Mesocosm
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Impact of climate change on wetland ecosystems: A critical review of experimental wetlands Open
Climate change is identified as a major threat to wetlands. Altered hydrology and rising temperature can change the biogeochemistry and function of a wetland to the degree that some important services might be turned into disservices. This…
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The Effects of Natural and Anthropogenic Microparticles on Individual Fitness in Daphnia magna Open
Concerns are being raised that microplastic pollution can have detrimental effects on the feeding of aquatic invertebrates, including zooplankton. Both small plastic fragments (microplastics, MPs) produced by degradation of larger plastic …
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Decomposing multiple dimensions of stability in global change experiments Open
Ecological stability is the central framework to understand an ecosystem's ability to absorb or recover from environmental change. Recent modelling and conceptual work suggests that stability is a multidimensional construct comprising diff…
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ERSEM 15.06: a generic model for marine biogeochemistry and the ecosystem dynamics of the lower trophic levels Open
The European Regional Seas Ecosystem Model (ERSEM) is one of the most established ecosystem models for the lower trophic levels of the marine food web in the scientific literature. Since its original development in the early nineties it ha…
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Tracking and forecasting ecosystem interactions in real time Open
Evidence shows that species interactions are not constant but change as the ecosystem shifts to new states. Although controlled experiments and model investigations demonstrate how nonlinear interactions can arise in principle, empirical t…
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Climate change could drive marine food web collapse through altered trophic flows and cyanobacterial proliferation Open
Global warming and ocean acidification are forecast to exert significant impacts on marine ecosystems worldwide. However, most of these projections are based on ecological proxies or experiments on single species or simplified food webs. H…
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Effect of different polymers of microplastics on soil organic carbon and nitrogen – A mesocosm experiment Open
Agricultural microplastic pollution has become a growing concern. Unfortunately, the impacts of microplastics (MPs) on agricultural soil carbon and nitrogen dynamics have not been sufficiently reported. In an attempt to remedy this, we con…
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Analysis of Organic Anionic Surfactants in Fine and Coarse Fractions of Freshly Emitted Sea Spray Aerosol Open
The inclusion of organic compounds in freshly emitted sea spray aerosol (SSA) has been shown to be size-dependent, with an increasing organic fraction in smaller particles. Here we have used electrospray ionization-high resolution mass spe…
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Cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms are a biological disturbance to Western Lake Erie bacterial communities Open
Summary Human activities are causing a global proliferation of cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms (CHABs), yet we have limited understanding of how these events affect freshwater bacterial communities. Using weekly data from western Lake …
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Synergistic Effects of Climate Change and Marine Pollution: An Overlooked Interaction in Coastal and Estuarine Areas Open
Coastal areas have been increasingly affected by human activities, marine pollution and climate change are among the most important pressures affecting these environments. Human-induced pressures occur in a cumulative way and generate addi…
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Omics Advances in Ecotoxicology Open
Toxic substances in the environment generate adverse effects at all levels of biological organization from the molecular level to community and ecosystem. Given this complexity, it is not surprising that ecotoxicologists have struggled to …
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Forest tree growth is linked to mycorrhizal fungal composition and function across Europe Open
Most trees form symbioses with ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) which influence access to growth-limiting soil resources. Mesocosm experiments repeatedly show that EMF species differentially affect plant development, yet whether these effects r…
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Macroalgae may mitigate ocean acidification effects on mussel calcification by increasing pH and its fluctuations Open
Ocean acidification (OA) is generally assumed to negatively impact calcification rates of marine organisms. At a local scale however, biological activity of macrophytes may generate pH fluctuations with rates of change that are orders of m…
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A Dynamic Link between Ice Nucleating Particles Released in Nascent Sea Spray Aerosol and Oceanic Biological Activity during Two Mesocosm Experiments Open
Emission rates and properties of ice nucleating particles (INPs) are required for proper representation of aerosol–cloud interactions in atmospheric models. Few investigations have quantified marine INP emissions, a potentially important I…
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Spatial Environmental Heterogeneity Determines Young Biofilm Assemblages on Microplastics in Baltic Sea Mesocosms Open
Microplastics in aquatic environments provide novel habitats for surface-colonizing microorganisms. Given the continuing debate on whether substrate-specific properties or environmental factors prevail in shaping biofilm assemblages on mic…
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Ocean acidification impacts on coastal ecosystem services due to habitat degradation Open
The oceanic uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions is changing seawater chemistry in a process known as ocean acidification. The chemistry of this rapid change in surface waters is well understood and readily detectable in oceani…
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Root xylem plasticity to improve water use and yield in water-stressed soybean Open
We tested the hypothesis that increasing the number of metaxylem vessels would enhance the efficiency of water uptake in soybean (Glycine max) and decrease the yield gap in water-limited environments. A panel of 41 soybean accessions was e…
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Depth matters: effects of precipitation regime on soil microbial activity upon rewetting of a plant-soil system Open
Changes in frequency and amplitude of rain events, that is, precipitation patterns, result in different water conditions with soil depth, and likely affect plant growth and shape plant and soil microbial activity. Here, we used 18O stable …
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Soil microbial responses to drought and exotic plants shift carbon metabolism Open
Significant gaps in our understanding of how global change drivers interact to affect the resistance and functioning of microbial communities hinders our ability to model ecosystem responses and feedbacks to co-occurring global stressors. …
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Response of cyanobacteria and phytoplankton abundance to warming, extreme rainfall events and nutrient enrichment Open
Cyanobacterial blooms are an increasing threat to water quality and global water security caused by the nutrient enrichment of freshwaters. There is also a broad consensus that blooms are increasing with global warming, but the impacts of …
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Temperature increase and fluctuation induce phytoplankton biodiversity loss – Evidence from a multi‐seasonal mesocosm experiment Open
Global climate change scenarios predict lake water temperatures to increase up to 4°C and extreme weather events, including heat waves and large temperature fluctuations, to occur more frequently. Such changes may result in a reorganizatio…
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Enrichment of Saccharides and Divalent Cations in Sea Spray Aerosol During Two Phytoplankton Blooms Open
Sea spray aerosol (SSA) is a globally important source of particulate matter. A mesocosm study was performed to determine the relative enrichment of saccharides and inorganic ions in nascent fine (PM2.5) and coarse (PM10-2.5) SSA and the s…
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Enhanced Weathering and related element fluxes – a cropland mesocosm approach Open
The weathering of silicates is a major control on atmospheric CO2 at geologic timescales. It was proposed to enhance this process to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere. While there are some studies that propose and theoretically analy…
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Field and laboratory studies reveal interacting effects of stream oxygenation and warming on aquatic ectotherms Open
Aquatic ecological responses to climatic warming are complicated by interactions between thermal effects and other environmental stressors such as organic pollution and hypoxia. Laboratory experiments have demonstrated how oxygen limitatio…
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Phytoplankton Blooms at Increasing Levels of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide: Experimental Evidence for Negative Effects on Prymnesiophytes and Positive on Small Picoeukaryotes Open
Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and the ongoing accumulation in the surface ocean together with concomitantly decreasing pH and calcium carbonate saturation states have the potential to impact phytoplankton community compos…
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Persistent high temperature and low precipitation reduce peat carbon accumulation Open
Extreme climate events are predicted to become more frequent and intense. Their ecological impacts, particularly on carbon cycling, can differ in relation to ecosystem sensitivity. Peatlands, being characterized by peat accumulation under …
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Persistence of marine fish environmental DNA and the influence of sunlight Open
Harnessing information encoded in environmental DNA (eDNA) in marine waters has the potential to revolutionize marine biomonitoring. Whether using organism-specific quantitative PCR assays or metabarcoding in conjunction with amplicon sequ…
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Greater lateral root branching density in maize improves phosphorus acquisition from low phosphorus soil Open
The development of crops with better growth under suboptimal phosphorus availability would improve food security in developing countries while reducing environmental pollution in developed countries. We tested the hypothesis that maize (Ze…
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Extreme drought pushes stream invertebrate communities over functional thresholds Open
Functional traits are increasingly being used to predict extinction risks and range shifts under long‐term climate change scenarios, but have rarely been used to study vulnerability to extreme climatic events, such as supraseasonal drought…
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Distinct Network Interactions in Particle-Associated and Free-Living Bacterial Communities during a Microcystis aeruginosa Bloom in a Plateau Lake Open
Particle-associated bacteria (PAB) and free-living bacteria (FLB) from aquatic environments during phytoplankton blooms differ in their physical distance from algae. Both the interactions within PAB and FLB community fractions and their re…