Towards a Molecular Taxonomy for Protists: Benefits,Risks, and Applications in Plankton Ecology

The increasing use of genetic information for the development of methods to study the diversity, distributions, and activities of protists in nature has spawned a new generation of powerful tools. For ecologists, one lure of these approaches lies in the potential for DNA sequences to provide the only immediately obvious means of normalizing the diverse criteria that presently exist for identifying and counting protists. A single, molecular taxonomy would allow studies of diversity across a broad range of species, as well as the detection and quantification of particular species of interest within complex, natural assemblages; goals that are not feasible using traditional methods. However, these advantages are not without their potential pitfalls and problems. Conflicts involving the species concept, disagreements over the true (physiological/ecological) meaning of genetic diversity, and a perceived threat by some that sequence information will displace knowledge regarding the morphologies, functions and physiologies of protistan taxa, have created debate and doubt regarding the efficacy and appropriateness of some genetic approaches. These concerns need continued discussion and eventual resolution as we move toward the irresistible attraction, and potentially enormous benefits, of the application of genetic approaches to protistan ecology.     

Parallel changes in the taxonomical structure of bacterial communities exposed to a similar environmental disturbance

Bacterial communities play a central role in ecosystems, by regulating biogeochemical fluxes. Therefore, understanding how multiple functional interactions between species face environmental perturbations is a major concern in conservation biology. Because bacteria can use several strategies, including horizontal gene transfers (HGT), to cope with rapidly changing environmental conditions, potential decoupling between function and taxonomy makes the use of a given species as a general bioindicator problematic. The present work is a first step to characterize the impact of a recent polymetallic gradient over the taxonomical networks of five lacustrine bacterial communities. Given that evolutionary convergence represents one of the best illustration of natural selection, we focused on a system composed of two pairs of impacted and clean lakes in order to test whether similar perturbation exerts a comparable impact on the taxonomical networks of independent bacterial communities. First, we showed that similar environmental stress drove parallel structural changes at the taxonomic level on two independent bacterial communities. Second, we showed that a long-term exposure to contaminant gradients drove significant taxonomic structure changes within three interconnected bacterial communities. Thus, this model lake system is relevant to characterize the strategies, namely acclimation and/or adaptation, of bacterial communities facing environmental perturbations, such as metal contamination.     

转型期城市生态学前沿研究进展

城市是一类以人类活动为中心听社会－经济－自然复合生态系统。城市人类活动对局地、区域和全球环境的胁迫效应,自然生态系统的响应机制,城市时、空、量、构、序的耦合规律、动力学机制和控制论方法是当前国际社会和学术界关注的热点。介绍了转型期城市人类生态影响研究的一些主要国际科学计划,如ＳＣＯＰＥ及ＩＨＤＰ等,综述了城市生态学研究三大前沿领域的国际研究动向和案例,即人居生态学、产业生态学和城镇生命支持系统生态     

Australia's place in the global restoration challenge: Interview with Richard Hobbs

Summary   This interview with Professor Richard Hobbs, a prominent Australian researcher, professor and journal editor, traces his involvement in ecology and the relatively new disciplines of landscape ecology and restoration ecology. Born and educated as a plant ecologist in Scotland, Richard undertook postdoctoral research in the USA before taking up a series of research positions in Australia that steered him towards landscape ecology and restoration ecology. Having maintained an interest and involvement in international organizations, Richard provides comment in this interview on the progress of ecological restoration practice in Australasia compared to North America and comments on the need for ensuring research in these disciplines is strongly linked to management, is as broadly relevant as possible, and, is carried out at appropriate scales.     

Rewilding the Scottish Highlands: Do Wild Boar,Sus scrofa,Use a Suitable Foraging Strategy to be Effective Ecosystem Engineers?

Ecosystem engineers are increasingly being reintroduced to restore ecological processes in restoration and rewilding projects. To predict and adaptively manage the impact of such species their behavioral ecology must be understood and quantified. Rooting behavior by wild boar qualifies them as ecosystem engineers due to their impact on vegetation disturbance regimes. The behavioral foraging ecology of wild boar was quantified in a fenced area in the Scottish Highlands in order to provide some of the understanding necessary to predict their ability to affect ecosystem restoration. Five wild boar were monitored within a 125 ha fenced area using Global Positioning System (GPS) collars and behavioral monitoring over a 12‐month period. Their activity budget, the relationship between foraging behavior and vegetation communities, and how these relationships vary between seasons was investigated. The results indicate that wild boar invested approximately four more hours daily to rooting during the autumn and winter than the spring and summer. During the spring and summer, grazing was the dominant foraging behavior (approximately 28% of foraging period) while rooting dominated in autumn and winter (approximately 76% of foraging period). Deep rooting behavior is particularly associated with bracken‐dominated communities. Associations between rooting, vegetation community, and season will have a strong influence on the spatial and temporal distribution of rooting behavior. This variation could have important implications for the impacts of boar on vegetation community dynamics. These results detail some of wild boar's ecosystem engineering behaviors; however, further research is required to consider the wider impacts of a full reintroduction.     

空间分子生态学——分子生态学与空间生态学相结合的新领域

分子标记、基因流、种群空间动态是当前生命科学研究中的热点领域。RFLPs、RAPDs、微卫星等新的分子标记的不断涌现,促进了这些领域的飞速发展。对种群空间动态研究中的等级岛屿模型、距离隔离模型、脚踏石模型、集合种群模型等方面许多令人瞩目的进展做了介绍。同时还介绍了遗传距离、基因流及其测度、基因突变模型、3S技术、空间精确性种群模型和基因频率的空间自相关等热点领域。最后,就空间分子生态学存在的问题与前景进行了讨论,指出了空间分子生态学可能的发展方向。     

流域生态学——生态学研究的一个新领域

由于人类不合理开发和利用自然资源,造成了流域生态环境的重大破坏,为了合理开放流域资源和保护生态环境,非常有必要开展流域生态学的研究。文中系统阐述了流域生态学的重要意义、主要研究内容和方法。流域生态学属于宏观生态学的研究领域,主要借助于宏观生态学的研究方法。流域生态学与目前生态学最关注的“全球变化、生物多样性和可持续发展”3个研究问题紧密结合在一起,极具研究价值,建议开展广泛深入的研究。     

The Philosophical Dullness of Classical Ecology, and a Levinsian Alternative

Ecology has had a lower profile in Biology & Philosophy than one might expect on the basis of the attention ecology is given in public discussions in relation to environmental issues. Our tentative explanation is that ecology appears theoretically redundant within biology and, consequently, philosophically challenging problemsrelated to biology are commonly supposed to be somewhere else, particularly in the molecular sphere. Richard Levins has recognized the genuine challenges posed by ecology for theoretical and philosophical thinking in biology. This essay sets the stage for appreciating his work; it was preceded by four articles published in Biology & Philosophy 15(2),and is followed by a personal reminiscent.     

Unifying functional trait approaches to understand the assemblage of ecological communities: synthesizing taxonomic divides

Functional traits have long been considered the ‘holy grail’ in community ecology due to their potential to link phenotypic variation with ecological processes. Advancements across taxonomic disciplines continue to support functional ecology's objective to approach generality in community assembly. However, a divergence of definitions, aims and methods across taxa has created discord, limiting the field's predictive capacity. Here, we provide a guide to support functional ecological comparisons across taxa. We describe advances in cross‐taxa functional research, identify gaps in approaches, synthesize definitions and unify methodological considerations. When deciding which traits to compare, particularly response traits, we advocate selecting functionally analogous traits that relate to community assembly processes. Finally, we describe at what scale and for which questions functional comparisons across taxa are useful and when other approaches may be more constructive. Our approach promotes standardized methods for integrative research across taxa to identify broad trends in community assembly.     

林带和牧草地水量平衡的研究

本文从水量平衡观点对林带、牧草地和裸露地的水量平衡各分量的变化规律进行了探讨。林带、牧草地和裸露地水量平衡各分量的分配比例分别为:降水均为100%;蒸发散96.4%、95.7%和89.5%;坡地径流3.6%、4.3%和10.5%。由于林带有林冠和林地两个作用面组成,分别对它们的水量平衡各分量的组成及其变化规律作了分析。还论述了林带对河川径流的影响。     

Distribution patterns of Batrachium communities in Mediterranean hard waters

The greatest number of Batrachium plant-communities is reached in base-poor waters of SW Europe where most Batrachium species develop laminar leaves. In contrast, base-rich waters of the Western Mediterranean are characterized by few Batrachium communities and by the only one Batrachium species present in the area with only dissected leaves. This work focused initially on studying the water ecology of Iberian Batrachium communities' developing in hard waters in order to seek to what extend the water physical–chemical gradient determines the occurrence of heterophyllous or homophyllous-dissected species. Floristic data and water physical–chemical data were analyzed using multivariate and comparative methods. We found two main types of Batrachium communities: community of Ranunculus trichophyllus – homophyllous and dissected species–, and community of Ranunculus penicillatus – heterophyllous species–. Alkalinity degree is the main factor separating both communities. Our results of a tentative survey on Batrachium composition in hard waters in the Eastern Mediterranean showed a wider range of physical–chemical water features as well as a greater number of Batrachium species with only dissected leaves in comparison to Western Mediterranean. We conclude that high alkalinity is related to the occurrence of Batrachium communities characterized by species with only dissected leaves in both the western and eastern parts of Mediterranean Europe.     

生态学研究的新领域--分子生态学

分子生态是生态学的一个新的研究领域。它采用分子生物学的技术与方法来研究生态活动规律的分子机理。本文简要介绍了分子生态学的定义、研究内容、研究方法和研究热点等,以期描述出分子生态学的概貌。     

Potentially handicapped but otherwise functional: Malformations in prey capture tools show no impacts on octopus life

Larval mortality is a keystone ecological factor for many benthic octopus since it mostly occurs before their settlement in the sea bottom as benthic juveniles. The literature had revealed that records of adult animals with morphological abnormalities (teratologies) are fewer in species with complex life cycle than in those with direct development. This is a direct consequence of the morphological, physiological, and development challenges that the transition from the larval to the adult morphology represents. During a routine fishing sample, we found an immature female horned octopus with additional buccal structures in two suckers of its ventral arms, likely rendering these suckers as inefficient. Based on the literature about the natural history of octopus, we provide evidence that these abnormalities were present at the moment of hatch. We evaluated the impact of the teratologies by comparing the shape of the buccal beaks and the trophic niche of the individual with five normal conspecifics. Although the beaks showed a different shape than normal individuals, the trophic niche was similar. Surprisingly, the teratological condition of the individual likely had no severe impacts on its life, even though it likely represents a handicap for its survival during its planktonic life. We also comment on other previous records from the literature of teratological adult octopus to highlight the amazing adaptive capacity of octopus to deal with challenging morphologies.     

Diet of Alouatta belzebul discolor in an Amazonian Rain Forest of Northern Mato Grosso State, Brazil

Prior field studies of Alouatta showed the highest frugivory in A. belzebul. During 10 mo between October 1999 and October 2000, we studied the feeding ecology of a group of 7–9 red-handed howlers (Alouatta belzebul discolor) in a primary forest on the banks of a tributary of the Teles Pires River, near Paranaíta, MT, Brazil (9°34S; 56°19W). The howlers used 3 types of habitat: upland (terra firme) forest, flood plain forest (igapó) and palm forest (açaizal). During 45 complete days of observation, the group fed on 67 plant species (N = 2039 feeding records) in 24 families. The 2 most used families were Leguminosae and Moraceae, with 17 species each. Fruits predominated (40–80%) in every month, except June, when young leaves accounted for 54% of the diet. Dialium guianense (Leguminosal, Caesalpinioideae) was the most consumed species. Flower (6%) and mature leaf (5%) consumptions were low. Tree bark, live and decayed wood, and woody twig monthly consumption varied from 0 to 26%, and occurred only in igapó, where they used mostly Macrolobium acaciaefolium (Leguminosae, Caesalpinioideae), Clitoria amazonum (Leguminosae, Papilionoideae) and Licania cf. canescens (Chrysobalanaceae). Our study on Alouatta belzebul discolor complements the high frugivory in A. b. belzebul and documents uncommon dietary items for the species. Although there is intraspecific variation in howler diets and new studies have shown higher frugivory for more folivorous species, Alouatta belzebul seems to be the most frugivorous howler species, in spite of its wide geographical distribution and, in this case, sympatry with Ateles chamek, a frugivore.     

3S技术及其在生态学研究中的应用

随着国民经济的迅速发展,人类对资源环境的需求越来越高,及时、准确、动态地获取资源现状及其变化信息对资源、生态环境的保护及可持续发展具有重要意义。本文综述了3S技术即遥感(RS)、地理信息系统(GIS)、全球定位系统(GPS)的概念、特点及其研究进展,探讨了3S技术在景观生态学及景观异质性研究、空间格局分析与模拟的应用;并对3S技术在群落生态学、植被调查、生物多样性研究、植被制图以及其它生态学领域中的应用作了展望。     

发展区域生态学理论与方法,服务美丽中国生态文明建设——第二届全国区域生态学学术研讨会述评

*通讯作者.Email: weiwei@rcees.ac.cn