Ambio’s legacy on monitoring,impact, and management of acid rain: This article belongs to Ambio’s 50th Anniversary Collection. Theme: Acidification

Early studies published in Ambio showed large-scale acidification of lakes in southern Sweden and Norway from acid rain. These studies were important for delimiting various scientific issues and thus for eventually contributing to legislation, which reduced emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides and helped to mitigate this major environmental problem. Long-term studies and monitoring in Sweden and Norway and at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire helped guide this legislation in Europe and in the USA.     

NABat: A top-down,bottom-up solution to collaborative continental-scale monitoring

Collaborative monitoring over broad scales and levels of ecological organization can inform conservation efforts necessary to address the contemporary biodiversity crisis. An important challenge to collaborative monitoring is motivating local engagement with enough buy-in from stakeholders while providing adequate top-down direction for scientific rigor, quality control, and coordination. Collaborative monitoring must reconcile this inherent tension between top-down control and bottom-up engagement. Highly mobile and cryptic taxa, such as bats, present a particularly acute challenge. Given their scale of movement, complex life histories, and rapidly expanding threats, understanding population trends of bats requires coordinated broad-scale collaborative monitoring. The North American Bat Monitoring Program (NABat) reconciles top-down, bottom-up tension with a hierarchical master sample survey design, integrated data analysis, dynamic data curation, regional monitoring hubs, and knowledge delivery through web-based infrastructure. NABat supports collaborative monitoring across spatial and organizational scales and the full annual lifecycle of bats.     

Transforming urban planning processes and outcomes through creative methods

Inclusively delivering the sustainable development goals (SDGs) remains challenging, particularly in urban areas, where some of the most pressing concerns exist. To achieve the transformative SDG agenda, new methods are required to overcome current deficits in engagement around inclusion and equitable outcomes. Evaluating against theories of governance and inclusion, we test a mixture of digital and physical creative methods abilities to deliver co-designed solutions that influence mobility and road safety planning outcomes in East African cities. Greater inclusion led to improved interactions of citizens with decision makers, and the identification of novel, practical solutions, delivering some elements of transformation. Risks include creative methods being used to co-opt communities to official agendas, and institutional planning norms needing to adapt to respond to a wider range of stakeholders. Overall, where risks are mitigated, we recommend that using Creative Methods could localise SDG delivery, ensuring more equitable and effective outcomes from infrastructure development investments.Supplementary InformationThe online version of this article (10.1007/s13280-020-01436-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Hg concentrations and stable isotope variations in tropical fish species of a gold-mining-impacted watershed in French Guiana

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The aim of the study was to determine if gold-mining activities could impact the mercury (Hg) concentrations and isotopic signatures in freshwater...     

Small-scale on-site treatment of fecal matter: comparison of treatments for resource recovery and sanitization

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - On-site small-scale sanitation is common in rural areas and areas without infrastructure, but the treatment of the collected fecal matter can be...     

镧-铅复合污染下AM真菌对玉米生长和镧、铅吸收的影响

采用温室盆栽试验的方法,模拟不同程度的镧-铅复合污染土壤(50、200、800 mg·kg~(-1)),研究接种丛枝菌根(arbuscular mycorrhizal,AM)、真菌Claroideoglomus etunicatum(CE)和Rhizophagus intraradices(RI)对玉米(Zea mays L.)菌根侵染率、生物量、矿质营养元素吸收、C∶N∶P生态化学计量比、稀土镧(La)和重金属铅(Pb)吸收、转运的影响,旨在为稀土-重金属复合污染土壤的治理和修复提供科学依据.结果表明,AM真菌CE和RI均与玉米建立了共生关系,平均菌根侵染率为26.7%~95.8%;随着La-Pb复合污染含量的增加,玉米植株菌根侵染率、地上部和根部生物量以及N、P、K、Ca、Mg这5种矿质营养元素含量显著降低,而玉米植株C∶P和N∶P以及地上部和根部La、Pb含量显著增加.接种2种AM真菌使玉米植株生物量显著提高了17.8%~158.9%,地上部和根部P含量显著提高了24.5%~153.8%,降低了C∶P和N∶P,符合生长速率假设.在3种程度La-Pb复合污染含量土壤上,AM真菌使玉米植株根部Pb含量显著增加了51.3%~67.7%,地上部Pb含量显著降低了16.0%~67.7%,Pb从玉米根部向地上部的转运率降低了31.5%~54.7%;同时,接种AM真菌显著增加了轻度LaPb复合污染土壤上玉米植株的La含量,在中度La-Pb复合污染土壤上却显著减少了玉米地上部的La含量,增加了玉米根部的La含量,抑制了La从根部向地上部的转运,重度La-Pb复合污染土壤上均没有显著影响.试验结果初步证明,AM真菌具有促进稀土-重金属复合污染土壤植物修复的潜力,对于稀土-重金属复合污染土壤生态系统的植被恢复具有潜在应用价值.     

Effects of exotic fish farms on bird communities in lake and marine ecosystems

Salmon farming is a widespread activity around the world, also known to promote diverse environmental effects on aquatic ecosystems. However, information regarding the impact of salmon farming on bird assemblages is notably scarce. We hypothesize that salmon farming, by providing food subsidies and physical structures to birds, will change their local community structure. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a seasonal monitoring of bird richness, abundance, and composition at paired salmon pen and control plots in two marine and two lake sites in southern Chile, from fall 2002 to summer 2004. Overall, salmon farming had no significant effects on species richness, but bird abundance was significantly and noticeably higher in salmon pens than in controls. Such aggregation was mainly accounted for by the trophic guilds of omnivores, diving piscivores, carrion eaters, and perching piscivores, but not by invertebrate feeders, herbivores, and surface feeders. Species composition was also significantly and persistently different between salmon pens and controls within each lake or marine locality. The patterns described above remained consistent across environment types and seasons indicating that salmon farming is changing the community structure of birds in both lake and marine habitats by promoting functional and aggregation responses, particularly by favoring species with broader niches. Such local patterns may thus anticipate potential threats from the ongoing expansion of the salmon industry to neighboring areas in Chile, resulting in regional changes of bird communities, toward a less diverse one and dominated by opportunistic, common, and generalist species such as gulls, vultures, and cormorants.     

Individual consistency in exploratory behaviour and mating tactics in male guppies

While behavioural plasticity is considered an adaptation to fluctuating social and environmental conditions, many animals also display a high level of individual consistency in their behaviour over time or across contexts (generally termed ‘personality’). However, studies of animal personalities that include sexual behaviour, or functionally distinct but correlated traits, are relatively scarce. In this study, we tested for individual behavioural consistency in courtship and exploratory behaviour in male guppies (Poecilia reticulata) in two light environments (high vs. low light intensity). Based on previous work on guppies, we predicted that males would modify their behaviour from sneak mating tactics to courtship displays under low light conditions, but also that the rank orders of courtship effort would remain unchanged (i.e. highly sexually active individuals would display relatively high levels of courtship under both light regimes). We also tested for correlations between courtship and exploratory behaviour, predicting that males that had high display rates would also be more likely to approach a novel object. Although males showed significant consistency in their exploratory and mating behaviour over time (1 week), we found no evidence that these traits constituted a behavioural syndrome. Furthermore, in contrast to previous work, we found no overall effect of the light environment on any of the behaviours measured, although males responded to the treatment on an individual-level basis, as reflected by a significant individual-by-environment interaction. The future challenge is to investigate how individual consistency across different environmental contexts relates to male reproductive success.     

Pollination syndromes ignored: importance of non-ornithophilous flowers to Neotropical savanna hummingbirds

Generalization prevails in flower–animal interactions, and although animal visitors are not equally effective pollinators, most interactions likely represent an important energy intake for the animal visitor. Hummingbirds are nectar-feeding specialists, and many tropical plants are specialized toward hummingbird-pollination. In spite of this, especially in dry and seasonal tropical habitats, hummingbirds may often rely on non-ornithophilous plants to meet their energy requirements. However, quantitative studies evaluating the relative importance of ornithophilous vs. non-ornithophilous plants for hummingbirds in these areas are scarce. We here studied the availability and use of floral resources by hummingbirds in two different areas of the Cerrado, the seasonal savannas in Central Brazil. Roughly half the hummingbird visited plant species were non-ornithophilous, and these contributed greatly to increase the overall nectar availability. We showed that mean nectar offer, at the transect scale, was the only parameter related to hummingbird visitation frequency, more so than nectar offer at single flowers and at the plant scale, or pollination syndrome. Centrality indices, calculated using hummingbird–plant networks, showed that ornithophilous and non-ornithophilous plants have similar importance for network cohesion. How this foraging behaviour affects reproduction of non-ornithophilous plants remains largely unexplored and is probably case specific, however, we suggest that the additional energy provided by non-ornithophilous plants may facilitate reproduction of truly ornithophilous flowers by attracting and maintaining hummingbirds in the area. This may promote asymmetric hummingbird–plant associations, i.e., pollination depends on floral traits adapted to hummingbird morphology, but hummingbird visitation is determined more by the energetic "reward" than by pollination syndromes.