EVALUATION OF DIFFERENT TAXONOMIC LEVELS AS SURROGATES OF ANT DIVERSITY IN GREEN AREAS IN AN URBANIZED ENVIRONMENT E. B. A. KOCH1, T. S. MELO2,3,4, A. R. S. ANDRADE2,3, M. LEPONCE5 & J. H. C. DELABIE2,4 1Programa de Pós-graduação em Ecologia e Evolução, Universidade Estadual de Feira de Santana (UEFS), CEP: 44.036-900 - Feira de Santana, Bahia, Brazil, e-mail: elmoborges@gmail.com; 2Programa de Pós-graduação em Ecologia, Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA), Salvador, Bahia, Brazil; 3Centro de Ecologia e Conservação Animal, Universidade Católica do Salvador (UCSal), Salvador, Bahia, Brazil; 4Laboratório de Mirmecologia, Convênio Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz (UESC)/Comissão Executiva do Plano da Lavoura Cacaueira (CEPLAC), Ilhéus, Bahia, Brazil; 5Biodiversity Monitoring & Assessment, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS), Bruxelas, Belgium. In cities located in environments of high biological importance, urbanization leads to changes in biotic diversity, while monitoring these changes can be difficult. Studies have pointed to the use of metrics that replace species as an alternative. Surrogate models are easily determined measures of biodiversity that correlate strongly with species richness and with what you want to investigate, being useful for detecting or monitoring environmental changes. The use of higher taxonomic levels has been applied to groups of megadiverse organisms, such as arthropods, since difficulties in identifying species are predictable. The aim of this study was to evaluate the practicality of using taxonomic diversity of ants as a surrogate of green area coverage in an urban environment. Four levels of "surrogate resolutions" (subfamily, genus, indicator taxa, and intermediate resolution) were assessed to the taxonomic diversity of ants across three levels of urban green areas (Small = 0 to 35%
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RBINS Staff Publications 2023
In order to estimate the effects of the meteorological variability on the gross primary production in the Ligurian Sea (NW Mediterranean Sea), a coupling between a hydrodynamic model and a biological one is realized. The one-dimensional version of the GHER hydrodynamic model includes heat and momentum exchanges at the air–sea interface. It is coupled with a simple food-web model from the LEPM. A simulation performed with real meteorological data for the year 1985 reproduces reasonably the seasonal phytoplanktonic dynamics and the distribution between diatoms and flagellates. From this simulation, an annual gross primary production integrated over 200 m of 46.4 g C m−2 year−1 is computed which is representative of an oligotrophic environment. In order to estimate the relative effect on the gross primary production of the meteorological variability on the one hand and of the initial conditions on the other hand, several runs have been performed for the year 1985 with different conditions of light, wind intensity and nitrate initial quantity. The first simulations are performed with daily and monthly mean solar radiation and wind intensity. An averaging of wind intensity yields a decrease in the gross primary production and leads to unrealistic phytoplankton dynamics. It seems then necessary to take into account the 3-hourly variability of the wind intensity in order to simulate the phytoplankton dynamics with relatively good accuracy. On the other hand, an averaging of the solar radiation leads to an increase in the gross primary production. The following simulations are performed with an increase (decrease) in the solar radiation, the wind intensity or the nitrate initial quantity which are representative of the variability observed in a 5-year set of meteorological and hydrobiological data (1984–1988). An increase in the solar radiation is found to reduce the gross primary production, while an increase in the initial nitrate quantity or the wind intensity leads to a higher gross primary production, and the reverse. In the case of variations of the solar radiation (±2%), the simulations give an annual gross primary production integrated over 200 m included between 44.8 and 46.7 g C m−2 year−1, representing a variability of 4%. With the variations of the surface wind intensity (±10%), the runs carry to an annual gross primary production integrated over 200 m from 34.1 to 59.1 g C m−2 year−1, representing a variability of 54%. The variations of the initial nitrate concentration (±50%) lead to an annual gross primary production integrated over 200 m between 20.7 and 69.8 g C m−2 year−1 which represents a variability of 108%. An analysis of the relationship between the total gross primary production and the annual mean depth of the mixed layer has shown that the deeper the mixed layer is, the higher is the total annual gross primary production.
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At the end of 2014, a Major Baltic Inflow (MBI) brought oxygenated, salty water into the Baltic proper and reached the long-term anoxic Eastern Gotland Basin (EGB) by March 2015. In July 2015, we measured benthic fluxes of phosphorus (P), nitrogen (N) and silicon (Si) nutrients and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) in situ using an autonomous benthic lander at deep sites (170–210 m) in the EGB, where the bottom water oxygen concentration was 30–45 μM. The same in situ methodology was used to measure benthic fluxes at the same sites in 2008–2010, but then under anoxic conditions. The high efflux of phosphate under anoxic conditions became lower upon oxygenation, and turned into an influx in about 50% of the flux measurements. The C:P and N:P ratios of the benthic solute flux changed from clearly below the Redfield ratio (on average about 70 and 3–4, respectively) under anoxia to approaching or being well above the Redfield ratio upon oxygenation. These observations demonstrate retention of P in newly oxygenated sediments. We found no significant effect of oxygenation on the benthic ammonium, silicate and DIC flux. We also measured benthic denitrification, anammox, and dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium (DNRA) rates at the same sites using isotope-pairing techniques. The bottom water of the long-term anoxic EGB contained less than 0.5 μM nitrate in 2008–2010, but the oxygenation event created bottom water nitrate concentrations of about 10 μM in July 2015 and the benthic flux of nitrate was consistently directed into the sediment. Nitrate reduction to both dinitrogen gas (denitrification) and ammonium (DNRA) was initiated in the newly oxygenated sediments, while anammox activity was negligible. We estimated the influence of this oxygenation event on the magnitudes of the integrated benthic P flux (the internal P load) and the fixed N removal through benthic and pelagic denitrification by comparing with a hypothetical scenario without the MBI. Our calculations suggest that the oxygenation triggered by the MBI in July 2015, extrapolated to the basin-wide scale of the Baltic proper, decreased the internal P load by 23% and increased the total (benthic plus pelagic) denitrification by 18%.
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