Aquatic organisms are constantly exposed to effluents which often contain microplastics. Microplastics adversely affect aquatic organisms as a result of mechanical damage during ingestion or intoxication by chemicals adsorbed on the microplastics. Sub-optimal temperatures may acerbate the adverse effects of microplastics on aquatic biota. Brachionid rotifers, such as Brachionus...
Anodonta anatina, a widely distributed Eurasian freshwater mussel, has dramatically declined and listed as endangered species in IUCN Red List in some parts of the Europe. To better understand its basic biology and possible sex-dependent effects of parasitism on reproduction, we investigated the reproductive traits, trematode parasitism and growth between November 2020 and...
Semi-quantitative microscope counts of phytoplankton are often a compromise between time-consuming cell biomass analyses and no phytoplankton data. We demonstrate how semiquantitative data from a monitoring program can be used to study phytoplankton community composition, its annual cycle, and aspects of the ecosystem it inhabits. Semi-quantitative counts from Agmon Wetlands...
In this work, we characterised the cyanobacterial communities in the plankton and littoral biofilm of 38 lakes and in the biofilm of 21 rivers in the Alps and surrounding subalpine regions by 16S rRNA gene metabarcoding. We found little overlap in the distribution of amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) between the three habitats and between water bodies. The differences were caused...
Bottom-feeding fish can exert strong top-down pressure on benthic invertebrates while also causing mechanical disturbance of the sediment. In our laboratory study, we investigated the influence of predation and disturbance-induced water column emigration on meiofauna, triggered by the armored catfish Corydoras aeneus. We hypothesized that both factors would significantly reduce...
Here, we studied the influence of changes of aquatic phases (standing and flowing phases) and human-induced habitat variability (natural and artificial) on the composition and diversity of benthic diatom assemblages in a small lowland stream in the Pannonian Ecoregion. Significant differences in composition were hypothesized between phases and habitats. Lower diversity was...
Habitat fragmentation is among the main threats to freshwater fish biodiversity, with expected effects including genetic impacts due to disturbance of migration and declining population size. Major concern falls on highly exploited species such as Prochilodus magdalenae, a migratory characiform fish endemic to the Magdalena River basin supporting much of the Colombian artisanal...
The East African soda lakes are known worldwide for their huge populations of lesser flamingos. Their phytoplankton community is often dominated by the cyanobacterium Limnospira fusiformis, the main food of lesser flamingos. In the early 2010s, the population of the cyanobacterium collapsed and the picoplanktic green alga Picocystis salinarum became dominant in Lake Nakuru...
Fisheries of the Mekong Basin are crucial to regional food security. They rely on seasonal monsoon rains that inundate rice fields and reconnect water bodies. Species assemblages vary over time and space, but infrastructure developments and climate change are negatively impacting the timing and magnitude of the flood pulse as well as fish migration routes and populations. In...
The translocation of non-indigenous fishes into lowland rives can result in invasive populations establishing and dispersing. Because non-indigenous fishes can cause ecological harm, it is important to understand their trophic relationships and the effects they may have on native fishes. We assessed the trophic ecology of a translocated chub Squalius cephalus population in the...
River regulation and water extraction has significantly altered flow regimes and reduced flood events in many inland river systems. Environmental flows have been adopted in many systems to mitigate the ecological impacts of river regulation, however a lack of knowledge regarding the interrelationship between flow regimes, carbon transport and instream productivity make...
Periphyton is the dominant primary producer in mountain streams and sustains the higher trophic levels. While certain periphyton groups, particularly diatoms, have received extensive study, the comprehensive characterization of the entire community has been largely neglected. This study aims to investigate the temporal pattern of biofilm in mountain streams characterized by...
The connectivity of the river–floodplain system during floods plays a decisive role in organisms/matter contribution to the ecosystems of large lowland rivers. We hypothesized that the direction of water-level trends during flood was crucial for zooplankton release from the floodplain into the river channel. The seven-year study of zooplankton in the large plain Ob river suggest...
The high-elevation plateaus of the inter-Andean valleys are home to shallow lakes that have become eutrophic. These lakes share similarities with shallow lakes in temperate and subtropical areas. Because native species diversity is low, invasive species dominate the fish and macrophytes communities. The study aimed to investigate the behavioral response of the local Daphnia pulex...
Archived water quality data collected between 1901 and 2019 were used to reconstruct annual averages of various forms of C, N, P, and silicate concentrations and alkalinity in the lower Mississippi River. During this interval the average annual nitrate concentrations doubled pre-dominantly from fertilizer applications and tiling, silicate concentrations decreased by half as...
The zooplankton of five estuaries of the Basque coast (southeast Bay of Biscay) was surveyed in summer 2019 to check the intraregional spread of exotic species and analyse the cross-estuary differences in brackish and neritic communities related to the arrival of exotic species and the summertime geographic gradient of water temperature. Results revealed that all the studied...
Seasonal variations of floating-leaved macrophyte Nuphar lutea chlorophyll content were studied in lakes with different water quality. The aim was to investigate whether chlorophyll content of the plants could be used as an indicator of brownification. The relationship between chlorophyll a and b (CHL a:b) of the petioles decreased with increasing water colour. The relationship...
Zhu et al. (Science 380:1230, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adi6022 ) recently reported in Science that ‘water diversions’ carry a range of freshwater invasive non-native species (INNS) in China, and make calls for the Chinese government to take actions to monitor this invasion pathway and prevent future spread. This issue is not confined to China however. Water...
Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera are three orders of freshwater macroinvertebrates with a short terrestrial adult life-stage that they use to disperse by flying upstream. This aerial dispersal can be assisted by native riparian forest, but regional variation has not yet been empirically tested. In this study we compared the EPT community of 153 sampling sites located in...