CHLOROPHYLL-BIOMASS-NUTRIENT RELATIONSHIPS FOR NATURAL ASSEMBLAGES OF FLORIDA PHYTOPLANKTON1

Parallel determination of phytoplankton biomass and chlorophyll a concentration were made on spring and summer phytoplankton samples collected from 165 Florida lakes. There was a significant correlation between chlorophyll a concentration and phytoplankton biomass (r=0.80; P < 0.01). Chlorophyll content per unit phytoplankton biomass ranged over two orders of magnitude. Nitrogen seemed to be a major factor influencing the chlorophyll content of Florida algae. Multiple regression analyses indicated that phytoplankton biomass was dependent on both the total phosphorus and total nitrogen concentration. Nutrient-phytoplankton and Secchi-phytoplankton relationships for the Florida lakes had higher coefficients of determination if chlorophyll a concentrations rather than phytoplankton biomass data were used in regression analyses.     

Changes in interacting species with disturbance

Human-influenced changes in the diversity and abundance of native wildlife in a southern boreal forest area, which became a national park in 1975, are used to develop working hypotheses for predicting and subsequently measuring the effects of disturbance or restoration programs on groups of interacting species. Changes from presettlement conditions began with early 1900 hunting, which eliminated woodland caribou (Rangifer tarandus) and elk (Cervus elaphus), and reduced moose (Alces alces) to the low numbers which still persist. Increases in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), as these other cervid species became less abundant or absent, provided enough alternative food to sustain the system's carnivores until plant succession on previously burned or logged areas also caused deer to decline. With increased competition for reduced food, carnivore species also became less abundant or absent and overexploited some prey populations. The abilities of interacting species to maintain dynamically stable populations or persist varied with their different capacities to compensate for increased exploitation or competition. These relationships suggested a possible solution to the problem of predicting the stability of populations in disturbed systems. For the 1976–1985 period, a hypothesis that the increased protection of wildlife from exploitation in a national park would restore a more diverse, abundant, and productive fauna had to be rejected.     

Rainfall Runoff Relationships for a Cloud Forest Watershed in Central America: Implications for Water Resource Engineering1

Caballero, Luis A., Alon Rimmer, Zachary M. Easton, and Tammo S. Steenhuis, 2012. Rainfall Runoff Relationships for a Cloud Forest Watershed in Central America: Implications for Water Resource Engineering. Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) 48(5): 1022‐1031. DOI: 10.1111/j.1752‐1688.2012.00668.x Abstract: Understanding the basic relationships between rainfall and runoff is vital for effective management and utilization of scarce water resources. Especially, this is important in Central America with widespread potable water shortage during the dry months of the monsoon. Potential good water sources are cloud forests, but little information concerning its potential is available to water supply engineers. Our objective is to define rainfall‐runoff‐base flow relationships for a cloud forest catchment. Flumes were installed for measuring river flow in four subwatersheds in La Tigra National Park, Honduras. One of the four watersheds was a 636‐ha subwatershed (WS1) with 60% cloud forest coverage. Precipitation averaged 1,130 mm/yr over the entire basin. About half of the total rainfall became runoff for the cloud forest watershed whereas, for the adjacent undisturbed forested watershed, the total discharge was <20% of the amount of precipitation. Infiltration rates were generally greater than rainfall rates. Therefore, most rainfall infiltrated into the soil, especially in the upper, steep, and well‐drained portions of the watershed. Direct runoff was generated from saturated areas near the river and exposed bedrock. This research provides compelling evidence that base flow is the primary contributor to streamflow during both wet and dry seasons in cloud forest catchments. Protecting these flow processes over time is critical for the sustained provision of potable water.     

再论环境社会系统/生态文明建设的四种基本关系

首先,在总结系列具有广泛影响的中西学者对中西文明特征的看法的基础上,论证了在东西方文明中,人与自然的关系存在分化的现象.又考虑到"天人合一"是中国文化的核心特质并是"中国文化对人类未来可有之贡献",进而将人与自然的关系分解为人与天的关系以及人与物的关系.人与天的关系是以整体性的视角对待人与自然的相互作用,并在此基础上形成的知识和观念的总和.人与物的关系是指以分析性的思路处理人与自然的相互作用,并在此基础上形成的知识与观念的总和.其次,论证了四种关系是基本关系.环境社会系统中的基本关系必须符合以下条件:一是必要的;二是基本关系之间可以是相关的,但不能是完全相关的;三是在所研究的系统中,所有的基本关系必须是完备的;四是基本关系应该是所描述的系统的各个一级子系统之间的一级关系.主要通过穷举法,发现从兰种生产理论或者社会-经济-自然复合生态系统的层面上看,其中存在九种一级关系,但是有些关系与环境社会系统的研究内容相去甚远,有的具有完全共线性的性质,把这些关系排除在外,剩下四种基本关系,即:人与自身的关系、人与人的关系、人与天的关系、人与物的关系.     

Microscale Spatial Variation in Forest Litter Phytotoxicity

The spatial variation (within a 100 × 100 m plot) in the pollution of forest litter with heavy metals (Cu, Cd, Pb, and Zn), its acidity, and phytotoxicity (measured by the results of the root test using seedlings from a genetically homogeneous sample of common dandelion (Taraxacum officinale s.l.) have been estimated. Forest litter has been sampled in three zones differing in the toxic impact of long-term polymetal pollution by emissions from a copper-smelting plant emissions in the Middle Urals. The phytotoxicity variation is maximum in a moderately polluted plot, where both very high and very low pollution levels were observed, which determines a substantially nonlinear dose–effect relationship. The litter phytotoxicity is mainly accounted for by exchangeable forms of metals. Biological testing of samples from the most polluted plot has demonstrated marked antagonism between heavy metals and acidity.     

Lactation patterns of pinnipeds are not explained by optimization of maternal energy delivery rates

Within pinnipeds, phocids and otariids show differing maternal care strategies. Phocids rear young out of body stores in a yearly cycle with a single stay ashore when the mother fasts while lactating, whereas otariids provision their young by repeated foraging trips to sea alternating with brief stays ashore where they suckle their young. In a previous optimality model, these differences have been interpreted as adaptations based on differing energy requirements of large (phocid) and smaller (otariid) species, and the time budget of the large elephant and the much smaller Antarctic fur seal were correctly predicted. Our refined model—extended to pinniped species of all sizes—predicts lactation strategies to shift from attendance cycles to 1-year cycles with increasing body mass and provides an explanation for the finding that phocid pups are weaned at lower relative mass than otariid pups. However, other predictions do not correspond to empirical findings. In particular, the model does not explain the behavior of large otariids and small phocids. Thus, maternal metabolic requirements alone appear insufficient to explain observed lactation patterns. In the light of our results, we discuss more generally the scope and limitations of optimality models when applied in a comparative framework to a group of related species.     

Ethological Structure of Freshwater Benthic and Nektobenthic Communities and Its Changes under the Influence of Abiotic and Anthropogenic Factors

Classification of the mode of life and behavior of zoobenthic, nektobenthic, and neustonic organisms was used as a basis for elucidating the formation of ethological structure of their communities in small lakes and streams of northeastern Fennoscandia. It is shown that the general response of these communities to anthropogenic impact is manifested in the reduction of the number of ethological groups. The specific response to eutrophication and heat pollution involves a decrease in the relative biomass of clingers and burrowers and an increase in the biomass of sprawling–walking and wormy animals; the response to toxic pollution and acidification is manifested in the prevalence of sprawlers–walkers.     

Fear in grasslands: the effect of Eurasian kestrels on skylark abundances

Predation has received considerable theoretical and empirical support in population regulation. The effect of predators, however, could be achieved in direct (killing) or indirect effects (such as displacement). In this paper, we explored the relationship between Eurasian kestrels Falco tinnunculus and skylarks Alauda arvensis in Mediterranean grasslands. First, we analysed the presence of skylarks in the kestrel diet over 9 years. We also compared a grassland area of experimentally increased kestrel density and a second grassland as control area to evaluate the direct or indirect effect on skylark abundance. We also considered two different habitats, grazed and ungrazed plots. If skylark abundance decreased as the kestrel breeding season progressed in high-density kestrel area compared with the control area, it would suggest a direct effect (predator hypothesis). If skylark abundance remains constant in both areas of contrasting kestrel density, it would suggest that skylarks avoid kestrels (avoidance hypothesis). We found that skylark abundance decreased in the kestrel area from the beginning of kestrel nest-box installation to recent years. The rate of skylark consumption decreased in a 9-year period as kestrel abundance increased, although the total amount skylark consumption did not show a decreasing trend. In addition, skylarks were more abundant in the kestrel-free area than in the kestrel area. Finally, we found that skylark abundance did not change through the kestrel breeding period in relation to grazing. We suggest that an increased breeding density of kestrels during their breeding period may force the skylarks to breed in other areas, which may explain the decline of their abundance.     

Bayesian model-based cluster analysis for predicting macrofaunal communities

To predict macrofaunal community composition from environmental data a two-step approach is often followed: (1) the water samples are clustered into groups on the basis of the macrofauna data and (2) the groups are related to the environmental data, e.g. by discriminant analysis. For the cluster analysis in step 1 many hard, seemingly arbitrary choices have to be made that nevertheless influence the solution (similarity measure, clustering strategy, number of clusters). The stability of the solution is often of concern, e.g. in clustering by the program. In the discriminant analysis of step 2 it can occur that a water sample is misclassified on the basis of the environmental data but on further inspection happens to be a borderline case in the cluster analysis. One would then rather reclassify such a sample and iterate the two steps. Bayesian latent class analysis is a flexible, extendable model-based cluster analysis approach that recently has gained popularity in the statistical literature and that has the potential to address these problems. It allows the macrofauna and environmental data to be modelled and analyzed in a single integrated analysis. An exciting extension is to incorporate in the analysis prior information on the habitat preferences of the macrofauna taxa such as is available in lists of indicator values. The output of the analysis is not a hard assignment of water samples to clusters but a probabilistic (fuzzy) assignment. The number of clusters is determined on the basis of the Bayes factor. A standard feature of the Bayesian method is to make predictions and to assess their uncertainty. We applied this approach to a data set consisting of 70 water samples, 484 macrofauna taxa and four environmental variables for which previously a five cluster solution had been proposed. The standard for Bayesian estimation, the Gibbs sampler, worked fine on a subset with only 12 selected taxa but did not converge on the full set with 484 taxa. This is due to many configurations in which the assignment probabilities are all very close to either 0 or 1. This convergence problem is comparable with the local optima problem in classical cluster optimization algorithms, including the EM algorithm used in Latent Gold, a Windows program for latent class analysis. The convergence problem needs to be solved before the benefits of Bayesian latent class analysis can come to fruition in this application. We discuss possible solutions.     

双酚A类似物雌激素干扰效应的定量结构-活性关系模型

由于双酚A(BPA)具有内分泌干扰等毒性效应,有些国家已经开始限制其在部分工业品生产中使用。一些双酚A类似物因用于替代BPA而被大量使用。因其与双酚A具有相似的分子结构,双酚A类似物是否也具有内分泌干扰等毒性效应受到越来越多的关注。采用逐步多元线性回归(MLR)方法,构建了可预测双酚A类似物雌激素效应的定量结构-活性关系模型。模型的决定系数R~2=0.899,去一法交叉验证系数Q_(LOO)~2=0.868,Bootstrapping验证系数Q_(BOOT)~2=0.755,均方根误差RMSE=0.339,表明模型具有较好的拟合优度、稳健性;验证集决定系数Q_(EXT)~2=0.921,外部验证系数Q_(EXT)~2=0.810,均方根误差RMSE=0.638,表明模型具有较好的预测能力。采用欧几里德距离方法和Wil iams图表征了模型应用域,依据分子描述符对模型进行了机理解释,并用所建模型,填补了22种其他双酚A类似物缺失的雌激素干扰效应数据。