The role of propagule pressure and environmental factors on the establishment of a large invasive cyprinid: black carp in the Laurentian Great Lakes basin

Author(s):  
Eric R.B. Smyth ◽  
D. Andrew R. Drake

Understanding the factors underlying species establishment is critical for the management of invasive fishes, yet the roles of propagule pressure and environmental factors are infrequently quantified in joint models. We estimated the establishment likelihood of the invasive black carp (Mylopharyngodon piceus) by examining the relative influence of propagule pressure (introduction size and age structure) and environmental factors (temperature-driven young-of-year [YOY] overwinter survival, adult survival, age at maturity, and longevity). Simulations demonstrated that both propagule pressure and environmental factors can act as non-linear bottlenecks to establishment. When the model was applied to 12 Great Lakes tributaries and nearshore areas, black carp establishment was probable with sufficient propagules and under most environmental conditions (median p = 0.21–0.73, 0.70–1.00, and 0.46–0.97 for 100 pairs of age 4, age 9, and age 16 fish, respectively), except for YOY (p < 0.01). Our analysis is one of the few studies to examine the relative role of propagule pressure and environmental conditions on establishment, indicating that both factors can lead to establishment failure independently or concurrently within an ecosystem.

1978 ◽  
Vol 1 (16) ◽  
pp. 70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dag Nummedal ◽  
Ian A. Fischer

Sediment dispersal patterns in tidal inlets within the German and the Georgia Bights are found to be controlled by three major environmental factors: (1) the tide range, (2) the nearshore wave energy, and (3) the geometry of the backbarrier bay. Both embayments chosen for study are characterized by high wave energies and low tide ranges on their flanks, and low wave energies and high tide ranges in their centers. The spatial variability in inlet morphology, therefore, contains information on the relative role of tides and waves in inlet sediment dispersal. The paper concludes by proposing a simple model for inlet morphologies for successively greater relative role of tidal currents in the sediment dispersal.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Depeux ◽  
Ascel Samba-Louaka ◽  
Christine Braquart-Varnier ◽  
Jérôme Moreau ◽  
Jean-François Lemaître ◽  
...  

AbstractMost living organisms display a decline in physiological performances when ageing, a process called senescence that is most often associated with increased mortality risk. Previous researches have shown that both the timing and the intensity of senescence vary a lot within and among species, but the role of environmental factors in this variation is still poorly understood. To fill this knowledge gap, we investigated the impact of environmental conditions on the strength of senescence using an experimental design applied to a population of common woodlouse Armadillidium vulgare intensively monitored in the lab. Cellular senescence biomarkers are available in woodlouse and are age-related. These biomarkers provide relevant biomarkers to test the impact of environmental conditions, through changes in temperature and photoperiod, on individuals of the same age maintained in different environmental conditions. We found different effects of the environmental changing: the increasing of day light modification leaded the same effect as age on our senescence biomarkers while temperature modifications leaded the opposite effect as age on the β-galactosidase activity and cell size. We also demonstrated the existence of sex-specific responses to changes in environmental conditions. By using an experimental approach and biomarkers of senescence in woodlouse, we show that environmental conditions and sex both shape the diversity observed in senescence patterns of woodlouse and underline the importance of identifying senescence biomarkers to understand how environmental conditions influence the evolution of senescence.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
O. V. Zhukov ◽  
O. M. Kunah ◽  
Y. Y. Dubinina

Environmental stability is a multifaceted concept and includes properties such as asymptotic stability, robustness, persistence, variability, elasticity and resistance. Resistance reflects the ability of a community or population to remain in a substantially unaltered state under external influence. The reverse of resistance is sensitivity. This article suggests a way to assess the sensitivity of animal communities to factors of various character and explain sensitivity and resistance of the macrofauna community near the floodplain of the river Dnieper within the "Dnipro-Orelsky" Nature Reserve to the effects of edaphic and plant factors, as well as spatial variables. It is shown that the regulatory impact of environmental factors is refracted through the properties of ecological systems themselves, namely resistance and sensitivity. If an ecological system does not react to changing environmental factors, such a system is indifferent with respect to these factors. In the case of regulatory influence of factors, there may be resistance, sensitivity and the proportionality of the response of the ecological system. The ratio of the specific role of a factor in the variability of a community to the contribution of the main components of the total variability of the attributive space makes it possible to assess the resistance, sensitivity and proportionality of response the ecological system to the action of that factor. If the ratio is >1, then this indicates sensitivity: level of variability of a community is higher than the relative role of environmental factors in the changing of the attributive space. If <1, this indicates resistance: the level of variability of a community is lower than the relative role of environmental factors in the changing of the attributive space. If the ratio =1 (≈1), changes in the community are proportional to the level of the main components of variation in comparison with other components. Ecological factors (both external environmental and internal due to species interactions and which have a neutral nature) cause different levels of community response to their impact. These differences refracted through different aspects of stability of a community can be described using the categories resistance, sensitivity and proportionality. The proposed procedure for quantification of specified properties of sustainability has established that the floodplain soil macrofauna is endowed with resistance to factors that prevail on the level of its variation. However, macrofauna is highly sensitive to minor factors. The community of the soil inhabitants is sensitive to fine-scale variations, which have a neutral nature.


1935 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 670-671
Author(s):  
M. Andreev

The Third Collection of Works of the Institute of Biology and Medicine (now called the Institute of Medicine and Genetics) contains 20 works; 10 of them are devoted to the study of the relative role of hereditary and environmental factors using the 'twin method' and represent a variety of twin studies.


Molecules ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (24) ◽  
pp. 5825
Author(s):  
Barbara Demmig-Adams ◽  
Jared J. Stewart ◽  
Marina López-Pozo ◽  
Stephanie K. Polutchko ◽  
William W. Adams

Conversion of sunlight into photochemistry depends on photoprotective processes that allow safe use of sunlight over a broad range of environmental conditions. This review focuses on the ubiquity of photoprotection associated with a group of interconvertible leaf carotenoids, the xanthophyll cycle. We survey the striking plasticity of this process observed in nature with respect to (1) xanthophyll cycle pool size, (2) degree and speed of interconversion of its components, and (3) flexibility in the association between xanthophyll cycle conversion state and photoprotective dissipation of excess excitation energy. It is concluded that the components of this system can be independently tuned with a high degree of flexibility to produce a fit for different environments with various combinations of light, temperature, and other factors. In addition, the role of genetic variation is apparent from variation in the response of different species growing side-by-side in the same environment. These findings illustrate how field studies can generate insight into the adjustable levers that allow xanthophyll cycle-associated photoprotection to support plant photosynthetic productivity and survival in environments with unique combinations of environmental factors.


Neurology ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 53 (5) ◽  
pp. 995-995 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Gervil ◽  
V. Ulrich ◽  
J. Kaprio ◽  
J. Olesen ◽  
M. B. Russell

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 2030
Author(s):  
Eva Cacabelos ◽  
Patrício Ramalhosa ◽  
João Canning-Clode ◽  
Jesús S. Troncoso ◽  
Celia Olabarria ◽  
...  

Microbial biofilms can be key mediators for settlement of macrofoulers. The present study examines the coupled effects of microbial biofilms and local environmental conditions on the composition, structure and functioning of macrofouling assemblages. Settlement of invertebrates over a gradient of human-impacted sites was investigated on local biofilms and on biofilms developed in marine protected areas (MPAs). Special attention was given to the presence of non-indigenous species (NIS), a global problem that can cause important impacts on local assemblages. In general, the formation of macrofouling assemblages was influenced by the identity of the biofilm. However, these relationships varied across levels of anthropogenic pressure, possibly influenced by environmental conditions and the propagule pressure locally available. While the NIS Watersipora subatra seemed to be inhibited by the biofilm developed in the MPA, Diplosoma cf. listerianum seemed to be attracted by biofilm developed in the MPA only under mid anthropogenic pressure. The obtained information is critical for marine environmental management, urgently needed for the establishment of prevention and control mechanisms to minimize the settlement of NIS and mitigate their threats.


2011 ◽  
Vol 68 (10) ◽  
pp. 1778-1789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Mikulyuk ◽  
Sapna Sharma ◽  
Scott Van Egeren ◽  
Eric Erdmann ◽  
Michelle E. Nault ◽  
...  

Quantifying the relative role of environmental and spatial factors to understand patterns in community composition is a fundamental goal of community ecology. We applied a tested and repeatable point-intercept sampling method to aquatic macrophyte assemblages in 225 Wisconsin lakes to understand the ability of environmental, land-use, and spatial patterns to explain aquatic plant distribution and abundance. Using a variation partitioning framework in conjunction with Moran eigenvector maps we found that environmental, land-use, and spatial patterns explained 31% of total adjusted variation in aquatic macrophyte assemblages across the landscape. Environmental factors were the most important (contributing 34% of the total explained variation), but all sources of variation were statistically significant. Community composition varied from north to south along a gradient of alkalinity and from disturbed to undisturbed lakes, diverging according to whether disturbance was urban or agricultural. The large amount of shared variation among predictor variables suggests causal relationships are complex and emphasizes the importance of considering space and land-use in addition to environmental factors when characterizing macrophyte assemblages. This work is the first to examine the joint and unique effects of environment, land-use, and spatial patterns on aquatic plant communities.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ambrogio Volonté ◽  
Peter A. Clark ◽  
Suzanne L. Gray

Abstract. Idealised simulations of Shapiro-Keyser cyclones developing a sting jet (SJ) are presented. Thanks to an improved and accurate implementation of thermal wind balance in the initial state, it has been possible to use more realistic environments than in previous idealised studies. As a consequence, this study provides further insight in SJ evolution and dynamics and explores SJ robustness to different environmental conditions, assessed via a wide and different range of sensitivity experiments. The control simulation contains a cyclone that fits the Shapiro-Keyser conceptual model and develops a SJ whose dynamics are associated with the evolution of mesoscale instabilities including symmetric instability (SI) along the airstream. The SJ undergoes a strong descent while leaving the cloud-head banded tip and markedly accelerating towards the frontal-fracture region, revealed as an area of buckling of the already-sloped moist isentropes. A substantial amount of SI, generated by slantwise frontal motions in the cloud head, is released along the SJ during its descent. This supports the role of SI in the airstream’s dynamics proposed in a conceptual model outlined in a previous study. Sensitivity experiments illustrate that the SJ is a robust feature of intense Shapiro-Keyser cyclones, highlighting a range of different environmental conditions in which SI contributes to the evolution of this airstream, conditional on the model having adequate resolution. The results reveal that several environmental factors can modulate the strength of the SJ. However, a positive relationship between the strength of the SJ, both in terms of peak speed and amount of descent, and the amount of instability occurring along it can still be identified. In summary, the idealised simulations presented in this study show the robustness of SJ occurrence in intense Shapiro-Keyser cyclones and support and clarify the role of dry instabilities in SJ dynamics.


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