Publications related to Ecological pyramid

Disentangling the effects of climate change and reoligotrophication on primary production in a large lake

Alfred Johny Wüest, Hugo Nicolás Ulloa Sánchez, Shubham Krishna, Emile Barbe

Climate change and reduction in nutrient loads have significant effects on primary production and phytoplankton growth dynamics. Since in the last few decades in many regions, nutrients in lakes were reduced simultaneously as the climate changed. Yet, it r ...

SPRINGER BASEL AG2023

Decision support for the design of integrated biorefineries

Julia Granacher

A shift from fossil-based energy and products to more sustainable alternatives is essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and associated climate change impacts. Biomass represents a promising alternative for providing fuels and carbon-based products w ...

EPFL2023

Food web structure and energy flux dynamics, but not taxonomic richness, influence microbial ecosystem functions in a Sphagnum-dominated peatland

Alexandre Buttler, Edward Mitchell, Vincent Eric Jules Jassey

Soil microbial communities are vital for multiple ecosystem processes and services. In particular, soil microbial food webs are key determinants of soil biodiversity, functioning and stability. Unclear, however, is how struc-tural features of food webs, su ...

ELSEVIER FRANCE-EDITIONS SCIENTIFIQUES MEDICALES ELSEVIER2023

Thinking like a consumer: Linking aquatic basal metabolism and consumer dynamics

Tom Ian Battin, Marta Boix Canadell, Janine Rüegg

The increasing availability of high‐frequency freshwater ecosystem metabolism data provides an opportunity to identify links between metabolic regimes, as gross primary production and ecosystem respiration patterns, and consumer energetics with the potenti ...

2021

Electrochemical evaluation of iron-binding ligands along the Australian GEOTRACES southwestern Pacific section (GP13)

Christel Sybille Hassler

In this work, we performed electrochemical investigations of Fe-binding ligands in water samples collected in autumn 2011 along the Australian GEOTRACES southwestern Pacific section (GP13, between 153 degrees E and 170 degrees W longitude along the 30 degr ...

2020

Catchment land cover influences macroinvertebrate food-web structure and energy flow pathways in mountain streams

Tom Ian Battin, Christopher Robinson

Understanding how different food resources sustain stream food webs is fundamental towards increasing our knowledge on trophic structure and energy flow pathways in fluvial ecosystems. 2. Food webs in small mountain streams are sustained by autochthonou ...

2019

Hydraulic-morphological habitat assessment in rivers considering residual flow, sediment replenishment and artificial flood events

Severin Stähly

Dams store water and trap sediment in their reservoirs. Downstream river segments, hence, are affected by a limited sediment dynamics. This becomes obvious by river bed incision, limited geomorphological variability and depletion of hydraulic habitats for ...

EPFL2019

Light availability impacts structure and function of phototrophic stream biofilms across domains and trophic levels

Tom Ian Battin

Phototrophic biofilms are ubiquitous in freshwater and marine environments where they are critical for biogeochemical cycling, food webs and in industrial applications. In streams, phototrophic biofilms dominate benthic microbial life and harbour an immens ...

Blackwell Publishing Ltd2018

An ecotoxicological view on neurotoxicity assessment

Wolfgang Schulz

The numbers of potential neurotoxicants in the environment are raising and pose a great risk for humans and the environment. Currently neurotoxicity assessment is mostly performed to predict and prevent harm to human populations. Despite all the efforts in ...

SPRINGEROPEN2018

Aquatic Fungi: A Disregarded Trophic Level in Ecological Risk Assessment of Organic Fungicides

Freshwater fungi are a diverse group of organisms and fulfill important functions in the food web dynamics of surface water ecosystems. Ascomycetic and basidiomycetic hyphomycetes play key roles in leaf litter breakdown in rivers and creeks, while parasiti ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2018

A generalized definition of reactivity for ecological systems and the problem of transient species dynamics

Andrea Rinaldo, Lorenzo Mari, Marino Gatto

Perturbations to an ecosystem's steady state can trigger transient responses of great ecological relevance. Asymptotic stability determines whether a generic perturbation will fade out in the long run, but falls short of characterizing the dynamics imme ...

Wiley2017

Subordinate plant species moderate drought effects on earthworm communities in grasslands

Alexandre Buttler, Claire Guenat, Pierre Rémi Mariotte, Renée-Claire Le Bayon

Loss of plant diversity resulting from forecasted drought events is likely to alter soil functioning and affect earthworm communities. Plant-soil interactions are expected to play an important role in mediating climate change effects on soil decomposers. I ...

Elsevier2016

Application of remote sensing for the optimization of in-situ sampling for monitoring of phytoplankton abundance in a large lake

Alfred Johny Wüest, Damien Bouffard, Isabel Blanca Sophie Kiefer

Directives and legislations worldwide aim at representatively and continuously monitoring the ecological status of surface waters. In many countries, chlorophyll-a concentrations (CHL) are used as an indicator of phytoplankton abundance and the trophic lev ...

Elsevier2015

Generalized receptor law governs phototaxis in the phytoplankton Euglena gracilis

Andrea Rinaldo, Andrea Giometto, Amos Maritan, Florian Altermatt

Phototaxis, the process through which motile organisms direct their swimming toward or away from light, is implicated in key ecological phenomena (including algal blooms and diel vertical migration) that shape the distribution, diversity, and productivity ...

National Academy of Sciences2015

Silver nanoparticle effects on simple stream food webs and ecosystem processes : periphyton-grazer system

Carmen Omayra Gil Allué

With the global nanotechnology market growing rapidly, nanomaterials are being increasingly released into aquatic environments, where they can undergo modifications and sedimentation, which will put benthic organisms at risk. Of particular interest is the ...

EPFL2015

Experimental evidence for strong stabilizing forces at high functional diversity of aquatic microbial communities

Andrea Rinaldo, Andrea Giometto, Francesco Carrara, Florian Altermatt

Unveiling the mechanisms that promote coexistence in biological communities is a fundamental problem in ecology. Stable coexistence of many species is commonly observed in natural communities. Most of these natural communities, however, are composed of spe ...

Ecological Soc Amer2015

Mixtures of Chemical Pollutants at European Legislation Safety Concentrations: How Safe Are They?

Kristin Schirmer

The risk posed by complex chemical mixtures in the environment to wildlife and humans is increasingly debated, but has been rarely tested under environmentally relevant scenarios. To address this issue, two mixtures of 14 or 19 substances of concern (pesti ...

Oxford University Press2014

Plant functional diversity drives niche-size-structure of dominant microbial consumers along a poor to extremely rich fen gradient

Vincent Eric Jules Jassey, Bjorn Jozef Maria Robroek, Mariusz Lamentowicz

Plant community composition is recognized more and more for playing an important role in ecosystem processes, such as C cycling. In particular, plant functional type (PFT) composition seems to have a key regulatory role, yet the underlying mechanisms in ...

Wiley-Blackwell2014

Integrated toxicity evaluation of a pulp deposit using organisms of different trophic levels

In order to assess possible adverse effects originating from pulp deposits in a Swiss lake, a sediment quality triad approach was applied with chemical, ecotoxicological and ecological assessment methods. To obtain an integrative picture of the potential e ...

Springer Heidelberg2013

To What Extent Do Food Preferences Explain the Trophic Position of Heterotrophic and Mixotrophic Microbial Consumers in a Sphagnum Peatland?

Edward Mitchell, Vincent Eric Jules Jassey, Caroline Meyer

Although microorganisms are the primary drivers of biogeochemical cycles, the structure and functioning of microbial food webs are poorly studied. This is the case in Sphagnum peatlands, where microbial communities play a key role in the global carbon cycl ...

Springer US2013