Invertebrate traits, diversity and the vulnerability of groundwater ecosystems

Funding Information: This manuscript evolved from a workshop titled Trait‐based analyses in groundwater ecology and bioassessment held as part of the 24th International Conference on Subterranean Biology, 20–24th August 2018, University of Aveiro, Portugal. The workshop was supported by the conference organisers and the Macquarie University Species Spectrum Research Centre. Financial support was also provided to M.A.D. by the Portuguese government (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia; FCT) through the research unit UIDB/04085/2020 (CENSE). A.S.P.S.R. was supported by the VILLUM FONDEN (research grant 15471) and by Portuguese National Funds through Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within the cE3c Unit funding UIDB/00329/2020. S.I.S. acknowledges funding through EU Operational Programme Research, Development and Education No. CZ.02.2.69/0.0/0.0/16_027/0008357, and by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic [grant number CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16 025/0007417]. K.L.K. was supported in part by Australian Research Council grant LP190100927. The comments of the Editor, Associate Editor and an anonymous reviewer greatly improved the MS. Open access publishing facilitated by Macquarie University, as part of the Wiley ‐ Macquarie University agreement via the Council of Australian University Librarians. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Functional Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.Groundwater comprises the largest freshwater ecosystem on the planet. It has a distinct regime of extreme, yet stable environmental conditions that have favoured the development of similar morphological and functional traits in the resident invertebrate fauna (stygofauna). The analysis of community traits is increasingly used as an alternative to taxonomy-based assessments of biodiversity, especially for monitoring ecosystem status and linking the functions of organisms to ecological processes, yet it has been rarely applied to stygofauna and groundwater ecosystems. In this paper, we review the variation in functional traits among the invertebrate fauna of this important ecosystem. We focus on the stygofauna and processes of alluvium and fractured rock aquifers that are typified by small voids and fissures that constrain the habitats and environmental conditions. As a first step, we compare trait variability between groundwater and surface water invertebrate communities and then examine the significance of the ranges of these traits to the vulnerability of the ecosystem to change. Fifteen potentially useful functional traits are recognised. Eight of these have narrower ranges (i.e. exhibit fewer states, or attributes, of a particular trait) in groundwater than they do in surface water. Two traits have wider ranges. Our synthesis suggests that the relative stability of groundwater environments has led to low trait variability. The low biomass and low reproductive rate of stygofauna suggest that recovery potential following disturbance is likely to be low. For the purposes of both improved understanding and effective management, further work is needed to document additional functional traits and their states in groundwater fauna, enabling a better understanding of the relationship between response and effect traits in these ecosystems. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.publishersversionpublishe

Verwey-Type Charge Ordering and Site-Selective Mott Transition in Fe4O5under Pressure

The metal-insulator transition driven by electronic correlations is one of the most fundamental concepts in condensed matter. In mixed-valence compounds, this transition is often accompanied by charge ordering (CO), resulting in the emergence of complex phases and unusual behaviors. The famous example is the archetypal mixed-valence mineral magnetite, Fe3O4, exhibiting a complex charge-ordering below the Verwey transition, whose nature has been a subject of long-time debates. In our study, using high-resolution X-ray diffraction supplemented by resistance measurements and DFT+DMFT calculations, the electronic, magnetic, and structural properties of recently synthesized mixed-valence Fe4O5are investigated under pressure to ∼100 GPa. Our calculations, consistent with experiment, reveal that at ambient conditions Fe4O5is a narrow-gap insulator characterized by the original Verwey-type CO. Under pressure Fe4O5undergoes a series of electronic and magnetic-state transitions with an unusual compressional behavior above ∼50 GPa. A site-dependent collapse of local magnetic moments is followed by the site-selective insulator-to-metal transition at ∼84 GPa, occurring at the octahedral Fe sites. This phase transition is accompanied by a 2+ to 3+ valence change of the prismatic Fe ions and collapse of CO. We provide a microscopic explanation of the complex charge ordering in Fe4O5which "unifies" it with the behavior of two archetypal examples of charge- or bond-ordered materials, magnetite and rare-earth nickelates (RNiO3). We find that at low temperatures the Verwey-type CO competes with the "trimeron"/"dimeron" charge ordered states, allowing for pressure/temperature tuning of charge ordering. Summing up the available data, we present the pressure-temperature phase diagram of Fe4O5 © 2022 American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.EAR-1634415; National Science Foundation, NSF: EAR-1606856; U.S. Department of Energy, USDOE: DE-FG02-94ER14466; Office of Science, SC; Argonne National Laboratory, ANL: DE-AC02-06CH11357; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG: OV-110/3-2; Russian Foundation for Basic Research, РФФИ: 20-42-660027; Israel Science Foundation, ISF: 1552/18, 1748/20; Russian Science Foundation, RSF: 19-72-30043; 122021000039-4We thank L. S. Dubrovinsky, I. A. Abrikosov, and V. Prakapenka for their interest in this research and B. Lavina for fruitful discussions about in situ DAC synthesis. We are grateful to M. Hanfland for the assistance in using beamline ID-15B of ESRF, Grenoble, France. Portions of this work were performed at GeoSoilEnviroCARS (The University of Chicago, Sector 13), Advanced Photon Source (APS), Argonne National Laboratory. GeoSoilEnviroCARS is supported by the National Science Foundation-Earth Sciences (Grant EAR-1634415) and Department of Energy-GeoSciences (Grant DE-FG02-94ER14466). This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. Use of the COMPRES-GSECARS gas loading system was supported by COMPRES under NSF Cooperative Agreement EAR-1606856 and by GSECARS through NSF Grant EAR-1634415 and DOE Grant DE-FG02-94ER14466.The work was partly supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grants No. 1552/18 and 1748/20) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Grant No. OV-110/3-2. The theoretical analysis was supported by Russian Foundation for the Basic Research (Project No. 20-42-660027). The DFT calculations were supported by the state assignment of Minobrnauki of Russia (Theme “Electron” No. 122021000039-4). The DFT+DMFT calculations were supported by the Russian Science Foundation (Project No. 19-72-30043)

High-Pressure Synthesis of Dirac Materials: Layered van der Waals Bonded BeN4 Polymorph

High-pressure chemistry is known to inspire the creation of unexpected new classes of compounds with exceptional properties. Here, we employ the laser-heated diamond anvil cell technique for synthesis of a Dirac material BeN4. A triclinic phase of beryllium tetranitride tr-BeN4 was synthesized from elements at ∼85 GPa. Upon decompression to ambient conditions, it transforms into a compound with atomic-thick BeN4 layers interconnected via weak van der Waals bonds and consisting of polyacetylene-like nitrogen chains with conjugated π systems and Be atoms in square-planar coordination. Theoretical calculations for a single BeN4 layer show that its electronic lattice is described by a slightly distorted honeycomb structure reminiscent of the graphene lattice and the presence of Dirac points in the electronic band structure at the Fermi level. The BeN4 layer, i.e., beryllonitrene, represents a qualitatively new class of 2D materials that can be built of a metal atom and polymeric nitrogen chains and host anisotropic Dirac fermions. © 2021 American Physical Society.Parts of this research were carried out at the Extreme Conditions Beamline (P02.2) at DESY, a member of Helmholtz Association (HGF). Portions of this work were performed on beamline ID15 at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), Grenoble, France. Portions of this work were performed at GeoSoilEnviroCARS (The University of Chicago, Sector 13) and at HPCAT (sector 16) of the Advanced Photon Source (APS), Argonne National Laboratory. Research was sponsored by the Army Research Office and was accomplished under the Cooperative Agreement No. W911NF-19-2-0172. N. D. and L. D. thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG Projects No. DU 954-11/1, No. DU 393-9/2, and No. DU 393-13/1) and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany (BMBF, Grant No. No. 05K19WC1) for financial support. D. L. thanks the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for financial support. Theoretical analysis of chemical bonding was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (Project No. 18-12-00492). Calculations of the phonon dispersion relations were supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation in the framework of Increase Competitiveness Program of NUST MISIS (No. K2-2020-026) implemented by governmental decree No. 211. Support from the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (Wallenberg Scholar Grant No. KAW-2018.0194), the Swedish Government Strategic Research Areas in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linköping University (Faculty Grant SFO-Mat-LiU No. 2009 00971) and SeRC, the Swedish Research Council (VR) Grant No. 2019-05600 and Vinnova VINN Excellence Center Functional Nanoscale Materials (FunMat-2) Grant No. 2016–05156 is gratefully acknowledged. The computations were enabled by resources provided by the Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) partially funded by the Swedish Research Council through Grant Agreement No. 2016-07213. The work of M. I. K. was supported by the JTC-FLAGERA Project GRANSPORT. GeoSoilEnviroCARS is supported by the National Science Foundation–Earth Sciences (EAR–1634415) and Department of Energy-Geosciences (DE-FG02-94ER14466). HPCAT operations are supported by DOE-NNSA’s Office of Experimental Sciences. Advanced Photon Source is U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357

Tree diversity and species identity effects on soil fungi, protists and animals are context dependent

Plant species richness and the presence of certain influential species (sampling effect) drive the stability and functionality of ecosystems as well as primary production and biomass of consumers. However, little is known about these floristic effects on richness and community composition of soil biota in forest habitats owing to methodological constraints. We developed a DNA metabarcoding approach to identify the major eukaryote groups directly from soil with roughly species-level resolution. Using this method, we examined the effects of tree diversity and individual tree species on soil microbial biomass and taxonomic richness of soil biota in two experimental study systems in Finland and Estonia and accounted for edaphic variables and spatial autocorrelation. Our analyses revealed that the effects of tree diversity and individual species on soil biota are largely context dependent. Multiple regression and structural equation modelling suggested that biomass, soil pH, nutrients and tree species directly affect richness of different taxonomic groups. The community composition of most soil organisms was strongly correlated due to similar response to environmental predictors rather than causal relationships. On a local scale, soil resources and tree species have stronger effect on diversity of soil biota than tree species richness per se

Universal diamond edge Raman scale to 0.5 terapascal and implications for the metallization of hydrogen

The recent progress in generating static pressures up to terapascal values opens opportunities for studying novel materials with unusual properties, such as metallization of hydrogen and high-temperature superconductivity. However, an evaluation of pressure above ~0.3 terapascal is a challenge. We report a universal high-pressure scale up to ~0.5 terapascal, which is based on the shift of the Raman edge of stressed diamond anvils correlated with the equation of state of Au and does not require an additional pressure sensor. According to the new scale, the pressure values are substantially lower by 20% at ~0.5 terapascal compared to the extrapolation of the existing scales. We compare the available data of H2 at the highest static pressures. We show that the onset of the proposed metallization of molecular hydrogen reported by different groups is consistent when corrected with the new scale and can be compared with various theoretical predictions