The effect of fixed‐count subsampling on macroinvertebrate biomonitoring in small streams

• 1 When rigorous standards of collecting and analysing data are maintained, biological monitoring adds valuable information to water resource assessments. Decisions, from study design and field methods to laboratory procedures and data analysis, affect assessment quality. Subsampling ‐ a laboratory procedure in which researchers count and identify a random subset of field samples ‐ is widespread yet controversial. What are the consequences of subsampling?
• 2 To explore this question, random subsamples were computer generated for subsample sizes ranging from 100 to 1000 individuals as compared with the results of counting whole samples. The study was done on benthic invertebrate samples collected from five Puget Sound lowland streams near Seattle, WA, USA. For each replicate subsample, values for 10 biological attributes (e.g. total number of taxa) and for the 10‐metric benthic index of biological integrity (B‐IBI) were computed.
• 3 Variance of each metric and B‐IBI for each subsample size was compared with variance associated with fully counted samples generated using the bootstrap algorithm. From the measures of variance, we computed the maximum number of distinguishable classes of stream condition as a function of sample size for each metric and for B‐IBI.
• 4 Subsampling significantly decreased the maximum number of distinguishable stream classes for B‐IBI, from 8.2 for fully counted samples to 2.8 classes for 100‐organism subsamples. For subsamples containing 100–300 individuals, discriminatory power was low enough to mislead water resource decision makers.

     

A multi-assemblage,multi-metric biological condition index for eastern Amazonia streams

Multimetric indices (MMIs) are widely used for assessing ecosystem condition and they have been developed for a variety of biological assemblages. However, when multiple assemblages are assessed at sites, the assessment results may differ because of differing physiological sensitivities to particular stressor gradients, different organism size and guilds, and the effects of different scales of disturbances on the assemblages. Those differences create problems for managers seeking to avoid type-1 and type-2 statistical errors. To alleviate those problems, we used an anthropogenic disturbance index for selecting and weighting metrics, modeled metrics against natural variability to reduce the natural variability in metrics, and developed an MMI based on both fish and aquatic insect metrics. We evaluated eight different ways of calibrating and combining candidate metrics and found that MMIs with unweighted and modeled aquatic insect and fish metrics were the preferred MMI options.     

基于植被完整性指数的鄱阳湖湿地生态健康评价

基于鄱阳湖湿地30个采样点的植被调查数据,利用植被完整性指数法(V-IBI)评价鄱阳湖湿地生态健康状况。通过分布范围分析、判别能力分析和相关性分析,从35个候选生物参数中筛选出6个核心参数,利用比值法对核心参数赋值并累加求得各采样点V-IBI分值,以所有采样点95%分位数值为最佳期望值建立评价标准划分健康等级。结果显示:鄱阳湖湿地生态健康状况总体较好,30个采样点中6个为非常健康(V-IBI≥5.01),7个为健康(4.38≤V-IBI5.01),8个为一般(3.74≤V-IBI4.38),7个为差(3.10≤V-IBI3.74),2个为极差(V-IBI3.10),呈现出西部优于东部,北部优于南部的空间差异。V-IBI与景观发展强度指数(LDI)和栖息地环境质量评价指数(QHEI)呈显著相关性,表明V-IBI方法对鄱阳湖湿地生态健康状况评价结果合理有效,可作为鄱阳湖湿地生态监测的重要手段。     

Spiral reentry waves in confluent layer of HL-1 cardiomyocyte cell lines

Cardiac excitation waves that arise in heart tissues have long been an important research topic because they are related to various cardiac arrhythmia. Investigating their properties based on intact animal whole hearts is important but quite demanding and expensive. Subsequently, dissociated cardiac cell cultures have been used as an alternative. Here, we access the usefulness of cardiomyocyte cell line HL-1 in studying generic properties of cardiac waves. Spontaneous wave activities in confluent populations of HL-1 cells are monitored using a phase-contrast optical mapping system and a microelectrode array recording device. We find that high-density cultures of HL-1 cells can support well-defined reentries. Their conduction velocity and rotation period both increase over few days. The increasing trend of rotation period is opposite to the case of control experiments using primary cultures of mouse atrial cells. The progressive myolysis of HL-1 seems responsible for this difference.     

Temporal variability in fish assemblages from disturbed and undisturbed streams

Fish assemblages were sampled by electrofishingover a two- to ten-year period in undisturbedand anthropogenically disturbed South Carolinacoastal plain streams. Jaccard similarity,Bray–Curtis similarity, and Spearman rankcorrelations among samples collected from thesame sites over time were significantly greaterat undisturbed sites than at disturbed sites,suggesting greater fish assemblage persistenceand stability at the undisturbed sites. TheIndex of Biotic Integrity (IBI) also exhibitedsignificantly less variation over time atundisturbed sites than at disturbed sites.Physical habitat structure changed more overtime at disturbed sites than at undisturbedsites, and this variability was directlyrelated to temporal variability in fishassemblage structure. Comparisons betweenmultiple and single pass electrofishing samplessuggested that only a small proportion of thetemporal variability observed at the studysites was caused by inefficient sampling.Assessment of temporal variation in fishassemblage structure can serve as an indicatorof environmental disturbance and facilitate thedistinction of substantive ecological changefrom normal background variation.     

Temporal and spatial variation in an index of biological integrity for the middle Wabash River, Indiana

Few studies have addressed within-year temporal variation of IBI scores. We compared index of biotic integrity (IBI) scores for two summer sampling events from a large river during 25 annual periods. The results indicated that IBI scores calculated from June samples were not significantly different from July samples. Spatial autocorrelation was present, such that sites that were closer together produced similar IBI scores and could not be considered independent. Temporal autocorrelation was present, but was not strong. Lower quality sites (low IBI score) did not have higher variation than higher quality sites. Our results show that a single sample of fishes by boat electrofisher during the summer in a large river such as the Wabash River can produce a repeatable estimate of IBI score. Thus, repeated or additional sampling within the summer season to improve the quality of the evaluation is not warranted. Handling editor: J. Trexler     

Temporal stability of vegetation indicators of wetland condition

Vegetation indices are widely employed to evaluate wetland ecological condition, and are expected to provide sensitive and specific detection of environmental change. Most studies evaluate the performance of condition assessment metrics in the context of the data used to calibrate them. Here we examined the temporal stability of the Florida Wetland Condition Index (FWCI) for vegetation of depressional forested wetlands by resampling sites in 2008 that were previously sampled to develop the FWCI in 2001. Our objective was to determine if FWCI, a composite of six vegetation-based metrics, provides a robust measure of condition given inter-annual variation in environmental conditions (i.e., rainfall) between sampling periods. To that end, we sampled 22 geographically isolated wetlands in north Florida that spanned a wide land use/land cover intensity gradient. Our results suggested the FWCI is robust. We observed no significant paired difference in FWCI across or within land use categories, and the relationship between FWCI in 2001 and 2008 was strong (r² = 0.88, p < 0.001). This was despite surprisingly high composition change. Mean Jaccard community similarity within sites between years was 0.30, suggesting that most of the herbaceous taxa were replaced, possibly because of different antecedent rainfall conditions or sampling during different phenological periods; both are contingencies to which condition indices must be robust. We did observe some evidence of convergence toward the mean in 2008, with the fitted slope relating 2001 and 2008 FWCI scores significantly below one (0.63, 95% CI = 0.53–0.73). The most variable FWCI component metric was the proportional representation of obligate wetland taxa, suggesting that systematic changes may have been induced by different hydrologic conditions prior to sampling; notably, however, FWCI computed without this component still exhibited a slope significantly less than 1 (0.72, 95% CI = 0.61–0.88). Moreover, there was evidence that species lost from reference sites (higher condition) were replaced by taxa of lower floristic quality, while species lost from agricultural sites (consistently the lowest condition land use category) were replaced by species of higher quality. A significant positive association between FWCI and the ratio of coefficients of conservatism (CC) of species lost to those gained suggests some overfitting in FWCI development. However, despite modest evidence of overfitting, FWCI provides temporally consistent estimates of wetland condition, even under conditions of substantial taxonomic turnover.