Severe disturbance overflows the stabilizing buffer of variable biotic interactions

Recent studies have uncovered that biotic interaction strength varies over time in real ecosystems intrinsically and/or responding to anthropogenic disturbances. Little is known, however, about whether such interaction variability strengthens or weakens community resistance against disturbances. Here, we examine how the change in interaction strength after pesticide application mediates disturbance impacts on a freshwater community using outdoor mesocosms. We show that the change in interaction strength buffered the disturbance impact but amplified it once the disturbance severity exceeded a certain threshold. Importantly, we also show that interactions fluctuating more temporally under no disturbances were more changeable in response to pesticide applications. Our findings suggest that a severe disturbance may have a surprise impact on a biological community amplified by their own interaction variability, but the possibility still remains that we can predict the consequences of the disturbance by measuring the interaction variability before the disturbance occurs.

Life under an oil slick: response of a freshwater food web to simulated spills of diluted bitumen in field mesocosms

Heavy crude oil transportation over land is increasing, yet the ecological impacts of spills, particularly of diluted bitumen, in freshwater environments remain poorly understood. We simulated spills of diluted bitumen in 1400 L land-based mesocosms containing water and sediments from a boreal, oligotrophic lake and monitored the response of natural planktonic communities over 11 days. Most species of phytoplankton (chrysophytes and dinoflagellates) and zooplankton (copepods and cladocerans) were sensitive to oil, exhibiting >70% overall abundance reductions in response to the spills. Declines in nano- and microphytoplankton were short-lived and began to recover after the oil sank, whereas picophytoplankton and zooplankton populations remained depressed at the end of the experiment. In contrast, oil spills stimulated bacteria known to degrade hydrocarbons, especially Alphaproteobacteria, whereas Gammaprotobacteria (a common marine oil spill bacterial class) increased less. This is the first experiment to examine the effects of diluted bitumen in a multitrophic freshwater community.

Response of aquatic microbial communities and bioindicator modelling of hydraulic fracturing flowback and produced water

ABSTRACT The response of microbial communities to releases of hydraulic fracturing flowback and produced water (PW) may influence ecosystem functions. However, knowledge of the effects of PW spills on freshwater microbiota is limited. Here, we conducted two separate experiments: 16S rRNA gene sequencing combined with random forests modelling was used to assess freshwater community changes in simulated PW spills by volume from 0.05% to 50%. In a separate experiment, live/dead cell viability in a freshwater community was tested during exposure to 10% PW by volume. Three distinct patterns of microbial community shifts were identified: (i) indigenous freshwater genera remained dominant in <2.5% PW, (ii) from 2.5% to 5% PW, potential PW organic degraders such as Pseudomonas, Rheinheimera and Brevundimonas became dominant, and (iii) no significant change in the relative abundance of taxa was observed in >5% PW. Microbial taxa including less abundant genera such as Cellvibrio were potential bioindicators for the degree of contamination with PW. Additionally, live cells were quickly damaged by adding 10% PW, but cell counts recovered in the following days. Our study shows that the responses of freshwater microbiota vary by spill size, and these responses show promise as effective fingerprints for PW spills in aquatic environments.