Aquatic Macroinvertebrate Life History and Phenology in a Colorado Alpine Wetland (Green Lakes Valley, Colorado Front Range)

Zoolog

European Frogbit (Hydrocharis morsus-ranae) in the Champlain/Adirondack Region: Recent Inferences

As part of its north-south movement following introduction to Canada, Hydrocharis morsus-ranae L. (Hydrocharitaceae) has recently become established in slow-moving waters of the Champlain/Adirondack region of the northeastern US. The species is present on both the New York and Vermont shores of Lake Champlain and, so far, at a single location in the interior of the Adirondack Park. The southernmost Champlain/Adirondack occurrence is in the Champlain Canal south of Whitehall, NY (L. Eichler, Darrin Freshwater Institute, pers. comm.), within 25 miles of the Hudson River watershed—a population first recorded around 2006. Entry into the Hudson watershed, whether from the canal or Adirondack headwaters, has the potential to increase the spread of European frogbit well beyond the handful of spot occurrences currently recorded in the rest of the Northeast. The objective of this note is to summarize findings derived from recent student-driven research conducted on the status and biology of H. morsus-ranae in the Champlain/Adirondack region

ISCAN: a System for Integrated Phonetic Analyses Across Speech Corpora

Speech corpora of many languages, styles, and formats exist in the world, representing significant potential for the phonetic sciences. However in practice there are significant practical and methodological barriers to conducting the “same study” across corpora, including necessary technical skills and non-comparability of results using non-standardized measures. We introduce an open-source software system for Integrated Speech Corpus ANalysis (ISCAN), which enables automated acoustic phonetic analysis across spoken corpora of diverse formats and sizes. A web-browser-based GUI and Python package allow for different user backgrounds. The system is a major update of core functionality for fully- automated speech corpus analysis (importing, enriching, querying) from a previous version, to meet new goals: different user configurations, working with restricted datasets, and interacting with data (visualization and correction). The system’s flexibility for different projects is shown in two use cases: large-scale automatic segmental analysis of spontaneous speech across English dialects, and smallerscale semi-automatic prosodic analysis

The effects of climatic fluctuations and extreme events on running water ecosystems

Most research on the effects of environmental change in freshwaters has focused on incremental changes in average conditions, rather than fluctuations or extreme events such as heatwaves, cold snaps, droughts, floods or wildfires, which may have even more profound consequences. Such events are commonly predicted to increase in frequency, intensity and duration with global climate change, with many systems being exposed to conditions with no recent historical precedent. We propose a mechanistic framework for predicting potential impacts of environmental fluctuations on running water ecosystems by scaling up effects of fluctuations from individuals to entire ecosystems. This framework requires integration of four key components: effects of the environment on individual metabolism, metabolic and biomechanical constraints on fluctuating species interactions, assembly dynamics of local food webs and mapping the dynamics of the meta-community onto ecosystem function. We illustrate the framework by developing a mathematical model of environmental fluctuations on dynamically assembling food webs. We highlight (currently limited) empirical evidence for emerging insights and theoretical predictions. For example, widely supported predictions about the effects of environmental fluctuations are: high vulnerability of species with high per capita metabolic demands such as large-bodied ones at the top of food webs; simplification of food web network structure and impaired energetic transfer efficiency; reduced resilience and top-down relative to bottom-up regulation of food web and ecosystem processes. We conclude by identifying key questions and challenges that need to be addressed to develop more accurate and predictive bio-assessments of the effects of fluctuations, and implications of fluctuations for management practices in an increasingly uncertain world

Environmental controls on benthic food web functions and carbon resource use in subarctic lakes

Climate warming and consequent greening of subarctic landscapes increase the availability of organic carbon to the detrital food webs in aquatic ecosystems. This may cause important shifts in ecosystem functioning through the functional feeding patterns of benthic organisms that rely differently on climatically altered carbon resources. Twenty-five subarctic lakes in Finnish Lapland across a tree line ecotone were analysed for limnological and optical variables, carbon (delta C-13) and nitrogen (delta N-15) stable isotope (SI) composition of surface sediment organic matter (OM) and fossil Chironomidae (Diptera) remains to examine environmental controls behind chironomid functional feeding group (FFG) structure and their isotopic associations for assessing ecosystem functioning and carbon utilisation. We hypothesise that the chironomid SI signatures reflect increased allochthony with increasing allochthonous input, but the resource use may be altered by the functional characteristics of the assemblage. Multivariate analyses indicated that carbon geochemistry in the sediments (delta C-13, delta N-15, C/N), nutrients, indices of productivity (chlorophyll-a) and lake water optical properties, related to increasing presence of OM, played a key role in defining the chironomid FFG composition and isotopic signatures. Response modelling was used to examine how individual FFGs respond to environmental gradients. They showed divergent responses for OM quantity, dissolved organic carbon and nutrients between feeding strategies, suggesting that detritivores and filter feeders prefer contrasting carbon and nutrient conditions, and may thus hold paleoecological indicator potential to identify changes between different carbon fluxes. Benthic production was the primary carbon source for the chironomid assemblages according to a three-source SI mixing model, whereas pelagic and terrestrial components contributed less. Between-lake variability in source utilisation was high and controlled primarily by allochthonous OM inputs. Combination of biogeochemical modelling and functional classification is useful to widen our understanding of subarctic lake ecosystem functions and responses to climate-driven changes in limnology and catchment characteristics for long-term environmental change assessments and functional paleoecology.Peer reviewe