location: Charles Darwin House 12 Roger Street London, WC1N 2JU. Tel: 0207 685 2500
10:00-10:45 Arrival/Poster Setup/Refreshments 10:45-11:00 Welcome 11:00-12:30 An Introduction to Quantum GIS How to get Published
“This course will introduce you to the The aim of this session is to equip basics of QGIS and show you how to participants with highly valuable extend this functionality to incorporate knowledge and skills useful for more sophisticated tools” publishing.
Chris Yesson (Zoological Society of London) Mark Ledger (University of Birmingham)
12:30-14:00 Lunch 14:00-15:30 Introduction to Analysing Food Web Data Succeeding with Grant Applications using Cheddar This session will provide participants with “We will use worked examples of real food an opportunity to learn what makes a web datasets to illustrate how to use successful grant application, from NERC Cheddar to perform a number of analyses” Large and Standard Grants to BES small grants. Lawrence Hudson (NHM)) Eoin O’Gorman (Imperial College London) Guy Woodward (Imperial College London) Tom Bell (Imperial College London) Jan Geert Hiddink (Bangor University) 15:30-16:00 Coffee 16:00-17:30 How to get started using likelihood to tailor ECR Career Question & Answer Discussion your statistics to biology instead of the session other way around This session allows participants to ask “This workshop aims to provide an panellists questions regarding career introduction to maximum likelihood and its advice usage with R”
Tin-Yu Hui (Imperial College London) 17:30 Close
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BES-AG Meeting July 2014
HORIZON SCANNING (Tuesday) AND DETRITAL DYNAMICS CONFERENCE (Wednesday- Friday, inc.) PROVISIONAL* TIMETABLE FOR TALKS AND POSTERS
1. Tuesday - Horizon-scanning - Aquatic Ecology in the 21st Century*
Tuesday: Horizon-Scanning – Aquatic Ecology in the 21st Century 9.00 Welcome from Guy Woodward 9.15 Nessa O’Connor Biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and community stability: experimental tests in marine ecosystems 9.50 Cathy Lucas Jellification of the oceans: fact or fiction? 10.15 Mark Gessner The value of mesocosm experiments Break 11.00 Jason Weeks The future of Aquaculture to 2060; addressing global challenges’ 11.25 Tom Webb Planet earth, planet ocean: does ecological theory generalise across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems?
11.50 John Griffin Predator biodiversity and functioning of aquatic ecosystems 12.15 Paul Somerfield Integrating theoretical and empirical approaches in marine ecosystems to address the grand challenges of the 21st century: the Marine Ecosystems Research Programme Lunch & posters 13.30 Don Jackson Collaborative Research Networks and Citizen Science: Evolving Approaches in Research 13.55 Olivier Dangles Species diversity effects on detrital dynamics: What can we learn from the Tropics? 14.20 Alex Drumbell Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: insights from novel molecular approaches 14.45 Pippa Moore The impacts of climate
4 change for marine biodiversity: a global meta- analysis Break 15.30 Louise Firth Artificial coastal defences: enhancing biodiversity using sensitive design 15.55 Samraat Pawar From individual metabolism to aquatic ecosystem dynamics 16.20 Steve Hawkins Pattern, process and prediction: combining long- term and broadscale observations with experiments and modelling on rocky shores 16.45 Guy Woodward The Blue Planet: Aquatic Ecology in the 21st Century 17.10 Mixer and open discussion
Each talk will be 25 mins per slot, inc. questions (question will also be taken in the general discussion in plenary at the end of the day).
Session Chairs: Morning (9:30 – 12:25): Lydia Bach; Afternoon (2:30 – 16:15): Pavel Kratina
*Speakers: please ensure you give your usb sticks with talks to the respective Chair before the start of your session.
Posters will be displayed throughout the meeting, both as hardcopy printed versions (for those who were the first to submit) and also as electronic projected versions (for the remainder).
Please note: although we do not anticipate any major changes to this schedule, it is potentially subject to minor revisions, so details may change – please check the BES-AG website regularly in case of alterations.
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2. Wednesday - Friday: Detrital Dynamics in Aquatic Systems**
Detrital dynamics Detrital dynamics Detrital dynamics Day 1: Wednesday Day 2: Thursday Day 3: Friday 9:00 Registration & Coffee Registration & Coffee Registration & Coffee
9:30 Jack Webster Ute Jacob Art Benke
10:05 Christian Mulder Kevin Purdy David Harper 10:40 Tea break 11:15 Claudia Pascoal Jon Grey Fanny Colas 11:50 Brendan McKie Gabriel Yvon-Durocher Mark Trimmer
12:25 Daniel Perkins Murray Thompson Michael Cunliffe 13:00 Lunch + poster sessions 14:30 Andrew Weightman Arturo Elosegi Scott Tiegs 15:05 Eoin O’Gorman Matt O’Callaghan Tom Bell 15:40 Clive Trueman Angela Gurnell Nikolai Friberg 16:15 Discussion sessions + Mixers
Session Chairs:
Morning (9:30 – 12:25): Eoin O’Gorman; Afternoon (2:30 – 16:15): Helen Bovy
Morning (9:30 – 12:25): Murray Thompson; Afternoon (2:30 – 16:15): Marian Pye
Morning (9:30 – 12:25): Mike Chadwick; Afternoon (2:30 – 16:15): Felicity Shelley
30 mins per slot, + 5 mins questions (question will also be taken in the general discussion in plenary at the end of each day)
**Speakers: please ensure you give your usb sticks with talks to the respective Chair before the start of your session.
Please note: although we do not anticipate any major changes to this schedule, it is potentially subject to minor revisions, so details may change – please check the BES-AG website regularly in case of alterations.
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Monday-Friday Talks: Speakers’ Names, Presentation Titles and Contact Details
Horizon scanning day (Tuesday):
• Alex Dumbrell, University of Essex, UK ([email protected]) – ‘Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: insights from novel molecular approaches’, http://www.essex.ac.uk/bs/staff/profile.aspx?ID=2130 • Olivier Dangles, Institute for Research and Development, Ecuador ([email protected]) – ‘Species diversity effects on detrital dynamics : What can we learn from the Tropics?’ http://scholar.google.fr/citations?user=YJbBFs0AAAAJ&hl=en • Louise Firth, National University of Ireland, Galway ([email protected]) – ‘Artificial coastal defences: enhancing biodiversity using sensitive design’ http://www.nuigalway.ie/zoology/firth/ • Mark Gessner, IGB Berlin, Germany ([email protected]) - The value of mesocosm experiments • John Griffin, Swansea University, UK ([email protected]) ‘Predator biodiversity and functioning of aquatic ecosystems’ • Steve Hawkins, University of Southampton, UK ([email protected]) – ‘Pattern, process and prediction: combining long-term and broadscale observations with experiments and modelling on rocky shores’ http://www.southampton.ac.uk/oes/research/staff/sh3u09.page • Don Jackson, University of Ottawa, USA ([email protected]) ’Collaborative Research Networks and Citizen Science: Evolving Approaches in Research’ • Cathy Lucas, University of Southampton, UK ([email protected]) – ‘Jellification of the oceans: fact or fiction?’ www.southampton.ac.uk/oes/research/staff/chl1.page • Pippa Moore, Aberystwyth University, UK ([email protected]) - The impacts of climate change for marine biodiversity: a global meta-analysis http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/ibers/staff/pim2/ • Nessa O'Connor, Queens University Belfast, UK ([email protected]) - 'Biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and community stability: experimental tests in marine ecosystems' http://www.qub.ac.uk/bb/People/DrNEOConnor/ • Samraat Pawar ([email protected]) ‘From individual metabolism to aquatic ecosystem dynamics’ • Paul Somerfield, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, UK ([email protected]) - ‘Integrating theoretical and empirical approaches in marine ecosystems to address the grand challenges of the 21st century: the Marine Ecosystems Research Programme’ http://www.pml.ac.uk/about_us/pml_people/paul_somerfield.aspx • Tom Webb, University of Sheffield, UK ([email protected]) – ‘Planet earth, planet ocean: does ecological theory generalise across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems?’ • Jason Weeks, Cranfield/CEFAS ( [email protected]) ‘The future of Aquaculture to 2060; addressing global challenges’ https://www.cranfield.ac.uk/about/people-and-resources/schools-and-departments/school-of- applied-sciences/ • Guy Woodward, Imperial College London, UK ([email protected]) – ‘The Blue Planet: Aquatic Ecology in the 21st Century’ https://sites.google.com/site/drguywoodward/
Detrital Dynamics Meeting (Wednesday – Friday, inc.):
• Tom Bell, Imperial College London, UK ([email protected]) • Arthur C Benke, University of Alabama ([email protected]) ‘Trophic basis of a blackwater river/floodplain system: a case for allochthony’ • Fanny Colas, Université Paul Sabatier, France ([email protected]) – ‘Assessment of aquatic ecosystems' functional integrity: insights on latest developments and their importance for management policies’ http://www.ecolab.ups-tlse.fr • Michael Cunliffe, ([email protected]) ‘Assimilation of transparent exopolymer particles into the coastal planktonic food web’ • Arturo Elosegi, University of The Basque Country, Spain ([email protected]) ‘So what? Consequences of altered plant litter processing in freshwaters’ http://www.ehu.es/streamecology/arturoelosegi.html 7 • Nikolai Friberg, NIVA, Norway ([email protected]) – ‘Drivers of detrital dynamics in Northern rivers’ http://scholar.google.dk/citations?user=ocw18ZIAAAAJ&hl=da • Jon Grey, Queen Mary University of London ([email protected]) – ‘From greenhouse gas to biomass: methane dynamics and the detrital food web’ http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/jgrey/index.html • Angela Gurnell, Queen Mary University of London ([email protected]) – ‘Drift wood: Dynamics and Habitat Construction in River Systems’ http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/staff/gurnella.html • David Harper – University of Leicester – ‘Holistic River Resoration’ • Ute Jacob, Institute for Hydrobiology and Fisheries Science - University of Hamburg, Germany (ute.jacob@uni- hamburg.de) ‘Detrital pathways in the Weddell Sea – not the missing but the most important link?’ • Brendan McKie, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden ([email protected]) – ‘Biodiversity and litter decomposition in streams: what we (think we) know and what we really should know more about’ http://www.slu.se/vatten-miljo/brendan-mckie • Christian Mulder, RIVM, Netherlands ([email protected]) – ‘Detritus as linked to the interface between air-soil-water compartments provides underestimated power to real food webs’ https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christian_Mulder2 • Eoin O’Gorman – Imperial College London – ‘Higher detrital and terrestrial subsidies help increase fish production in warmer waters’ • Claudia Pascoal, University of Minho, Portugal ([email protected]) • Daniel Perkins, Imperial College London, UK ([email protected]) - ‘Food web size-structure in running waters’ • Kevin Purdy, University of Warwick, UK ([email protected]) – ‘Investigating the microbial ecology of terminal oxidsers’ http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/lifesci/people/kpurdy/ • Scott Tiegs, Oakland University, USA ([email protected]) – ‘Ecological Roles of Pacific Salmon in Alaskan Rivers’ http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7-3rO_sAAAAJ&hl=en • Mark Trimmer, Queen Mary University of London, UK ([email protected]) • Clive Trueman, University of Southampton, UK ([email protected]) – ‘Quantifying the relative role of detrital and biological nutrient fluxes in supporting long-term carbon storage and benthic production on continental slopes’ http://www.southampton.ac.uk/oes/research/staff/trueman.page • Jack Webster, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA ([email protected]) – ‘Leaf breakdown, autochthonous production, and nutrient dynamics in streams -- they're all connected’ • Andy Weightman, Cardiff University ([email protected]) ‘DURESS – The Role of Detrital Dynamics in Ecosystem Service Sustainability’ • Gabriel Yvon-Durocher, University of Exeter, UK ([email protected]) ‘Temperature dependence of biogeochemical cycles: scaling from populations to ecosystems’ http://www.exeter.ac.uk/esi/people/yvon- durocher/
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D) POSTERS Please see the BES-AG website for updates on posters and poster abstracts – pdf copies of posters will be given to delegates on usb sticks at registration. We can also take electronic submission of e-posters up until the last week before the meeting - contact Gavin Williams for further details.
9 E) ORAL ABSTRACTS
BES-AG Meeting July 2014 – Charles Darwin House, London
Abstracts for Talks
Abstracts arranged alphabetically by author
10 Disentangling species effects on detritus breakdown
Tom Bell
Imperial College London, Silwood Park, Buckhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 7PY, UK
Bacteria are key components in decomposition dynamics, but bacterial communities are extraordinarily diverse, so understanding species' impacts on decomposition are challenging. Two methods are currently widespread: explicit manipulations of species composition in synthetic communities, and observational studies of extant communities. I will discuss a third option: common garden experiments that take advantage of natural variation in microbial communities. Preliminary results indicate that the common garden approach can successfully identify species impacts on litter breakdown. I will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the method, and applications beyond microbial communities.
11 Trophic basis of a blackwater river/floodplain system: a case for allochthony
Arthur C. Benke
Aquatic Biology Program, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487- 0206 USA
I synthesized production of invertebrates from the main channel of a 6th order blackwater river in the southeastern U.S.A., focusing on submerged snags. Snags accounted for 73% of production compared to 27% from benthic habitat. After estimating the trophic basis of production and developing a flow web, I found that invertebrates were primarily supported by amorphous detritus (AD), originating mostly from adjacent floodplain forest (allochthonous) rather than autochthonous algae. Bacteria within AD grow well on DOM from the floodplain and AD consumed by snag invertebrates alone was greater than autochthonous NPP (mostly diatoms). Findings were consistent with a mean P/R of only 0.25.
[email protected] http://bsc.ua.edu/about/faculty-directory/arthur-c-benke/
12 Assessment of stream ecosystems' functional integrity: insights on latest developments and their importance for management policies
Fanny Colasa,b & Eric Chauveta,b
aUniversité de Toulouse ; UPS, INPT ; EcoLab UMR 5245, 118 route de Narbonne, 31062 Toulouse, France bCNRS, EcoLab, 31062 Toulouse, France
Human activities in the late 20th century have profoundly altered the natural ecosystems leading to the so-called sixth mass extinction of species. There is evidence that this erosion of biodiversity deeply threatens the functioning of ecosystems and the ecological goods and services needed to sustain human societies. In this context, it is now crucial to identify predictors of the effects of disturbance on the ecosystem functioning, named functional indicators, in order to quickly implement management, conservation and restoration policies of natural ecosystems. Meanwhile, we observe a strong increase in initiatives to restore degraded aquatic ecosystems. However, the lack of appropriate monitoring and indicators limits our ability to predict the ecological trajectories of restored ecosystems and quantify the effectiveness of this type of intervention. The IDFUN project aims to produce such monitoring tools to identify predictors of functional trajectory of restored lotic ecosystems. Seventeen projects of physical restoration including dam removals, remeandering of rivers and disconnection of ponds and sedimentary recharge, were selected in France. We proposed an experimental design inspired from BACI (Before-After-Control-Impact) for which five stations per restoration project were selected. For each station, we evaluated leaf litter breakdown, hydromorphological and chemical parameters before and after restoration. These results were intended to be compared to those from communities monitoring as obtained by restoration practitioners. This work should identify the effects of physical disturbance on ecosystem functioning and the predictors of the trajectories of restored ecosystems. It should also help in building a predictive model of functional responses of stream ecosystems to alteration of their physical characteristics (degradation or restoration) to large spatial scales. Finally, because we collaborate with streams managers, this work contributes to a national strategy for the assessment of restoration operations based on functional indicators.
[email protected] http://www.ecolab.ups-tlse.fr
13 Assimilation of transparent exopolymer particles into the coastal planktonic food web
Michael Cunliffe
Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom, The Laboratory, Citadel Hill, Plymouth.
Marine Institute, Plymouth University, Drake Circus, Plymouth.
Marine ecosystems contain a reservoir of organic carbon that is a vital part of the global carbon cycle. Transparent exopolymer particles (TEP) are gelatinous aggregates derived from phytoplankton and constitute as much as 40% of particulate organic carbon. It is currently unknown how TEP are recycled within the marine food web. To understand TEP carbon cycling through the marine ecosystem, we produced 13C-labelled diatom-derived TEP and exposed a coastal plankton community to the substrate followed by Stable Isotope Probing. By isolating 13C-labelled community DNA and comparing with un-labelled DNA, we were able to determine which components of the community had assimilated the TEP carbon. Rhodobacterales, Alteromonadales and Flavobacteriales were enriched in 13C in the 16S rRNA gene libraries, indicating which bacterioplankton had assimilated the 13C-TEP. Basidiomycota and Ascomycota were also enriched in 13C in the 18S rRNA gene libraries, suggesting that fungi also utilise TEP, and could be important in cycling POC in coastal seas. 13C was transferred to the eukaryote flagellates Telonemia, Picozoa, Pedinellales and the Marine Stramenopile group 7 (MAST-7), probably by bacterivory, however Picozoa could have consumed TEP directly. The enrichment of copepods in the 13C 18S rRNA gene libraries suggests that they may assimilate TEP-derived carbon. The results suggest the diversity of the route of TEP carbon transfer through the microbial loop in coastal waters, indicating that bacterioplankton and fungi are key functional groups, and that TEP carbon also supports microbial eukaryotes and zooplankton.
Web page: http://www.mba.ac.uk/fellows/cunliffe/
14 Horizon scanning in freshwater ecology: A contribution from the Neotropics
Olivier Dangles
French Institute for Research & Development, c/o Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Ecuador (PUCE), Laboratorio de Entomologia, oficina 207, Edificio de Ciencias Av. 12 de Octubre 1076 y Patria Quito, Ecuador
Most concepts and paradigms in freshwater ecology science come from temperate latitudes yet it is not clear whether they conform to the reality of tropical freshwater ecosystems. What has been called a "temperate intellectual hegemony" might also bias our view of future challenges facing freshwater ecosystems worldwide. Building on experience in the Neotropics, the objective of this talk is to present some major issues in the study and the conservation of freshwater ecosystems in a rapidly changing tropical region.
[email protected] http://scholar.google.fr/citations?user=YJbBFs0AAAAJ&hl=en http://dangles.naturexpose.com
15 Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: insights from novel molecular approaches
Alex Dumbrell
University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK
Biodiversity underpins ecosystem functioning and services. However, the majority of ecosystem functions are supported by microbes, and relatively little is known about microbial diversity-ecosystem functioning relationships. New molecular methods (loosely termed Next Generation Sequencing) are allowing unprecedented insights into microbial diversity and associated functions. However, these approaches run the risk of generating “stamp collecting” research and should be used cautiously. This talk explores these technologies and their applications in ecology, and demonstrates how they can be used effectively to test ecological hypotheses.
[email protected] http://www.essex.ac.uk/bs/staff/profile.aspx?ID=2130 http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=5P0LlRMAAAAJ&hl=en
16 So what? Consequences of altered plant litter processing in freshwaters
Arturo Elosegi & Jesús Pozo
Faculty of Science and Technology, the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, PoBox 644, 48080 Bilbao, Spain
Freshwater scientists have spent decades measuring inputs, storage and breakdown of organic matter in freshwaters, and have documented the effects of soil uses, pollution, climate warming or flow regulation on these pivotal ecosystem functions. Large-scale collaborative experiments and meta-analyses have revealed some clear patterns as well as a lot of variability in detrital dynamics, and a number of standardised methods have been designed for routine monitoring of organic matter inputs, retention and breakdown in different conditions. Despite these efforts, we scientists have been ineffective at convincing managers of the importance of altered organic matter dynamics in freshwaters. Here we review the existing information of the role of organic matter and plant litter processing as a) a key factor structuring freshwater habitats, b) a source or sink of nutrients, c) a food resource for heterotrophs, d) an energy input into food webs, e) a modulator of the fate of pollutants, f) a source or sink of greenhouse gases, g) a potential source of environmental problems, h) an ecosystem service, and i) a diagnostic tool for ecosystem functioning. Current knowledge in some of these points is enough to be transferred to management actions, whereas some others, such as the interactions between organic matter and emerging pollutants, offer interesting research questions.
http://www.ehu.es/streamecology/arturoelosegi.html
17 Artificial coastal defences: enhancing biodiversity using sensitive design
Louise B. Firth1,2, Richard C. Thompson3, Pippa Moore4, Stephen J. Hawkins2,5
1 Ryan Institute, National University of Ireland Galway, Galway, Ireland
2 School of Ocean Sciences, Bangor University, Menai Bridge, Anglesey, LL59 5AB
3 Marine Biology and Ecology Research Centre, School of Marine Science and Engineering, Plymouth University, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK
4 Institute of Biological, Environmental andRural Sciences, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth SY233DA, UK
5 Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre Southampton, Waterfront Campus, University of Southampton, European Way, Southampton, Hampshire SO14 3ZH, UK
Coastal defence structures are proliferating as a result of rising sea levels and stormier seas. With the realisation that most coastal infrastructure cannot be lost or removed, research is required into ways that coastal defence structures can be built to meet engineering requirements, whilst also providing relevant ecosystem services - ecological engineering. This approach requires an understanding of the types of assemblages and their functional roles that are desirable and feasible in these novel ecosystems. We review the major impacts coastal defence structures have on surrounding environments and recent experiments informing building coastal defences in a more ecologically sustainable manner. We summarise research carried out during the THESEUS project (2009–2014) which optimised the design of coastal defence structures with the aim to conserve or restore native species diversity. Native biodiversity could be manipulated on defence structures through various interventions: we created artificial rock pools and on breakwaters and we deployed a precast habitat enhancement unit (the BIOBLOCK) in a coastal defence scheme. Finally, we outline guidelines and recommendations to provide multiple ecosystem services while maintaining engineering efficacy. This work demonstrated that simple enhancement methods can be cost-effective measures to manage local biodiversity. Care is required, however, in the wholesale implementation of these recommendations without full consideration of the desired effects and overall management goals.
[email protected] http://www.nuigalway.ie/zoology/firth/ http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=lyN1MUkAAAAJ&hl=en
18 Drivers of detrital dynamics in Northern rivers
Nikolai Friberg
Norwegian Institute for Water Research (NIVA), Oslo, Norway
Global changes is predicted to increase temperature substantially in the North as well as altering run-off regimes with less synchronicity as the importance of snow melt declines. At the same time there will be a substantial “greening” of the terrestrial biome, which will increase organic carbon inputs to river ecosystems. In this paper, I re- examine a number of studies conducted in Greenland (66-69oN), Iceland (65oN), Sweden (60oN) and Denmark (56oN) and other published literature to try and tease out the likely impacts of temperature and hydrology in shaping stream communities and ecosystem processes. From this I suggest that temperature is likely to be the major driver and that the detrital energy base of Northern river ecosystems will be of increasing importance in future. However, other important drivers will be increased terrestrial (wooded) vegetation, more benign run-off regimes (more groundwater influence), increased in-channel retentive capacity and feeding plasticity of macroinvertebrate detritivores.
[email protected] http://scholar.google.dk/citations?user=ocw18ZIAAAAJ&hl=da
19 The value of mesocosm experiments
Mark Gessner
Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB), Alte Fischerhütte 2, 16775 Stechlin, Germany
Ecology is fortunate in being able to draw on a wide range of methodologies for gaining insights into ecological problems. These methodologies range from purely theoretical considerations to data-driven models and from observations to experiments. Not all approaches are widely accepted, however, nor are they currently used to their full capacity. Here I argue that experiments in large enclosures, or mesocosms, are likely to provide insights that might not be gained through other approaches or by experiments conducted at different scales or in the laboratory. The key reason is that, if well planned, experiments in large mesocosms facilitate statistically sound experimental designs involving replication while capturing much of the complexity of natural ecosystems, thus potentially meeting the important criteria of both realism and strength of inference. Although the approach is potentially powerful, designing and executing mesocosm experiments requires great care to obtain meaningful results. For example, in marine and freshwater ecosystems, profuse periphyton growth on mesocosm walls can be important enough to turn a pelagic system into one dominated by benthic metabolism, entailing substantial risk of systematic error and hence invalid interpretations. Further challenges include the simulation, or at least characterization, of the physical conditions in natural water bodies as well as the controlled manipulation of large-bodied species such as fish. Both challenges are likely to be greater in the ocean than in lakes. Both also diminish with increasing size of the experimental units. However, it is a common misconception that aquatic mesocosms must fully reflect conditions in natural water bodies. Even large facilities will only do so in part. Recognition of this fallacy is important to place results from mesocosm experiments in proper context when interpreting and extrapolating experimental data. This requires confrontation of the experimental outcomes with results of both models and field observations. Thus, while experiments in large mesocosms are a potentially powerful element of ecological research that complements other approaches, they are not a silver bullet. The silver lining, however, can be enhanced by devising coordinated experiments in multiple mesocosm facilities, especially when underpinned by long-term data series and a sound theoretical framework.
20 From greenhouse gas to biomass: methane dynamics and the detrital food web
Jon Grey
Queen Mary University of London, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Mile End Road
London E1 4NS, UK
Aquatic sediments the world over, once considered typically as sinks for organic matter, have recently been re- evaluated especially in terms of their potential as sources of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. Regarding the latter, we have known about the processes of methanogenesis and methanotrophy since the days of Winogradsky, yet the role of those processes in food webs was deemed negligible until the application of stable isotope analyses (SIA) within the last 15 years. There is now a growing realisation that production on earth is not simply driven by energy from the sun, and that considerable biomass accrues from alternative, chemosynthetic energy sources. Net production of, for example, methane oxidisers may account for 100% of total bacterial production in some circumstances and be equivalent to 10 to 15% of photosynthetic primary production in lakes and rivers. Further, a few SIA studies have revealed that methane-derived carbon (MDC) is also a significant component (up to 70%) of the biomass of organisms higher in the food web, as revealed by characteristically low δ13C (i.e. <<- 35‰) values in zooplankton, benthic macroinvertebrates (especially chironomid larvae in lakes and cased caddis larvae in rivers), and even fish. What has not been established to date is the provenance of the organic matter that is being metabolised to methane. In addition, the isotope mixing models used to calculate such contributions are rather simplistic.
While the study of MDC contributing to riverine food webs is still very much in its infancy, there is a wealth of data from lakes allowing us to predict the likelihood of it contributing to different components of the food web. How the relative reliance upon such MDC within lakes might respond to contemporary stressors such as climate change and invasive species will be discussed.
[email protected] http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/jgrey/index.html http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pT5FFXgAAAAJ&hl=en
21 Predator biodiversity and functioning of aquatic ecosystems
John N Griffin
Department of Biosciences, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK
It is well established that species richness of primary producers and primary consumers can enhance efficiency of resource uptake and biomass production of respective trophic levels. At the level of secondary consumers (predators), however, conclusions about the functional role of biodiversity have been mixed. We take advantage of a recent surge of published experiments (totaling 46 since 2005) to both evaluate general effects of predator richness on aggregate prey suppression (top-down control) and explore sources of variability among experiments. Our results show that, across experiments, predator richness enhances prey suppression relative to the average single predator species (mean richness effect), but not the best-performing species. Mean richness effects in predator experiments were stronger than those for primary producers and detritivores, suggesting that relationships between richness and function may increase with trophic height in food webs. The strength of mean predator richness effects increased with the spatial and temporal scale of experiments, and the taxonomic distinctness (TD, used as a proxy of phylogenetic diversity) of species present. This latter result suggests that TD captures important aspects of functional differentiation among predators and that measures of biodiversity that go beyond species richness may help to better predict the effects of predator species loss. While the controlled manipulative experiments synthesized here provide clear evidence of the functional role of predator richness, they were inevitably limited by practical constraints in scope and scale. We look forward to innovative future studies that expand our scales of understanding and begin to consider the cascading effects of predator biodiversity within the context of more complete and complex natural food webs.
[email protected] http://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/science/biosciences/j.n.griffin/
22 Driftwood: Dynamics and Habitat Construction in River Systems
Angela Gurnell
Queen Mary University of London, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Mile End Road
London E1 4NS, UK
In the last decade, a large body of research has shown that plants have a very significant physical influence on river systems across space scales from individual plants to entire river corridors. Small -scale phenomena structure patch- scale habitats and processes, and interactions between patches are almost certainly crucial to larger-scale and longer-term development of river environments.
Plants growing within river corridors both affect and respond to physical river processes. Their above ground biomass produces organic matter, and when inundated, modifies the flow field, resulting in the retention of organic matter and mineral sediment, whereas their below-ground biomass affects the hydraulic and mechanical properties of the substrate and consequently the moisture regime and erosion-susceptibility of the land surface.
Riparian trees are particularly important in this regard, partly because their large size forms an important structure for the retention and stabilization of materials transported by the river, but also because they produce large wood pieces that are a major component of river organic load and an important influence on physical habitat construction.
This paper focuses specifically on wood and its retention within river corridors. The role of wood in habitat and landform development from patch to landscape scales is then explored not only through the direct impact of wood accumulations on flow hydraulics and associated erosion and deposition of smaller organic matter and mineral sediment but also by considering interactions between wood and riparian vegetation. Using examples of rivers where wood is not significantly managed, the paper illustrates how the role of wood varies with its properties (size, density, decomposition rate, ability to sprout) and also with the size and type of river. Different types of wood structure evolve in different river environments, contributing to the development of different riparian forest characteristics and styles of river, and thus the dynamic habitat mosaic that is crucial to the functioning of river ecosystems.
[email protected] http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/staff/gurnella.html
23 Holistic River Restoration
David Harper
Centre for Landscape and Climate Research, University of Leicester, Bennett Building, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
Rivers are littered with failed restoration projects, with limited knowledge about them other than monitoring data with photographs before and after the work was done. We developed a method for evaluating the ‘naturalness’ of rivers, part of which is hidden with the ‘River Habitats Survey’ methodology, that is useful for river restoration. All rivers are mosaics of patches called ‘biotopes’ which have a discrete assemblage of invertebrates as well as geomorphological reality. Existing biotopes are easily mapped, designs of a ‘natural’ river made, restoration can be tailored to these and monitoring based both on biotopes and their properties. A CRF project in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, is given as an example of this approach. [email protected] http://www.le.ac.uk/biology/staff/bldmh.htm http://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=xI8fLHcAAAAJ&hl=en
24 Pattern, process and prediction: combining long-term and broad-scale observations with experiments and modelling on rocky shores.
Steve Hawkins1,9,10, Mike Burrows2,8, Pippa Moore3,8, Roger Herbert4, Elvira Poloczanska2,5, Louise Firth6,9, Heather Sugden7,9, Richard Thompson8, Stuart Jenkins9,10, and Nova Mieszkowska10
University of Southampton1, Scottish Association for Marine Science2, Aberystwyth University3, University of Bournemouth4, CSIRO Queensland5, University of Ireland Galway6, University of Newcastle7, University of Plymouth8, Bangor University9, Marine Biological Association, Plymouth10
Rocky shores have over the last 70 years become recognised as an excellent natural laboratory for field experimental studies contributing to and testing ecological theory (e.g., work by Connell, Paine, Sousa, Lubchenco, Menge, Bertness, Branch and early work in Europe by Hatton, Fischer-Piette, Jones, Southward, Kitching and Ebling). In the UK and Europe we are also fortunate to have extensive historical broad-scale and long-term studies. These were originally intended to map biogeographic patterns undertaken with in parallel laboratory experimentation on the causes of these distributions, especially the underlying influence of temperature (work by Orton, Southward, Crisp, Fischer-Piette). This baseline from the 1930s-1950s has proved invaluable in charting responses to climate fluctuations and recent warming in both the abundance and distribution of species. Changes on the seashore also mirror those offshore making rocky shore species good indicators of broader climate-related changes in the ocean.
Our talk will weave these two strands together to show how broad-scale and long-term studies of pattern can be integrated with field experiments and modelling to not only better understand ecological processes but also predict possible responses to global change.
S.J.Hawkins @soton.ac.uk http://www.southampton.ac.uk/oes/research/staff/sh3u09.page
25 Collaborative Research Networks and Citizen Science: Evolving Approaches in Research
Donald Jackson
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G5, Canada
Research programs in ecology have been evolving from the traditional approaches involving individuals or small groups of researchers. Although long common in areas such as particle physics, large collaborative research networks at the national or international level are becoming increasingly common in ecology. Such networks provide opportunities to examine different questions or questions at scales greatly different than are possible with our more traditional research approaches. Although networks generally involve highly trained researchers, looser organizations typically comprising the general public, often with skilled naturalists, can be citizen science groups. Increasingly citizen science provides opportunities to engage the public and to compile data at previously unattainable rates or scales, potentially opening new avenues of investigation and contributing to “big data” collection. I examine both of these approaches as means to address important issues for our future, considering both the advantages and disadvantages, and highlighting examples from a Canadian context.
[email protected] http://jackson.eeb.utoronto.ca/
26 Detrital pathways in the Weddell Sea – not the missing but the most important link?
Ute Jacob Institute for Hydrobiology and Fisheries Science, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
In contrast to pioneering trophic studies of Antarctic food webs which focused on simple pelagic food chains, the food web of the Weddell Sea is characterised by an complex food web, owing to high species numbers, to a variety in foraging strategies, to an enormous range in body mass of species and to the large share of omnivorous species in the system where the detrital pathways appear like the most important ones. Here we bring some order out of “chaos” that the trophic complexity of this real world system at first presents.
27 Jellyfication of the oceans: fact or fiction?
Cathy H Lucas
Ocean & Earth Science, University of Southampton, National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton Waterfront Campus, European Way, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK
Gelatinous zooplankton, including cnidarian jellyfish are found throughout the world's oceans, from the poles to the equator and from the surface ocean to the deep sea. They are natural members of marine ecosystems, playing an important trophic role as predators of zooplankton, and providing food for turtles and fish. Jellyfish are characterised by life-history, physiological and behavioural traits that enable large numbers of individuals to be produced quickly to form mass occurrences or blooms. (This year has seen unusually large numbers of barrel and moon jellyfish along the south-west coast, for example). Over the last 15 years there has been a perception that jellyfish bloom events are increasing in frequency and magnitude and that 'jellyfication' of the world's oceans will occur. This paradigm has led to a significant increase in scientific interest in jellyfish and jellyfish blooms, as significant bloom events can lead to changes in ecosystem function as well as impact ecosystem services. Three major questions have been and will continue to dominate jellyfish research in the 21st century. 1) Are jellyfish blooms increasing and is jellyfication of the world's oceans taking place? 2) If blooms are increasing, what are the drivers of bloom events and how do they work? 3) Can jellyfish bloom events be predicted (for ecosystem management purposes)? This talk will summarise our current state of knowledge and suggest future requirements for research in this area.
Staff webpage: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/oes/research/staff/chl1.page
ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cathy_Lucas2/
Jellyfish Database Initiative (JeDI): http://jedi.nceas.ucsb.edu
28 Detritivore diversity and litter decomposition in streams: What we (think we) know and what we should really know more about
Brendan G. McKie,
Department of Aquatic Sciences & Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, P.O. Box 7070, SE-750 07 Uppsala, Sweden
Biodiversity is declining catastrophically in most ecosystems worldwide, and streams and rivers are no exception, with multiple human disturbances driving losses of species at local and regional scales. “Biodiversity-ecosystem functioning” (B-EF) research is concerned with how this species loss might affect ecosystem-level process rates. Stream B-EF research has focused on the key process of leaf decomposition, and this presentation concentrates on the role detritivore diversity. Most of the early stream B-EF research was conducted in laboratory microcosms, and these results indicate that increasing the species richness of detritivores often has positive effects on leaf decomposition and related ecosystem processes, though several examples of neutral and negative relationships also have been observed. However, the relevance of much of the laboratory-based research for predicting the likely effects of biodiversity loss in nature remains unclear, given the high degree of spatio-temporal dynamism in both environmental conditions and community composition and diversity that characterises stream environments. Indeed, after a decade of laboratory-based research, we remain unable to address some basic questions of key management relevance. For example, the importance of biodiversity for functioning in streams relative to other biotic and abiotic drivers remains unclear, as does the extent to which biodiversity can help buffer human impacts on functioning, and it is not possible to predict when and where biodiversity will be important for functioning in situ. To address these shortcomings, stream B-EF research has been shifting towards more field-based research, with a greater emphasis on the diversity of functional traits rather than species. Findings from these field studies provide strong evidence that biodiversity can be as important a driver of ecosystem functioning as other important abiotic and biotic drivers in situ, but not universally. Development of a framework for predicting exactly when and where species loss will have its greatest impact remains challenging.
[email protected] http://www.slu.se/vatten-miljo/brendan-mckie
29 The impacts of climate change for marine biodiversity: a global meta-analysis
Pippa J. Moore, Mike T. Burrows, Elvira S. Poloczanska, Anthony Richardson & NCEAS Marine Climate Impacts Working Group
Aberystwyth University, Penglais, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, SY23 3FL, UK
Numerous studies across taxa, habitats and biogeographic provinces have demonstrated that marine systems are already responding to increases in sea surface temperature (SST), however global syntheses of marine biological responses to climate change have, until recently been lacking. In this talk I will focus on the outcomes from a 4-year project that collated and analysed environmental and biological data at a global scale to determine how sea-surface and air temperatures have changed in both space and time, how marine biological systems have responded to these changes and how the rate of observed biological changes in the sea compare to those observed on land. Finally I will discuss how novel metrics of climate change, such as the velocity of climate change, can potentially provide insights for marine spatial management planning.
[email protected] http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/ibers/staff/pim2/
30 Detritus as linked to the interface between air-soil-water compartments provides underestimated power to real food webs
Christian Mulder
Centre for Sustainability, Environment and Health, National Institute for Public Health and Environment, P.O.Box 1, NL-3720 BA Bilthoven, The Netherlands
Environmental science has reached a level of maturity that enables the quantification of chemical footprints. However, relating footprints to our planetary boundaries needs on one hand Big Data (including ways to surmount gaps and to increase quality) and on the other hand interdisciplinary bridging between aquatic and terrestrial ecology. Declining water quality, rising eutrophication, and increases in turbidity are major issues because they seem to drive species-rich systems to collapse into species-poor bare sediment systems. Hence, the identification of both direct as indirect effects requires an integrated focus on the soil/sediment/water interfaces. Our objective at the RIVM is to validate tools through empirical evidence for the identification of essential ecosystem services by comparing data from rivers, agroecosystems and nature in Europe and USA for a quantification of processes in the detritus along combined N-eutrophication and pesticides gradients. Novel results from mesocosms, creeks and rivers illuminate the extent to which trait-mediated effects really occur. Food-web connectance remains stable for a long time, albeit some communities show more secondary extinctions than primary extinctions. Seen that complexity of multitrophic interactions has been a major barrier to a sustainable management so far, it is worth to highlight that high-diversity food webs were just as (or even more) vulnerable to extinctions as low-diversity food webs, a non- intuitive result with several important implications for ecosystem management and environmental policy. It is mostly the functional diversity (and not the taxonomic diversity) that plays the greatest role in enhancing ecological services and determining ecological processes. We need to combine scientific progress on service delivery and to perform macroecological analyses to achieve additional economic values in river management through the implementation of land use.
[email protected] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Christian_Mulder2
31 Habitat change and energy flows in experimental mesocosms
Matthew O’Callaghan1, Hart K.2,Williams G. D.1, Trimmer M.2, Woodward G.3, Ledger M.E.1
1School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK, 2Queen Mary University of London, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Mile End Road London E1 4NS, UK, 3Imperial College London, Silwood Park, Buckhurst Road, Scot, Berkshire, SL5 7PY, UK
DriStream is a three year project experimentally investigating the effects of drought on stream ecosystem functioning and utilises the University of Birmingham’s new mesocosm facility in Hampshire. Midway through the project, we present preliminary findings on changes in habitat provision under increasing dewatered scenarios. We demonstrate how a shift in production away from algal and macrophyte biomass toward emergent and terrestrial plants has the potential to alter the energy flows of streams, severing longitudinal connections, and favouring very localised and lateral dispersal of aquatic derived energy into wider terrestrial habitats. [email protected] http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/gees/ocallaghan-matt.aspx
32 Biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and community stability: experimental tests in marine ecosystems
Nessa E. O’Connor1 and Ian Donohue 2
1School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast, BT9 7BL, Northern Ireland
2Department of Zoology, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
In light of predicted global change, it is increasingly important to understand how biodiversity- ecosystem functioning relationships vary under increasingly disturbed conditions. Multiple aspects of environmental change may alter ecosystem functioning and stability. However, we currently lack the theoretical framework, and empirical tests, to understand whether diversity infers greater resistance or resilience to ecosystems. Further theoretical advancements are needed to identify the ecological patterns and processes underpinning correlations among the components of stability and identifying the individual species contributions to different components of stability. Aquatic ecosystems provide ideal model systems to test these approaches using mesocosms and, importantly, many are tractable systems for longer-term field experimentation.
[email protected] http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofBiologicalSciences/People/DrNEOConnor/
33 Higher detrital and terrestrial subsidies help increase fish production in warmer waters
Eoin O’Gorman
Imperial College London, Silwood Park, Buckhurst Road, Ascot, Berkshire, SL5 7PY, UK
It is generally accepted that top predators and other large organisms are most at risk from global warming due to their elevated metabolic demands. Some low productivity environments may show an increase in ecosystem performance with warming, however, leading to surprising effects on higher trophic level organisms. Geothermally heated streams in the Hengill valley of Iceland act as a natural warming experiment to explore these effects in a low productivity sub-Arctic environment. Primary and secondary production both increase with rising temperature in the streams, driven by increased nutrient and energy recycling. Decomposition rates increase in warmer waters, despite a reduction in fungal species richness, suggesting high levels of functional redundancy among microbial detritivores. Terrestrial subsidies to the streams also increase in warmer areas of the valley, with more adult flies available as food for the apex predator in the system, brown trout. These factors all contribute to an increase in population biomass, growth rate, production, and general condition of this fish species in the warmer streams.
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.eoinogorman.co.nr Research website: www.hengillresearch.co.nr
34 What can microbial decomposers tell us about biodiversity and ecosystem functioning relationships?
Cláudia Pascoal and Fernanda Cássio
Centre of Molecular and Environmental Biology (CBMA), Department of Biology, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal
Microorganisms play a key role in several ecosystem services, such as carbon and nutrient cycling, and water purification. However, studies investigating the impacts of biodiversity loss on ecosystem processes have often neglected the role of microorganisms in sustaining global stability. Here, we will use freshwater microbial decomposers to examine critical aspects of the relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, including i) which measure of biodiversity (taxonomic diversity, genetic diversity and functional diversity) better explains ecosystem functioning, ii) the mechanisms underlying biodiversity effects, iii) how biodiversity can sustain multiple ecological processes, and iv) how can environmental context modulates biodiversity effects.
[email protected] cbma.uminho.pt/cpascoal
35 From individual metabolism to aquatic ecosystem dynamics
Samraat Pawar
Imperial College London, Silwood Park, Buckhurst Road, Ascot, Berkshire, SL5 7PY, UK
I will present recent advances towards an general, mechanistic theory for aquatic ecosystem dynamics in the face of environmental fluctuations. In particular, I will show how an empirically-grounded metabolic theory of species interactions can naturally capture the ubiquitous effect of environmental temperature and body size constraints on community dynamics. Nevertheless, this theory is very much a work in progress, and I will identify a number of important hurdles in the way of a truly general framework for predicting the dynamics of natural and perturbed aquatic ecosystems.
36 Foodweb size-structure in running waters
Daniel M. Perkinsa, Matteo Dossenab, Katrin Layer-Dobraa, Julia Reissc, Murray Thompsona & Guy Woodwarda
aDepartment of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, U.K.; bSchool of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, U.K.; cDepartment of Life Sciences, Roehampton University, London, U.K.
Relationships between body size and abundance provide a measure of the ‘size-structure’ of ecological communities and can be used to inform conservation and management policy in some aquatic systems. However, few studies have quantified the size-structure of benthic food webs where external subsidies and the prevalence of detritivory likely complicate simple size-based predictions. Here, we characterise relationships between organism body mass and abundance for streams and rivers across spatial-temporal scales. We then investigate the effects of detritivory on the form of size-abundance relationships and trophic structure.
[email protected] http://nerc-duress.org/
37 Terminal oxidation – the final pull in the degradation process
Kevin Purdy
School of Life Sciences, Gibbet Hill Campus, The University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
Within many systems the final arbiters of degradation are the anaerobic terminal oxidisers, the sulphate reducing bacteria and methanogenic archaea. Yet traditionally the final stages in degradation have been treated as a black box, small organic compounds go in and carbon dioxide and methane come out. However, these final steps are far more than sweeping up the remnants, up to 50% of all organic carbon can be oxidised by terminal oxidisers and they play a pivotal role not just in cleaning up the mess but in ensuring that degradation continues and global biogeochemical cycles keep functioning. Here I will discuss the role of terminal oxidisers and some recent insights we have made into their ecological and function in a changing world.
[email protected] http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/lifesci/people/kpurdy/
38 Integrating theoretical and empirical approaches: the Marine Ecosystems Research Programme
Paul Somerfield
Principal Investigator, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Prospect Place, Plymouth PL1 3DH, UK
Coastal and shelf marine ecosystems are highly productive, bringing great benefits to humans. These benefits, called "ecosystem services" include food supply, recycling and recreation. Coastal and shelf seas are under great pressure from factors such as fishing and climate change. Despite years of intensive study, our knowledge of how shelf ecosystems work is still patchy. Therefore we cannot yet predict how they will respond to changes.
This talk is a brief introduction to the NERC/Defra Marine Ecosystems Research Programme. In the programme researchers with complementary track records from across a number of UK institutes will develop an integrated, whole-ecosystem approach to understand how changes occur in marine ecosystems and how these affect the services they provide.
We will: a) synthesise and analyse the vast array of existing, but scattered, data, b) target key data gaps and choke-points in our understanding with focussed fieldwork and experimentation and c) combine these into a suite of computer models to explore future consequences of changes and perturbations for ecosystem services.
Our geographical focus will be the western seas, from the western English Channel, through the Celtic and Irish Seas, to western Scotland, although relevant data from a wider area will be included.
[email protected] www.marine-ecosystems.org.uk
39 Restoration, conservation and resilience in lowland rivers
Murray Thompson1, Clare Gray1, Manon Czuckermand1, Carl Sayer, Adam Hilliard, Katja Lehman, Mark Ledger, Alex Dumbrell, Tom Bell1, Claire Bankier1, Mark Trimmer, Felicity Shelly, Charlotte Hitchmough, Guy Woodward1 & Steve Brooks
1Imperial College London, Silwood Park, Buckhurst Road, Ascot, Berkshire, SL5 7PY, UK
The natural chemical, physical and biological states of rivers are being altered increasingly by long-term exploitation and habitat modification. Successful restorative intervention is therefore critical for mitigating impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Here we investigate the ecological impact of restoration and a pesticide spill using detrital breakdown rates in conjunction with a BACI monitoring design which includes measures across multiple organisational levels, from genes and individuals through to quantified food webs.
40 Ecological Roles of Pacific Salmon in Alaskan Rivers
Scott Tiegs
Department of Biological Sciences, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA
Millions of Pacific salmon migrate each year from the ocean into their natal streams to spawn and die. In their bodies these fish bring with them huge quantities of often-limiting nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. These nutrients – released by live salmon as excreta, and leached from salmon carcasses as they decompose – are believed to have a positive bottom-up influence on the abundance of stream and riparian organisms. In contrast, extensive nest digging in stream sediments during spawning may disturb benthic organisms, countering these bottom-up effects. Manipulative and observational field studies were conducted on Prince of Wales Island, Southeast Alaska, USA, that allowed an evaluation of these and other types of ecological effects that salmon were thought to have on stream ecosystems. The abundance of salmon carcasses was experimentally increased by installing 140, 1.5 m-long carcass-retention devices, made of rebar and conduit pipe, in a 110-m length of stream channel. Ecological responses in this reach were compared to an upstream control reach before and after the salmon run. In a second experiment, 2 x 2 m exclosures were installed to locally prevent salmon from nest digging activity associated with spawning. Additional studies evaluated the decomposition of salmon carcasses across different stream and riparian habitats, and the stream-ecosystem response to salmon across a gradient of timber- harvest intensity in 7 streams. In these field-based studies response variables included: dissolved-nutrient concentrations and fluxes, benthic algal biomass, stream metabolism, macroinvertebrate community composition, isotopic composition of juvenile salmon, and rates of nitrification.
Concentrations of streamwater ammonium, soluble reactive phosphorus, and nitrate increased more than 15-fold with the arrival of migrating salmon. Algal biomass exhibited increases as well, evidence of a bottom-up effect of salmon-derived nutrients. Later in the salmon run, salmon-carcass retention devices resulted in an approximately five-fold increase in carcass abundance. Despite this significant increase in carcass abundance, dissolved nutrients and benthic algal biomass increased only slightly. Our results illustrate that nutrients excreted by migrating and spawning salmon can have an immediate and strong positive influence on algal biomass, whole- stream metabolism, and biogeochemical processes such as nitrification. However, results from the salmon exclosure experiment revealed that some of these positive effects are largely offset by salmon spawning disturbance, and the magnitude of this offset is regulated by in-stream conditions, such as sediment size. Collectively, these and other findings suggest that the effects of salmon migrations can be significant, and are primarily through nutrient excretion and salmon spawning disturbance, while those of salmon carcasses are relatively modest.
[email protected] https://files.oakland.edu/users/tiegs/website_tiegs.htm
41 Riverbeds: new ways in and out for carbon and nitrogen
Mark Trimmer
Queen Mary University of London, School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Mile End Road
London E1 4NS, UK
Rivers are not simple inert conduits merely piping carbon and nitrogen from catchment to coast. Some 0.35 Pg C y-1 is estimated to be respired to CO2 across the global network of rivers, even though some of that carbon is conveyed from the land and may be very old. In turn, the availability of that carbon appears to be a good indicator of a rivers capacity to remove fixed nitrogen and hence down regulate primary production. A large body of data are available for whole river carbon metabolism which, in turn, can provide managers with functional metric ‘tools’ to assess river quality in light of the impact of changing land use, for example. In contrast, such a wealth of data are not available for ‘denitrification’ and the overall pathways for processing fixed N. Even though the recent whole reach application of 15N advances our understanding of ‘denitrification’ in small streams, its cost is likely to prohibit its wide scale use in research, let alone its routine application as a management tool. In addition, our own recent work and that further afield, across rivers of contrasting geologies, quite clearly demonstrates that multiple metabolisms play a role in removing fixed N, even in seemingly completely oxic parts of the riverbed – and such pathways cannot be captured by even the most advanced techniques available today. Further, our recent realisation that a considerable fraction of primary production appears to be driven by the oxidation of methane in many lowland rivers challenges the fundamental principle that riverine food webs and production are solely based on either allochthonous detrital resources and/or authochthonous photosynthetic production. The potential for import and recycling of such “inorganic allochthonous resources”, via lateral exchange with the broader landscape, for example, could represent a large, yet almost entirely unappreciated, source of carbon to rivers. While the advent of such novel routes through the carbon and nitrogen cycles certainly challenges the simple conventions of GPP, ER and ‘denitrification’ they ensure that the biogeochemistry of carbon and nitrogen in rivers will continue to stimulate novel research for years to come. [email protected] http://www.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/staff/marktrimmer.html http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=JIOy8pgAAAAJ
42 Nutrient flux to demersal faunas in the deep sea – detrital or biological vectors?
Clive N Trueman
SuMIE, Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton Waterfront Campus, European Way, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK
The transfer of nutrients between linked ecosystems influences ecosystem production, composition and resilience to change. Quantifying the relative importance of biological and physical mechanisms of nutrient flux is critical for determining the vulnerability of ecosystems to exploitation in physically distant, but ecologically linked areas.
Continental slopes provide a unique natural laboratory, with rapid depth-related gradients accessible across short physical distances. Primary production is limited to the surface ocean layers, therefore as physical distance from primary production increases, the relatively importance of different vectors transporting nutrients to the demersal fauna is likely to change. Particularly, the relative importance of detrital particle fluxes is expected to increase with depth, and many marine biology texts states that detrital particle flux fuels deep-water ecosystems.
Here, we combine natural abundance stable isotope tracers and fisheries survey data to quantify nutrient pathways leading to different trophic guilds of demersal fishes across a depth gradient on the continental slope. We show that midwater and bentho-pelagic feeding organisms play an important role in the ocean carbon cycle, bypassing the detrital particle flux and transferring carbon to deep storage in demersal biomass. Global peaks in biomass and diversity of fishes at mid-slope depths are explained by competitive release of the demersal fish predators of mid- water organisms, which in turn supports benthic fish production. We estimate that over 50% of the biomass of the demersal fish community at depths between 500 and 1800m is supported by biological rather than detrital nutrient flux processes.
Lab website (under construction!): www.marineisotopeecology.weebly.com
43 Planet earth, planet ocean: does ecological theory generalise across aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems?
Tom Webb
Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TP, UK
The extent to which ecosystem properties and dynamics generalise across biomes is a fundamental question in ecology: to what extent can principles derived from one system be applied to systems in different environmental settings? Yet to date, cross-realm thinking has been restricted by the separation between marine and ‘mainstream’ ecology. Furthermore, cross-realm efforts have typically adopted a ‘marine vs terrestrial’ approach, whereas more nuanced, question-specific comparisons are likely to prove more fruitful. These include the comparison of ecological process in physically dissimilar settings, and the comparison of marine and terrestrial phenomena (e.g. organismal traits, community diversity) occurring in physically similar settings. In this talk, I will give an overview of some of the more promising avenues for crossover between theories developed on land and the study of marine biodiversity, with a focus on macroecological scales and the role of environmental variability.
44 Leaf breakdown, autochthonous production, and nutrient dynamics in streams -- they're all connected.
Jack Webster and Denis Newbold
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA
There is accumulating evidence that living organisms in streams may significantly affect nutrient dynamics, which is important to our understanding of how upstream processes are linked to downstream responses, the biogeochemical interpretation of watershed exports, and delivery of nutrients to coastal waters. Our objective was to demonstrate these dynamics by developing a computer simulation model that incorporates much of what we currently know about nutrient dynamics in streams. Our model includes two fundamental concepts, stream spiraling and ecological stoichiometry. It also includes both autotrophic and heterotrophic processes.
Simulations with only autotrophs resulted in a strong reduction in both N and P during summer. Overall, 26.3% of input dissolved N and 27.9% of dissolved P were retained within the 1000-m reach. With only heterotrophs, immobilization of both N and P exceeded mineralization so that there was net retention through much of the year. However, during spring through mid-summer, mineralization was greater than immobilization and there was net mineralization. Overall, net retention was 18.5% for N and 22.8% for P for the 1000-m reach. We simulated two types of leaf-decomposing microbes, those that get nutrients (N and P) from leaves (miners) and those that get nutrients from water (immobilizers). Our simulations suggest that miners and immobilizers may stimulate each other through nutrient generation and that the presence of both nutrient acquisition mechanisms increases the efficiency of leaf litter decay.
With both autotrophs and heterotrophs, the resulting pattern of dissolved nutrient concentration had two peaks, similar to what has been observed in some streams in the U.S. In general the results showed competition for nutrients between autotrophs and heterotrophs during some times of the year. Without competition from heterotrophic immobilizers, NPP was substantially increased in summer and fall, but through winter and spring, a large fraction of NPP was based on leaf-derived nutrients. Similarly, when there was no primary production, the leaf decay rate increased in spring, but without regeneration of algal-fixed nutrients, the leaf decay rate was slowed through most of the growing season.
Most small streams are either dominated by autochthonous or allochthonous energy input. Where trees shade a stream, they provide allochthonous energy but also shade the stream, limiting autochthonous production. In streams where allochthonous and autochthonous production are similar (partial riparian forest but open over the stream), interactions between autotrophs and heterotrophs can affect the retention of inorganic nutrients. Rather than being synergistic, autotrophs and heterotrophs often compete for critical nutrients -- in our simulations, NPP was generally higher when leaves were not present and leaf decay was faster when there was no algae production.
45 The Future of Aquaculture to 2060; Addressing Global Challenges
Jason Weeks
Environmental Science and Technology Department, School of Applied Sciences, Cranfield University, College Road, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, MK43 0AL, UK
This talk will consider the significant challenge that is to ensure the continued supply of sustainable and healthy seafood in the future whilst at the same time seeing a significant intensification of farmed fish and shellfish. Nearly 50% of the seafood we eat in the UK is farmed at locations all over the world; this proportion is likely to grow significantly in coming years. Much of this seafood is imported into the EU from South East Asia including countries such as Thailand, China, Vietnam and Bangladesh. We expect that production is both safe and ethical not withstanding sustainable. This presentation will consider the future drivers and scenarios likely to impact on the global aquaculture industry and will be based around a series of ‘key factors’ to focus horizon scanning efforts on trends in ‘emerging or ongoing’ global aquaculture issues, often as a result of new research or knowledge, a shift in geographical or temporal scales of impact, or due to heightened awareness or responsive measures to emerging issues. The key factors will consider for example, consumer attitudes and behaviour, science, technology and innovation, energy supply and demand, food production, processing and distribution, climate, environment and biodiversity and oceans, marine life and fisheries. Web-based exploratory horizon scanning was undertaken and insights considered and grouped together if they shared a similar theme or idea; generating insight clusters. Clusters were sense checked using Google trends software and verified by expert knowledge. Evidence and information from articles in the insight clusters and other publications were used to develop key trends. These trends suggest the direction of change, but have an inherent level of uncertainty. This presentation identifies likely trends that impact on global aquaculture. As with any foresight activity, the trends represented provide only a small number of possible future outcomes.
46 DURESS – The Role of Detrital Dynamics in Ecosystem Service Sustainability
Andrew J. Weightman & DURESS Project Team
Cardiff School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, The Sir Martin Evans Building, Museum Ave, Cardiff CF10 3AX, UK
Sustainable management of river ecosystem services depends on understanding the processes that underpin them. For example, we lack quantitative understanding of how river processes contribute to the clarification, purification and cost of clean water. Through in situ experiments and long-term big data analysis, the NERC-DURESS project is seeking to assess quantitatively how river services, such as fish production or water quality regulation, depend on river organisms, and whether there are biodiversity thresholds under which a service cannot be delivered or is compromised.
[email protected] http://nerc-duress.org/
47 The Blue Planet: Aquatic Ecology in the 21st Century
Guy Woodward
Imperial College London, Silwood Park, Buckhurst Road, Ascot, SL5 7PY
Aquatic ecology has made huge advances in our understanding of marine, brackish and freshwaters throughout the 20th Century. Over this past century, aquatic systems have faced a huge range of anthropogenic threats, some of which have subsided, whereas others have intensified. New stressors are increasingly coming to the fore in the 21st Century and aquatic ecology must now rise to the challenges they will pose. A host of powerful new approaches – from Citizen Science and ecoinformatics to Next Generation Sequencing and sophisticated predictive models - must be marshalled if we are to protect and restore these critically important ecosystems for future generations.
[email protected] https://sites.google.com/site/drguywoodward/
48 Temperature dependence of biogeochemical cycles: scaling from populations to ecosystems
Gabriel Yvon-Durocher
University of Exeter , Penryn Campus, Penryn, Cornwall TR10 9FE, UK
I will discuss the biochemical, physiological and ecological mechanisms that link biota to global biogeochemical cycles. I will show how the temperature dependence of the key fluxes in the global carbon cycle scale from organismal physiology to ecosystem-level fluxes. I will argue that at very large scales – e.g. in large compilations of data from many ecosystems – the intrinsic biochemical kinetics of metabolism emerge as the key constraint governing the response of ecosystem fluxes to temperature.
I will also show that respiration, photosynthesis and methane flux have differential temperature sensitivities that cause the emission balance of greenhouse gases (CO2 & CH4) to be temperature dependent, which may have fundamental implications for understanding future feedbacks between the biosphere and climate change.
[email protected] http://www.exeter.ac.uk/esi/people/yvon-durocher/
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E) SOCIAL (Monday – Friday + Saturday)
THE SOCIAL SIDE….EVENING MIXERS AND “SILFEST”
Monday night will involve a mixer at Charles Darwin House from 5pm, after which we will retire to the local pub – The Blue Lion. This will be the general meeting place for after- hours drinks outside of mixers and poster sessions etc held in CDH during the rest of the meeting. The local helpers – see page 1 – will help guide you to the bar…!
On Saturday, for those of you with enough energy for more drinks and parties – there is the annual Silfest gathering at Imperial College’s Silwood Park Campus – see photo...
This will be an outdoors “garden party” in the grounds of the country estate and manor house – with live bands etc. Tickets can be purchased in advance – it is a short journey to Silwood on the train from London Waterloo (take the Reading train and get off at Sunningdale – it is a 20min walk or short cab ride from there to the campus)….see flyer below:
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Come and join in the revelry at the Imperial College London Silwood Park Campus for the annual Silfest festival. Located in stunning Berkshire parkland, with a bar, live music, fresh food, free camping and a fun carnival atmosphere
Tickets can be bought online; the early bird tickets are still up for grabs for £15 at tinyurl.com/Silfest2014
More information can be found on facebook-facebook.com/Silfest2014 and twitter - twitter.com/Silfest2014 and the union website union.ic.ac.uk/silfest/
Travel Directions: 50-minute train journey from Waterloo to Sunningdale, train tickets approximately £13 and there will be a shuttle bus from the station to the park.
51 F) APPENDIX: DOCUMENT FOR DISCUSSION
APPENDIX: DOCUMENT FOR OPEN DISCUSSION DURING THE MEETING (courtesy of Linda May et al)
Explanatory Text supplied by Linda May:
“The UK freshwater research community has been developing as draft document for submission to the recent NERC 'Call for ideas' (http://www.nerc.ac.uk/latest/news/nerc/ideas/). We hope to encourage better funding for freshwater ecological research within the UK. We would welcome comments on the 'Idea' as it stands, bearing in mind the call guidelines provided by NERC, and hope that it inspires other aquatic ecologists to submit their own ideas, too.”
2-page outline document:
Idea Template
Title: Freshwater futures: sustaining freshwater ecosystems in exploited landscapes Statement of the idea Freshwaters are essential to our health and well-being, but are losing biodiversity, integrity and function faster than any other ecosystem on the planet [1]. Their sensitivity to change results from their high level of connectance to processes and pressures across a range of scales, including global climate change, regional atmospheric deposition, and local inputs of nutrients, sediment, pollutants and invasive species from the catchment [2]. Within the UK, many freshwaters are also affected by a legacy of past impacts (e.g. pollution, hydrological modification, species introductions) and by their location in heavily exploited and ecologically degraded landscapes [3]. Until recently, freshwater research has tended to be fragmented - focusing on a particular site, component or problem [4] and overlooking the full role of microorganisms in the functioning of freshwaters. However, the sustainable management of our freshwaters into the future requires a much more integrated approach that is based on holistic and ecosystem-based research, combines lakes, rivers, wetlands and groundwaters, and includes multiple pressures from the immediate catchment and beyond. A novel and ambitious programme of work is proposed that addresses this need by linking freshwater ecologists from universities, institutes, regulatory authorities, industry and local communities across the UK to achieve a common goal: excellent science to support the sustainable management of freshwaters in exploited landscapes. To achieve this goal, five key research areas have been identified: (i) Elucidating the importance of physical and ecological connectivity within freshwater systems at the landscape scale on ecosystem function in terms of biodiversity, resilience, species invasions, and the spread of pollutants and diseases;
52 (ii) Identifying the role of the functional and taxonomic diversity of microbes in resource cycling and ecosystem resilience, including the importance of microbial “seedbanks” in ensuring that local diversity is sufficient to support key ecosystem functions (e.g. respiration, carbon fixation and nutrient cycling) and their role as functional ‘custodians’ of chemical water quality, vectors of disease and in providing essential links in food chains that lead to higher organisms; (iii) Developing a capacity to forecast how freshwater ecosystems will respond to multiplying and interacting pressures across multiple spatial scales and under rapid environmental change; (iv) Identifying the role of historical influences, such as pollution and inappropriate prior management, on recovery trajectories following ecosystem remediation activities, especially in terms of delayed recovery and the public perception of the cost-effectiveness of restoration; and (v) Optimising the benefits of landscape-level management for securing the natural capital of our freshwater systems and the multiple goods and services that waterbodies and catchments provide, with particular focus on the unintended ‘knock on’ consequences that place-based restoration activities may have elsewhere within a highly connected system [5]. The topics also address some of the recently-identified‘100 fundamental questions in ecology’ [6] including the role of connectance and fragmentation (Q1); the role of microbial diversity in ecosystem function (Q30); the controls on system resilience (Q60) and modelling feedbacks between human behavior and ecological dynamics (Q100). Addressing NERC’s societal challenges, and strategic importance for the UK and NERC All three of NERC’s societal challenges are addressed. Benefiting from natural resources: Human survival depends on freshwater ecosystems that are threatened by increasing pressures and demands [7]; sustainable use needs a better understanding of how landscape scale environmental processes affect resource availability. Resilience to environmental hazards: Hazards such as pollution, floods, droughts and invasive species have profound effects on freshwaters; more integrated research will help us manage their vulnerability, risk, response and recovery more effectively. Managing environmental change: Freshwaters are very sensitive to environmental change across a range of scales; this research will help us manage these resources for multiple benefits within a changing landscape. The proposed research is highly relevant to a country with limited water resources, because of its island status, and a high population density, and will strengthen the international profile of UK freshwater science. Describe what scientific advance is needed, and its timeliness and novelty A holistic view of freshwaters within their catchments is crucial to their sustainable management and responsible use in the future, and presents novel research challenges that require interdisciplinary, cross scale, and process-based research. These challenges can be met by building on existing national and international networks of freshwater scientists and facilities (eg GLEON, NERC BESS & macronutrient cycles programmes), applying modern high-frequency measurement technologies (eg UKLEON, Defra test catchments, COSMOS) and adopting Earth Observation approaches (eg GloboLakes). Potential for collaborations and partnerships that would be beneficial The vision is to produce an integrated network of research scientists, regulators, water industry staff and citizen scientists working together to achieve a common goal. Existing networks (see above) will be expanded and supplemented to include other expertise such as social science and environmental economics. Part of the work proposed will be to create and maintain these links via meetings, interactive internet resources and other means of communication. There is potential to secure funding from other organisations such as BBSRC, Defra and ESRC for the fundamental research, and to involve business partners in developing sustainable solutions to environmental problems or designing simple, cost effective, monitoring equipment (eg to support citizen science). Capacity and infrastructure needed to do the research This initiative capitalises on data, scientific expertise and experimental facilities available within the UK and will enable a step change in our understanding of freshwater ecology within a landscape context. Concerning data, the UK has unparalleled freshwater datasets (e.g. CEH long-term monitoring programme; Environmental Change Network; Uplands Water Monitoring Network; regulatory and conservation agency monitoring data) in terms of their temporal and spatial extent, many of which remain under-utilised scientifically.
53 Information on how the idea originated and has been developed The initial idea was developed by the UK freshwater research community during a 2-day workshop involving 20 people which was refined through subsequent discussions and e-mail exchanges with more than 80 of the UK’s freshwater scientists. Most work closely with conservation bodies, regulatory agencies and policymakers on a regular basis, and this research proposal has been developed with stakeholder engagement and end user involvement in mind. References [1] Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) Ecosystems and Human well-being: Synthesis. Washington. [2] Maberly & Elliott (2012) Insights from long-term studies in the Windermere catchment: external stressors, internal interactions and the structure and function of lake ecosystems. Freshwat. Biol. 57: 233-243. [3] Maltby et al. (2011) Freshwater-openwaters, wetlands and floodplains, IN The UK National Ecosystem Assessment Tech. Rep., UNEP-WCMC, Cambridge. [4] Battarbee et al. (2005) A review of freshwater ecology in the UK., FBA. [5] May & Spears (2012) Managing ecosystem services at Loch Leven, Scotland, UK: actions, impacts and unintended consequences. Hydrobiol. 681: 117-130. [6] Sutherland et al. (2013) Identification of 100 fundamental ecological questions. J. Ecol. 101: 58-67. [7] Vorosmarty et al. (2010). Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity. Nature 467: 555-561.
For office use only:
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