Robustness of the biotic indicators used for classification of ecological status of lotic water bodies: A testing method when the data series are short

Successful implementation of the Water Framework Directive and achieving its objective of good ecological status of all water bodies depend on the power of the set of monitoring indicators to capture the change in the ecological status of aquatic systems. In this context, testing the robustness and sensitivity of ecological indicators currently used for assessing the status of lotic water bodies is instrumental for the adaptation and further development of assessment methods. This is also a prerequisite for an effective, context-based monitoring system and for improving the quality of the decision making for water bodies. This is particularly challenging in regions where the sets of indicators are under development, the data series are relatively short and data which addresses the individual error sources are lacking. Here we show that hierarchical clusters and ordination analysis provide appropriate tools with which the validity of the ecological status of water bodies set up based on biological multimetric monitoring indices in a small water basin could be tested. We hypothesize that robust and informative monitoring methods classify all water bodies belonging to a single ordination grouping in the same quality class (high, good, moderate, poor or bad). In our case study multimetric biological indicators failed to discriminate between the good and moderate ecological status. Community structure as well as water conductivity and nitrate load were primarily responsible for the observed difference between ordination groupings. Inconsistencies shown in our case study are likely to be induced by insufficient refinement of monitoring schemes and by the constraints existing in the data series and available metadata. We show that multiplication of indicators leads to discrepant interpretation and problematic application. Proposed ordination analysis proves to be a simple and useful tool to detect such discrepancies and support further progress in indicator development. Integrated and longer data and metadata series are needed to refine context-based monitoring methods.     

The impacts of agricultural payments on groundwater quality: Spatial analysis on the case of Slovenia

The European Common Agricultural Policy still follows its primary goals, i.e. quality food at affordable prices and a decent standard of living for farmers, fifty years after its adoption. Moreover, this policy adapts to the changing needs of society and the new challenges, mostly preservation of the environment, nature and biodiversity in rural areas. Although the Common Agricultural Policy receives the largest share of European budget, the funds are decreasing over time, especially direct payments, which aim to provide basic income support to farmers in the European Union. On the other hand, agri-environmental payments are gaining importance. Policy decision-makers should be interested in the question of impacts of growing eco-conditionality of agricultural spending. New insights would help them to be successful in achieving the goals of sustainable agriculture. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impacts of production support payments and rural development payments on the quality of groundwater. We use the small EU country Slovenia as an example. The baseline indicators are the level of nitrates and pesticides in groundwater, while the impacts were estimated using spatial error model. The results show that direct payments, coupled subsidies and investment grants raise the level of pesticides in groundwater, but do not have any statistically significant impact on the level of nitrates in groundwater. Furthermore, we did not find any statistically significant effects of agri-environmental payments on decrease of groundwater pollution with nitrates. However, our findings revealed that agri-environmental payments are effective in reducing pesticides in groundwater, although only to a limited extent. These results imply a problem of insufficient targeting of agri-environmental measures on the one hand, and suggest that greening of direct payments is necessary and entirely justified.     

Osmotic stress decreases complexity underlying the electrophysiological dynamic in soybean

• Studies on plant electrophysiology are mostly focused on specific traits of single cells. Inspired by the complexity of the signalling network in plants, and by analogy with neurons in human brains, we sought evidence of high complexity in the electrical dynamics of plant signalling and a likely relationship with environmental cues.
• An EEG‐like standard protocol was adopted for high‐resolution measurements of the electrical signal in Glycine max seedlings. The signals were continuously recorded in the same plants before and after osmotic stimuli with a ?2 MPa mannitol solution. Non‐linear time series analyses methods were used as follows: auto‐correlation and cross‐correlation function, power spectra density function, and complexity of the time series estimated as Approximate Entropy (ApEn).
• Using Approximate Entropy analysis we found that the level of temporal complexity of the electrical signals was affected by the environmental conditions, decreasing when the plant was subjected to a low osmotic potential. Electrical spikes observed only after stimuli followed a power law distribution, which is indicative of scale invariance.
• Our results suggest that changes in complexity of the electrical signals could be associated with water stress conditions in plants. We hypothesised that the power law distribution of the spikes could be explained by a self‐organised critical state (SOC) after osmotic stress.

     

Evaluating the performance of benthic multi-metric indices across broad-scale environmental gradients

The usefulness of benthic multi-metric indices when assessing seafloor integrity across broad environmental gradients should be deliberated, as their lack of transparency might hide important sources of variation and fail to identify environmental change. This study compares the performance of two multi-metric indices; the Benthic Quality Index (BQI) and the Brackish water Benthic Index (BBI) between three sub-basins in the Baltic Sea. Both indices reflect the salinity-driven gradient in macroinvertebrate diversity and composition as well as changes in bottom water oxygen concentrations. The relative contribution of predictor variables for explaining index variation does, however, differ between sub-basins, resulting in the indices representing different aspects of the benthic community along the environmental gradient. This context-dependency is caused by inherent differences in benthic community characteristics between the sub-basins of the Baltic Sea, and how the communities are portrayed by the indices. An increased transparency of the importance of the different predictors for directing index values is needed for coherent classifications over broad environmental gradients, such as those occurring in large estuarine water bodies. Use of a weight of evidence table to combine multiple indicators would preserve transparency and be more likely to provide a robust assessment method that would detect seafloor degradation at an early stage.     

Chronobiological factors for compassion satisfaction and fatigue among ambulatory oncology caregivers

Primary caregivers for victims of chronic illness and or trauma experience both positive and negative emotional consequences. These are broadly classified as compassion satisfaction (CS) and compassion fatigue (CF). Because one of the components of CF, burnout, varies with chronotype and sleep quality, we assessed the influence of chronobiological features on the broader constructs of CS and CF. Responses from primary ambulatory care oncology staff working dayshifts were assessed for potential relationships of chronotype and sleep quality with CS and CF using the professional quality of life scale. These were analyzed further in a multivariate model that included personality and job satisfaction as cofactors. We found that sleep quality was a key contributor to CS development and CF reduction. Morningness was positively linked to CS, but the univariate association was masked in the multivariate model. Job satisfaction (contingent rewards, nature of work and operating procedures) heavily influenced CS and CF development. Agreeableness and openness showed positive correlations with CS and negative with burnout, while emotional stability was linked to reduced CF. While job satisfaction and personality predictably played roles in the development of CS and CF, sleep quality and chronotype contributed significantly to benefits and negative consequences of providing care.     

Why did heterospory evolve?

The primitive land plant life cycle featured the production of spores of unimodal size, a condition called homospory. The evolution of bimodal size distributions with small male spores and large female spores, known as heterospory, was an innovation that occurred repeatedly in the history of land plants. The importance of desiccation‐resistant spores for colonization of the land is well known, but the adaptive value of heterospory has never been well established. It was an addition to a sexual life cycle that already involved male and female gametes. Its role as a precursor to the evolution of seeds has received much attention, but this is an evolutionary consequence of heterospory that cannot explain the transition from homospory to heterospory (and the lack of evolutionary reversal from heterospory to homospory). Enforced outcrossing of gametophytes has often been mentioned in connection to heterospory, but we review the shortcomings of this argument as an explanation of the selective advantage of heterospory. Few alternative arguments concerning the selective forces favouring heterospory have been proposed, a paucity of attention that is surprising given the importance of this innovation in land plant evolution. In this review we highlight two ideas that may lead us to a better understanding of why heterospory evolved. First, models of optimal resource allocation – an approach that has been used for decades in evolutionary ecology to help understand parental investment and other life‐history patterns – suggest that an evolutionary increase in spore size could reach a threshold at which small spores yielding small, sperm‐producing gametophytes would return greater fitness per unit of resource investment than would large spores and bisexual gametophytes. With the advent of such microspores, megaspores would evolve under frequency‐dependent selection. This argument can account for the appearance of heterospory in the Devonian, when increasingly tall and complex vegetative communities presented competitive conditions that made large spore size advantageous. Second, heterospory is analogous in many ways to anisogamy. Indeed, heterospory is a kind of re‐invention of anisogamy within the context of a sporophyte‐dominant land plant life cycle. The evolution of anisogamy has been the subject of important theoretical and empirical investigation. Recent work in this area suggests that mate‐encounter dynamics set up selective forces that can drive the evolution of anisogamy. We suggest that similar dispersal and mating dynamics could have underlain spore size differentiation. The two approaches offer predictions that are consistent with currently available data but could be tested far more thoroughly. We hope to re‐establish attention on this neglected aspect of plant evolutionary biology and suggest some paths for empirical investigation.     

Ultrafine Metal Nanoparticles/N‐Doped Porous Carbon Hybrids Coated on Carbon Fibers as Flexible and Binder‐Free Water Splitting Catalysts

By employing in situ reduction of metal precursor and metal‐assisted carbon etching process, this study achieves a series of ultrafine transition metal‐based nanoparticles (Ni–Fe, Ni–Mo) embedded in N‐doped carbon, which are found efficient catalysts for electrolytic water splitting. The as‐prepared hybrid materials demonstrate outstanding catalytic activities as non‐noble metal electrodes rendered by the synergistic effect of bimetal elements and N‐dopants, the improved electrical conductivity, and hydrophilism. Ni/Mo₂C@N‐doped porous carbon (NiMo‐polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)) and NiFe@N‐doped carbon (NiFe‐PVP) produce low overpotentials of 130 and 297 mV at a current density of 10 mA cm^?2 as catalysts for hydrogen evolution reaction and oxygen evolution reaction, respectively. In addition, these binder‐free electrodes show long‐term stability. Overall water splitting is also demonstrated based on the couple of NiMo‐PVP||NiFe‐PVP catalyzer. This represents a simple and effective synthesis method toward a new type of nanometal–carbon hybrid electrodes.     

Rare species habitat suitability assessment and reliability evaluation of an expert-based model: A case study of the insectivorous plant Pinguicula crystallina Sibth. et Smith subsp. hirtiflora (Ten.) Strid (Lentibulariaceae)

The development of habitat suitability models requires a large amount of data which are rarely available. In this case, researchers need to get information on the ecological features of the studied species, based on the opinion of experts or on the literature, to construct a qualitative model. However, such models cannot be rigorously evaluated, as in most cases absence points are not available. In this paper, we assess the habitat suitability for a vulnerable insectivorous plant, Pinguicula crystallina Sibth. et Smith subsp. hirtiflora (Ten.) Strid (Lentibulariaceae) in the Campania region. Our aim was to develop an expert-based, presence-only model in support of possible conservation actions. Topographic and geological features of this species suggested by the literature were used in our model. Both the Boyce index and field surveys were chosen to evaluate the model's reliability. During field surveys, 31 absence sites and 1 new presence site were identified, and differences between sites with regard to water chemistry and quality were investigated, water being an element in the species habitat. Factors that affect reliability of the model, such as the lack of a large amount of information on the species and the limited spatial resolution of geographical information system data, are discussed.     

The effect of water stress on the vacuole-extravacuole compartmentation of proline in potato cell suspension cultures

Solute compartmentation in cells is an important component of metabolic regulation. There is only little information on how stress treatment of cells effects this component. Therefore, the effect of water stress [10% (w/v) PEG 6000] on the vacuolar-extravacuolar proline compartmentation was studied in a cell suspension culture of Svlanum tuberosum L, cv, HH258, In non-stressed cells 34% of the total cellular proline was located in the vacuole. After 20 h of water stress the proline pool of the cells was increased 4-6 fold and only t6% of it was found in the vacuole. A negative correlation between the total cellular proline content and its percentage in the vacuole was observed, irrespective of the culture method (stress or non-stress culture). The stress-induced changes in proline compartmentation are discussed.     

Coping with drought: diapause plasticity in katydid eggs at high,mid-, and low elevations

1. Semi-arid rangeland productivity is limited by precipitation, and yet droughts are projected to increase in frequency and duration with unknown impacts on insect populations. As some katydids prolong diapause and remain in an egg bank as a blastoderm for multiple growing seasons, is it possible that drought could prolong diapause and promote outbreaks by synchronising embryonic development and hatching of Mormon crickets, Anabrus simplex, after moisture is restored? 2. In this study, a high-elevation Wyoming population (WY) was compared with a mid-elevation Idaho (ID) and a low-elevation Oregon population (OR). It was predicted that eggs from the drier ID and OR habitats would be more tolerant of desiccation. Developmental state and water loss of eggs were measured after drought treatments, and when moisture was restored. 3. The two drier treatments had significantly more WY eggs prolonging diapause until after drought ended compared with the two wetter treatments. Whether WY eggs developed in the second or subsequent warm periods was independent of drought treatments. Significantly fewer OR embryos developed in the driest treatment compared with the others, whereas almost all ID eggs developed irrespective of the drought treatment. 4. In conclusion, Mormon crickets can delay embryonic development to improve drought tolerance. Although drought did not synchronise development and hatching, diapause plasticity allowed insects to cope and await more favourable conditions. 5. Unexpectedly, eggs from WY (the highest, wettest site) were more tolerant, because postponing development resulted in less water loss than in developed embryos. OR egg loss was also reduced by prolonging diapause, relative to ID, which developed in even the driest conditions.