Discovery of coprolites in an Early Permian fern mesophyll

Plants and arthropods interact with each other and constitute an important part of the modern terrestrial ecosystem (Schoonhoven et al., 2005). Historically, fossil records of plant-arthropod interactions have been well documented in Paleozoic terrestrial ecosystems, which were evidenced by large coprolites containing various plant fragments (e.g., Salter et al., 2012), small larvae and coprolites remained in plant organs (e.g., Feng et al., 2017), and diverse functional feeding groups discovered on plant stems, rachises, roots, leaves and fertile organs (e.g., Liu et al., 2020).

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Preliminary Results on Aquatic Insects in the Me Linh Station for Biodiversity, Vinh Phuc Province

VNU Journal of Science Natural Sciences and Technology ◽

10.25073/2588-1140/vnunst.4696 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 33 (4) ◽

Author(s):

Nguyen Van Hieu ◽

Nguyen Van Vinh

Keyword(s):

Quantitative Analysis ◽

Aquatic Insects ◽

Field Survey ◽

Aquatic Insect ◽

Insect Species ◽

Functional Feeding Groups ◽

Species Number ◽

Feeding Groups ◽

Preliminary Results

An intensive field survey on aquatic insects of Me Linh Station for Biodiversity in Vinhphuc province was conducted in December 2015. Specimens were collected at 8 different sites and aquatic insects were collected both quantitatively by Surber net and qualitatively by hand net, pond net. As a result, a total of 110 aquatic insect species belonging to 98 genera, 49 families and 9 orders were recognized. Among these, the order Ephemeroptera had the highest species number with 26 species, followed by Odonata with 25 species, Trichoptera with 18 species, Coleoptera with 15 species, Hemiptera with 11 species, Diptera with 9 species. Lepidoptera, Plecoptera and Megaloptera had the lowest of species number, represented by 3 species of Lepidoptera, 2 species of Plecoptera and 1 species of Megaloptera. Besides, the quantitative analysis results and the functional feeding groups were provided.

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Potassium Control of Plant Functions: Ecological and Agricultural Implications

Plants ◽

10.3390/plants10020419 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 419

Author(s):

Jordi Sardans ◽

Josep Peñuelas

Keyword(s):

Food Security ◽

Stress Responses ◽

Crop Production ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystem ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Wood Formation ◽

Cellular Growth ◽

Ecosystem Functions ◽

Metabolite Transport ◽

Physiological Functions

Potassium, mostly as a cation (K+), together with calcium (Ca2+) are the most abundant inorganic chemicals in plant cellular media, but they are rarely discussed. K+ is not a component of molecular or macromolecular plant structures, thus it is more difficult to link it to concrete metabolic pathways than nitrogen or phosphorus. Over the last two decades, many studies have reported on the role of K+ in several physiological functions, including controlling cellular growth and wood formation, xylem–phloem water content and movement, nutrient and metabolite transport, and stress responses. In this paper, we present an overview of contemporary findings associating K+ with various plant functions, emphasizing plant-mediated responses to environmental abiotic and biotic shifts and stresses by controlling transmembrane potentials and water, nutrient, and metabolite transport. These essential roles of K+ account for its high concentrations in the most active plant organs, such as leaves, and are consistent with the increasing number of ecological and agricultural studies that report K+ as a key element in the function and structure of terrestrial ecosystems, crop production, and global food security. We synthesized these roles from an integrated perspective, considering the metabolic and physiological functions of individual plants and their complex roles in terrestrial ecosystem functions and food security within the current context of ongoing global change. Thus, we provide a bridge between studies of K+ at the plant and ecological levels to ultimately claim that K+ should be considered at least at a level similar to N and P in terrestrial ecological studies.

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Reduced resilience of terrestrial ecosystems locally is not reflected on a global scale

Communications Earth & Environment ◽

10.1038/s43247-021-00163-1 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Yuhao Feng ◽

Haojie Su ◽

Zhiyao Tang ◽

Shaopeng Wang ◽

Xia Zhao ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Climate Change ◽

Vegetation Index ◽

Global Climate ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystem ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Global Scale ◽

Ecological Resilience ◽

Terrestrial Vegetation ◽

Ecosystem Resilience

AbstractGlobal climate change likely alters the structure and function of vegetation and the stability of terrestrial ecosystems. It is therefore important to assess the factors controlling ecosystem resilience from local to global scales. Here we assess terrestrial vegetation resilience over the past 35 years using early warning indicators calculated from normalized difference vegetation index data. On a local scale we find that climate change reduced the resilience of ecosystems in 64.5% of the global terrestrial vegetated area. Temperature had a greater influence on vegetation resilience than precipitation, while climate mean state had a greater influence than climate variability. However, there is no evidence for decreased ecological resilience on larger scales. Instead, climate warming increased spatial asynchrony of vegetation which buffered the global-scale impacts on resilience. We suggest that the response of terrestrial ecosystem resilience to global climate change is scale-dependent and influenced by spatial asynchrony on the global scale.

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Microhabitat selection and distribution of functional feeding groups of mayfly larvae (Ephemeroptera) in lotic karst habitats

Knowledge and Management of Aquatic Ecosystems ◽

10.1051/kmae/2018011 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 17 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Marina Vilenica ◽

Andreja Brigić ◽

Michel Sartori ◽

Zlatko Mihaljević

Keyword(s):

Water Current ◽

Functional Feeding Groups ◽

Feeding Strategies ◽

Microhabitat Selection ◽

Dinaric Karst ◽

Feeding Groups ◽

Microhabitat Preferences ◽

One Year ◽

Physical And Chemical ◽

Chemical Water

Research examining mayfly ecology in karst streams and rivers has increased in recent years, though microhabitat preferences remain poorly characterized. We examined mayfly assemblage taxonomy, functional feeding groups and microhabitat preferences in two contrasting lotic Dinaric karst catchments, one pristine and one anthropogenically impacted. At monthly intervals over a one-year period, all major microhabitats (i.e. dominated by boulders, cobbles, sand, silt, mosses, or angiosperms) were sampled at sites spanning springs, upper, middle and lower river reaches, and tufa barriers. In both catchments, mayfly species richness was comparable among microhabitats, while mayfly abundance was highest on mosses and lowest on silt. NMDS ordination did not group assemblages according to microhabitat type, which may reflect the greater influence of physical and chemical water properties. In both catchments and all microhabitats, mayfly assemblages were dominated by grazers/scrapers at upstream sites and by detritivores at downstream sites. Active filter feeders were more abundant in microhabitats with silt substrates and lower current velocities. This study demonstrated that certain mayfly species strongly preferred a specific microhabitat type, reflecting their water current preferences and feeding strategies, while other species shifted between microhabitats, likely in search of food resources and shelter. The results emphasize the importance of habitat heterogeneity in supporting diverse communities in karst rivers.

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A coupled multi-proxy and process modelling approach for extraction of quantitative terrestrial ecosystem information from speleothems

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-4761 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Franziska Lechleitner ◽

Christopher C. Day ◽

Oliver Kost ◽

Micah Wilhelm ◽

Negar Haghipour ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Soil Respiration ◽

Western Europe ◽

Global Climate ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystem ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Clear Correlation ◽

Northern Spain ◽

Regional Temperature ◽

Global Carbon

Terrestrial ecosystems are intimately linked with the global climate system, but their response to ongoing and future anthropogenic climate change remains poorly understood. Reconstructing the response of terrestrial ecosystem processes over past periods of rapid and substantial climate change can serve as a tool to better constrain the sensitivity in the ecosystem-climate response.In this talk, we will present a new reconstruction of soil respiration in the temperate region of Western Europe based on speleothem carbon isotopes (&#948;13C). Soil respiration remains poorly constrained over past climatic transitions, but is critical for understanding the global carbon cycle and its response to ongoing anthropogenic warming. Our study builds upon two decades of speleothem research in Western Europe, which has shown clear correlation between &#948;13C and regional temperature reconstructions during the last glacial and the deglaciation, with exceptional regional coherency in timing, amplitude, and absolute &#948;13C variation. By combining innovative multi-proxy geochemical analysis (&#948;13C, Ca isotopes, and radiocarbon) on three speleothems from Northern Spain, and quantitative forward modelling of processes in soil, karst, and cave, we show how deglacial variability in speleothem &#948;13C is best explained by increasing soil respiration. Our study is the first to quantify and remove the effects of prior calcite precipitation (PCP, using Ca isotopes) and bedrock dissolution (open vs closed system, using the radiocarbon reservoir effect) from the speleothem &#948;13C signal to derive changes in respired &#948;13C over time. Our approach allows us to estimate the temperature sensitivity of soil respiration (Q10), which is higher than current measurements, suggesting that part of the speleothem signal may be related to a change in the composition of the soil respired &#948;13C. This is likely related to changing substrate through increasing contribution from vegetation biomass with the onset of the Holocene.These results highlight the exciting possibilities speleothems offer as a coupled archive for quantitative proxy-based reconstructions of climate and ecosystem conditions.

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A temperature threshold to identify the driving climate forces of the respiratory process in terrestrial ecosystems

10.5194/bg-2017-345 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Zhiyuan Zhang ◽

Renduo Zhang ◽

Yang Zhou ◽

Alessandro Cescatti ◽

Georg Wohlfahrt ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Temperature ◽

Driving Forces ◽

Ecosystem Respiration ◽

Large Fraction ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystem ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Co2 Concentration ◽

Temperature Threshold ◽

Current Scenario ◽

Ecosystem Flux

Abstract. Terrestrial ecosystem respiration (Re) is the major source of CO2 release and constitutes the second largest carbon flux between the biosphere and atmosphere. Therefore, climate-driven changes of Re may greatly impact on future atmospheric CO2 concentration. The aim of this study was to derive an air temperature threshold for identifying the driving climate forces of the respiratory process in terrestrial ecosystems within different temperature zones. For this purpose, a global dataset of 647 site-years of ecosystem flux data collected at 152 sites has been examined. Our analysis revealed an ecosystem threshold of mean annual air temperature (MAT) of 11 &pm; 2.3 °C. In ecosystems with the MAT below this threshold, the maximum Re rates were primarily dependent on temperature and respiration was mainly a temperature-driven process. On the contrary, in ecosystems with the MAT greater than 11 ± 2.3 °C, in addition to temperature, other driving forces, such as water availability and surface heat flux, became significant drivers of the maximum Re rates and respiration was a multi-factor-driven process. The information derived from this study highlight the key role of temperature as main controlling factor of the maximum Re rates on a large fraction of the terrestrial biosphere, while other driving forces reduce the maximum Re rates and temperature sensitivity of the respiratory process. These findings are particularly relevant under the current scenario of rapid global warming, given that the potential climate-induced changes in ecosystem respiration may lead to substantial anomalies in the seasonality and magnitude of the terrestrial carbon budget.

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Functional feeding groups of Protist Ciliates (Protist: Ciliophora) on a neotropical flood plain

Annales de Limnologie - International Journal of Limnology ◽

10.1051/limn/2021009 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 57 ◽

pp. 13

Author(s):

Bianca Ramos Meira ◽

Melissa Progênio ◽

Edilaine Corrêa Leite ◽

Fernando Miranda Lansac-Tôha ◽

Carolina Leite Guimarães Durán ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Flood Plain ◽

Food Resources ◽

Functional Feeding Groups ◽

Hydrodynamic Conditions ◽

Efficient Tool ◽

Ecological Processes ◽

Clear Separation ◽

Feeding Groups ◽

Temporal Segregation ◽

Influence Of Food

Functional diversity approaches have been an efficient tool in gaining a better understanding of how environmental conditions selected species in a given environment and how they share resources, linking ecological processes to biodiversity patterns. Although most of the protist ciliates are not highly specialized, functional feeding groups with species which ingest similar food can be identified. Thus, this study aimed to compare the abundance of different Functional Feeding Groups (FFG) of ciliates in environments with different hydrodynamic conditions (lotic and lentic) in different hydrological periods (high and low water) in a neotropical flood plain. The samples for analysis of the community of ciliates were taken in March and September of 2010 and 2011, at the subsurface of 12 different hydrodynamic environments. The results of an RDA showed a spatial and temporal segregation of the sampling units, based on the abundance and occurrence of the FFG. In addition, a clear influence of food resources on the structuring of functional ciliate guilds was evidenced. Thus, there were both temporal (hydrological periods) and spatial (different hydrodynamic environments) differences in the distribution of the FFG, with a clear separation of the FFGs between the years studied. In summary, the results of the categorization of species of ciliates in FFG responded satisfactorily suggesting fluctuations in different food resources, which reinforces the idea that the grouping of species by functional characteristics can be a good indicator of the responses of organisms to environmental fluctuations.

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Climate Change and Its Impact on Terrestrial Ecosystems

Impacts of Climate Change on Agriculture and Aquaculture - Advances in Environmental Engineering and Green Technologies ◽

10.4018/978-1-7998-3343-7.ch007 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 140-157

Author(s):

Banwari Dandotiya ◽

Harendra K. Sharma

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Greenhouse Gases ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystem ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Extreme Weather Events ◽

Precipitation Pattern ◽

Contributing Factors ◽

Weather Events ◽

Increasing Temperature ◽

Climatic Disturbances

This chapter provides a general overview of the effects of climate change on the terrestrial ecosystem and is meant to set the stage for the specific papers. The discussion in this chapter focuses basically on the effects of climatic disturbances on terrestrial flora and fauna, including increasing global temperature and changing climatic patterns of terrestrial areas of the globe. Basically, climate disturbances derived increasing temperature and greenhouse gases have the ability to induce this phenomenon. Greenhouse gases are emitted by a number of sources in the atmosphere such as urbanization, industrialization, transportation, and population growth, so these contributing factors and its effects on climatic events like temperature rise, change precipitation pattern, extreme weather events, survival and shifting of biodiversity, seasonal disturbances, and effects on glaciers are relatively described in this chapter.

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A new terrestrial biosphere model with coupled carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus cycles (QUINCY v1.0; revision 1772)

10.5194/gmd-2019-49 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Tea Thum ◽

Silvia Caldararu ◽

Jan Engel ◽

Melanie Kern ◽

Marleen Pallandt ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Terrestrial Ecosystem ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Ecosystem Dynamics ◽

Soil Conditions ◽

Monitoring Networks ◽

Nitrogen And Phosphorus ◽

Element Cycling ◽

Terrestrial Biosphere ◽

Ecosystem Monitoring ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystem Model

Abstract. The dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems are shaped by the coupled cycles of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus, and strongly depend on the availability of water and energy. These interactions shape future terrestrial biosphere responses to global change. Many process-based models of the terrestrial biosphere have been gradually extended from considering carbon-water interactions to also including nitrogen, and later, phosphorus dynamics. This evolutionary model development has hindered full integration of these biogeochemical cycles and the feedbacks amongst them. Here we present a new terrestrial ecosystem model QUINCY (QUantifying Interactions between terrestrial Nutrient CYcles and the climate system), which is formulated around a consistent representation of element cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. This new model includes i) a representation of plant growth which separates source (e.g. photosynthesis) and sink (growth rate of individual tissues, constrained by nutrients, temperature, and water availability) processes; ii) the acclimation of many ecophysiological processes to meteorological conditions and/or nutrient availabilities; iii) an explicit representation of vertical soil processes to separate litter and soil organic matter dynamics; iv) a range of new diagnostics (leaf chlorophyll content; 13C, 14C, and 15N isotope tracers) to allow for a more in-depth model evaluation. We present the model structure and provide an assessment of its performance against a range of observations from global-scale ecosystem monitoring networks. We demonstrate that the framework is capable of consistently simulating ecosystem dynamics across a large gradient in climate and soil conditions, as well as across different plant functional types. To aid this understanding we provide an assessment of the model's sensitivity to its parameterisation and the associated uncertainty.

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Terrestrial Ecosystem Impacts of Sulfide Mining: Scope of Issues for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Minnesota, USA

Forests ◽

10.3390/f10090747 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (9) ◽

pp. 747 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Lee E. Frelich

Keyword(s):

Boreal Forest ◽

Large Scale ◽

Mine Drainage ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystem ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Migration Routes ◽

Metal Mining ◽

Mining Operations ◽

Ecosystem Impacts ◽

Mining Impacts

Large-scale metal mining operations are planned or underway in many locations across the boreal forest biome in North America, Europe, and Asia. Although many published analyses of mining impacts on water quality in boreal landscapes are available, there is little guidance regarding terrestrial impacts. Scoping of potential impacts of Cu-Ni exploration and mining in sulfide ores are presented for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW), Minnesota USA, an area of mostly boreal forest on thin soils and granitic bedrock. Although the primary footprint of the proposed mines would be outside the BWCAW, displacement and fragmentation of forest ecosystems would cause spatial propagation of effects into a secondary footprint within the wilderness. Potential negative impacts include disruption of population dynamics for wildlife species with migration routes, or metapopulations of plant species that span the wilderness boundary, and establishment of invasive species outside the wilderness that could invade the wilderness. Due to linkages between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, acid mine drainage can impact lowland forests, which are highly dependent on chemistry of water flowing through them. The expected extremes in precipitation and temperature due to warming climate can also interact with mining impacts to reduce the resilience of forests to disturbance caused by mining.

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