Seeking,Thinking, Acting: Understanding Suburban Resident Perceptions and Behaviors Related to Stream Quality

Theories in risk, psychology, and communication suggest aiming to inform the public about basic ecological facts may not be enough to influence knowledge of risks or behaviors to mitigate water quality risks. The risk information‐seeking and processing model and the theory of planned behavior suggest several additional variables that are likely to influence risk‐mitigating behaviors. We used data from a survey of watershed residents in Ohio to explore a model of behavioral intentions to positively impact stream health. Residents' informational norms, or the perceived pressure to know about local stream health, strongly predicted their information‐seeking behaviors. Active‐seeking behaviors predicted positive attitudes toward behaviors impacting stream health, which predicted intentions to positively impact stream health. Implications for outreach include couching communication in terms of risk found important to the local community, here wildlife were seen as negatively influenced by water quality, as opposed to plain reports typically provided by utility companies. Increasing social pressure to feel informed by emphasizing the existing knowledge of stream ecology among residents could change the norm for the less informed. A low response rate limits the generalizability of findings here, but leveraging these findings in outreach efforts could prove more successful in engaging the public to improve stream health and support policies to improve stream health.     

Characterizing a Major Urban Stream Restoration Project: Nine Mile Run (Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania, USA)

Urban stream restoration continues to be used as an ecological management tool, despite uncertainty about the long‐term sustainability and resilience of restored systems. Evaluations of restoration success often focus on specific instream indicators, with limited attention to the wider basin or parallel hydrologic and geomorphic process. A comprehensive understanding of urban stream restoration progress is particularly important for comparisons with nonurban sites as urban streams can provide substantial secondary benefits to urban residents. Here, we utilize a wide range of indicators to retrospectively examine the restoration of Nine Mile Run, a multi‐million dollar stream restoration project in eastern Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania, USA). Examination of available continuous hydrological data illustrates the high cost of failures to incorporate the data into planning and adaptive management. For example, persistent extreme flows drive geomorphic degradation threatening to reverse hydrologic connections created by the restoration and impact the improved instream biotic communities. In addition, human activities associated with restoration efforts suggest a positive feedback as the stream restoration has focused effort on the basin beyond the reach. Ultimately, urban stream restoration remains a potentially useful management tool, but continued improvements in post‐project assessment should include examination of a wider range of indicators.     

Limb regeneration and subsequent asymmetry in a male secondary sexual character influences sexual selection in wolf spiders

Males of the brush-legged wolf spider Schizocosa ocreata (Hentz) have conspicuously decorated forelegs used in courtship and agonistic displays. Approximately one in five juvenile males has a missing or regenerating foreleg, and regeneration of a leg lost during development usually results in the absence of a decorative tuft on that leg. The subsequent asymmetry in this male secondary character significantly decreases success in both courtship of females and male-male agonistic interactions. Experimental removal of tufts from one leg of previously successful symmetric males produces similar results. As a test for concomitant behavioral effects, female spiders were shown video images of a courting male with symmetric tufts and the same video image altered to have asymmetric tufts. Female receptivity to the asymmetric video image was lower. In contrast to fluctuating asymmetry resulting from developmental instability, leg tuft asymmetry in S. ocreata most likely arises from a single event during ontogeny – possibly leg loss from an aggressive or predator encounter  – and may serve as a quality indicator in female mate choice. Received: 27 July 1995/ Accepted after revision: 19 November 1995     

Nachhaltige Entwicklung von Managementstrategien: Multikriterielle Bewertungs- und Entscheidungshilfe-Instrumente im Umweltbereich

Zur Unterstützung von Bewertungs- und Entscheidungsprozessen über die Nachhaltigkeit von Managementstrategien, deren Auswirkungen durch unterschiedlich dimensionierte Indikatoren gemessen werden, gibt es verschiedene mathematische Methoden. In diesem Beitrag werden die Prinzipien dieser sog. multikriteriellen Bewertungs- und Entscheidungshilfeinstrumente beispielhaft anhand einer Auswahl von Strategien für ein Nachhaltiges Wassermanagement vorgestellt, sowie Vor- und Nachteile herausgearbeitet. Es wird gezeigt, dass sich die Verfahren insbesondere in Transparenz, Objektivit?t und durch den Grad an Partizipation durch Akteure z.T. erheblich unterscheiden. W?hrend die Hassediagrammtechnik sich an den naturwissenschaftlich begründbaren Datenmatrix orientiert und somit eine objektive und transparente Bewertung und Datenanalyse liefert, haben Konkordanzanalyse, Nutzwertanalyse, PROMETHEE und AHP ihre St?rken in der M?glichkeit, Akteure bzw. Stakeholder am Entscheidungsprozess partizipieren zu lassen. *** DIRECT SUPPORT *** A00OI029 00003     

A carbon budget of a small humic lake: an example of the importance of lakes for organic matter cycling in boreal catchments

Lakes play an important role in the cycling of organic matter in the boreal landscape, due to the frequently high extent of bacterial respiration and the efficient burial of organic carbon in sediments. Based on a mass balance approach, we calculated a carbon budget for a small humic Swedish lake in the vicinity of a potential final repository for radioactive waste in Sweden, in order to assess its potential impact on the environmental fate of radionuclides associated with organic matter. We found that the lake is a net heterotrophic ecosystem, subsidized by organic carbon inputs from the catchment and from emergent macrophyte production. The largest sink of organic carbon is respiration by aquatic bacteria and subsequent emission of carbon.dioxide to the atmosphere. Although the annual burial of organic carbon in the sediment is a comparatively small sink, it results in the build-up of the largest carbon pool in the lake. Hence, lakes may simultaneously disperse and accumulate organic-associated radionuclides leaking from a final repository.     

Public perception of air pollution sources across Europe

Air pollution is one of the primary concerns of our society for its effect on human health and the environment. Among the policy measures that can be put in place to limit air pollutant emissions, end-of-pipe technologies and/or regulatory instruments may be implemented through legislative acts. Also, equally important are behavioural measures, requiring citizens’ active involvement. The success of any measure to limit pollutant emissions requires the acceptance by the citizens that, in turn, implies a correct perception of the main pollutant emission drivers. We present here the comparison between the public perception of air pollution sources and the real-world situation through a survey carried out in seven European countries and involving 16 101 respondents. Our study shows a dramatic underestimation of the contribution of the agri-food sector to air pollution. This result is common to all respondents in the seven countries examined and only to a small extent depends on gender, age and socio-economic status of the respondents.     

Ozon in Waldökosystemen aus atmosphärenchemischer und pflanzenphysiologischer Sicht

The trend of rising ozone concentrations in forest ecosystems and the phytotoxicity of ozone demand a realistic risk assessment according to an internationally accepted and flux-based quality standard. Ozone fluxes within the canopy are influenced by chemical gas-phase reactions with nitrogen oxide and biogenic hydrocarbons and by surface deposition processes. Therefore, a differentiation of the ozone flux within the canopy is needed between stomatal uptake and other transport pathways. The Eddy Covariance technique is the method of choice for the determination of trace gas fluxes relevant for ozone chemistry. This method is also used for stomatal conductance measurements based on evapotranspiration fluxes and for emission measurements of biogenic hydrocarbons by PTR-MS. Although considerably research efforts were directed to canopy measurements in recent years, the underlying processes are not fully understood yet. Thus, major differences occur in the ratios of stomatal ozone uptake, non-stomatal deposition and gas-phase chemistry between different studies. Furthermore, the vertical concentration gradients within the canopy measured at several forest sites are rather inconsistent and the existing deposition models do rarely account for chemical transformation and detoxification processes. Only a simultaneous measurement of all photochemically relevant trace gases, plant physiological parameters at different sites and forest species over entire vegetation periods, and model parameterization according to the measurement results from the experimental sites will contribute to the clarification of the canopy processes and will ensure realistic risk assessments.     

Graded recruitment in a ponerine ant

Summary (1) The giant tropical ant, Paraponera clavata, exhibits graded recruitment responses, depending on the type, quantity, and quality of a food source. More ants are initially recruited to a large prey or scavenge item than to a large quantity of sugar water. (2) Individual ants encountering prey items gauge the size and/or unwieldiness of the item, regardless of the weight, when determining whether to recruit. (3) The trail pheromone of this species is often used as an orientation device by individual ants, independent of recruitment of nestmates. (4) It is proposed that the foraging behavior of P. clavata represents one of the evolutionary transitions from the independent foraging activities of the primitive ants to the highly coordinated cooperative foraging activities of many higher ants.     

“An eye for an eye?”—on the generality of the intimidating quality of eyespots in a butterfly and a hawkmoth

Large eyespots on the wings of butterflies and moths have been ascribed generally intimidating qualities by creating a frightening image of a bird or mammal much larger than the insect bearing the eyespots. However, evidence for this anti-predator adaptation has been largely anecdotal and only recently were peacock butterflies, Inachis io, shown to effectively thwart attacks from blue tits, Parus caeruleus. Here, we test whether large eyespots on lepidopterans are generally effective in preventing attacks from small passerines and whether the size of insect or bird can influence the outcome of interactions. We staged experiments between the larger eyed hawkmoths, Smerinthus ocellatus, and the smaller peacock butterflies, I. io, and the larger great tits, Parus major, and the smaller blue tits, P. caeruleus. Survival differed substantially between the insect species with 21 of 24 peacock butterflies, but only 6 of 27 eyed hawkmoths, surviving attacks from the birds. Thus, surprisingly, the smaller prey survived to a higher extent, suggesting that factors other than insect size may be important. However, great tits were less easily intimidated by the insects’ eyespots and deimatic behaviour and consumed 16 of 26, but the blue tits only 8 of 25, of the butterflies and hawkmoths. Our results demonstrate that eyespots per se do not guarantee survival and that these two insects bearing equally large eyespots are not equally well protected against predation.