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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Structure And Functional Composition Of Macroinvertebrate Communities In Coastal Plain Streams Across A Precipitation Gradient, Fernando R. Carvallo, Bradley A. Strickland, Sean K. Kinard, Brandi Kiel Reese, James Derek Hogan, Christopher J. Patrick
Structure And Functional Composition Of Macroinvertebrate Communities In Coastal Plain Streams Across A Precipitation Gradient, Fernando R. Carvallo, Bradley A. Strickland, Sean K. Kinard, Brandi Kiel Reese, James Derek Hogan, Christopher J. Patrick
VIMS Articles
Climate change is expected to alter rainfall and temperature regimes across the world. The hydrology and riparian zone vegetation of lotic ecosystems are tightly linked to rainfall and a mechanistic understanding of the effects of rainfall on lotic ecosystems is needed to forecast the ecological impacts of climate change. However, it is difficult to isolate rainfall effects from other environmental variables that covary across climates. To address this, we leveraged a unique steep rainfall gradient with few covarying changes in elevation, temperature, and geology to evaluate the effects of rainfall on stream invertebrate communities. We surveyed nine streams in the …
Processes And Mechanisms Of Coastal Woody-Plant Mortality, Nate G. Mcdowell, Marilyn Ball, Ben Bond-Lamberty, Matthew L. Kirwan, Et Al
Processes And Mechanisms Of Coastal Woody-Plant Mortality, Nate G. Mcdowell, Marilyn Ball, Ben Bond-Lamberty, Matthew L. Kirwan, Et Al
VIMS Articles
Observations of woody plant mortality in coastal ecosystems are globally widespread, but the overarching processes and underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. This knowledge deficiency, combined with rapidly changing water levels, storm surges, atmospheric CO2, and vapor pressure deficit, creates large predictive uncertainty regarding how coastal ecosystems will respond to global change. Here, we synthesize the literature on the mechanisms that underlie coastal woody-plant mortality, with the goal of producing a testable hypothesis framework. The key emergent mechanisms underlying mortality include hypoxic, osmotic, and ionic-driven reductions in whole-plant hydraulic conductance and photosynthesis that ultimately drive the coupled processes of …
The Terroir Of The Finch: How Spatial And Temporal Variation Shapes Phenotypic Traits In Darwin's Finches, Paola L. Carrión, Joost A.M. Raeymaekers, Luis Fernando De León, (...), S. K. Huber, Et Al
The Terroir Of The Finch: How Spatial And Temporal Variation Shapes Phenotypic Traits In Darwin's Finches, Paola L. Carrión, Joost A.M. Raeymaekers, Luis Fernando De León, (...), S. K. Huber, Et Al
VIMS Articles
The term terroir is used in viticulture to emphasize how the biotic and abiotic characteristics of a local site influence grape physiology and thus the properties of wine. In ecology and evolution, such terroir (i.e., the effect of space or “site”) is expected to play an important role in shaping phenotypic traits. Just how important is the pure spatial effect of terroir (e.g., differences between sites that persist across years) in comparison to temporal variation (e.g., differences between years that persist across sites), and the interaction between space and time (e.g., differences between sites change across years)? We answer this …
Making Sense Of Multivariate Community Responses In Global Change Experiments, Meghan L. Avolio, Kimberly J. Komatsu, Sally E. Koerner, Emily Grman, Forest Isbell, David S. Johnson, Et Al
Making Sense Of Multivariate Community Responses In Global Change Experiments, Meghan L. Avolio, Kimberly J. Komatsu, Sally E. Koerner, Emily Grman, Forest Isbell, David S. Johnson, Et Al
VIMS Articles
Ecological communities are being impacted by global change worldwide. Experiments are a powerful tool to understand how global change will impact communities by comparing control and treatment replicates. Communities consist of multiple species, and their associated abundances make multivariate methods an effective approach to study community compositional differences between control and treated replicates. Dissimilarity metrics are a commonly employed multivariate measure of compositional differences; however, while highly informative, dissimilarity metrics do not elucidate the specific ways in which communities differ. Integrating two multivariate methods, dissimilarity metrics and rank abundance curves (RACs), have the potential to detect complex differences based on …
Nutrient Function Over Form: Organic And Inorganic Nitrogen Additions Have Similar Effects On Lake Phytoplankton Nutrient Limitation, Sabrina N. Volponi, Heather L. Wander, (...), Brian S. Kim, Et Al
Nutrient Function Over Form: Organic And Inorganic Nitrogen Additions Have Similar Effects On Lake Phytoplankton Nutrient Limitation, Sabrina N. Volponi, Heather L. Wander, (...), Brian S. Kim, Et Al
VIMS Articles
The concentration of dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) is increasing in many northern hemisphere lakes, yet its use by phytoplankton and fate in the environment seldom have been quantified. We conducted 1 week, insitu, microcosm incubations across 25 lakes in northeastern North America to understand how DON, dissolved norganic nitrogen (DIN), and dissolved inorganic phosphorus (P) affected phytoplankton biomass. In addition,we tested whether lakes were limited by single macronutrients (N or P) or colimited by both. Phytoplankton biomass in 80% of lakes responded similarly to DON and DIN additions. Of the lakes where N form produced differential responses, the majority of …
Enhancing Assessments Of Blue Carbon Stocks In Marsh Soils Using Bayesian Mixed-Effects Modeling With Spatial Autocorrelation — Proof Of Concept Using Proxy Data, Grace S. Chiu, Molly Mitchell, Julie Herman, Christian Longo, Kate Davis
Enhancing Assessments Of Blue Carbon Stocks In Marsh Soils Using Bayesian Mixed-Effects Modeling With Spatial Autocorrelation — Proof Of Concept Using Proxy Data, Grace S. Chiu, Molly Mitchell, Julie Herman, Christian Longo, Kate Davis
VIMS Articles
Our paper showcases the potential gain in scientific insights about blue carbon stocks (or total organic carbon) when additional rigor, in the form of a spatial autocorrelation component, is formally incorporated into the statistical model for assessing the variability in carbon stocks. Organic carbon stored in marsh soils, or blue carbon (BC), is important for sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. The potential for marshes to store carbon dioxide, mitigating anthropogenic contributions to the atmosphere, makes them a critical conservation target, but efforts have been hampered by the current lack of robust methods for assessing the variability of BC stocks at …