A global experiment suggests climate warming will not accelerate litter decomposition in streams but might reduce carbon sequestration

The decomposition of plant litter is one of the most important ecosystem processes in the biosphere and is particularly sensitive to climate warming. Aquatic ecosystems are well suited to studying warming effects on decomposition because the otherwise confounding influence of moisture is constant. By using a latitudinal temperature gradient in an unprecedented global experiment in streams, we found that climate warming will likely hasten microbial litter decomposition and produce an equivalent decline in detritivore-mediated decomposition rates. As a result, overall decomposition rates should remain unchanged. Nevertheless, the process would be profoundly altered, because the shift in importance from detritivores to microbes in warm climates would likely increase CO(2) production and decrease the generation and sequestration of recalcitrant organic particles. In view of recent estimates showing that inland waters are a significant component of the global carbon cycle, this implies consequences for global biogeochemistry and a possible positive climate feedback.     

Consequences of the Elimination of Old Leaves upon Spring Phenological Events and the New Leaves Nutrient Concentration in a Wintergreen Woody Species in the Southern Hemisphere

Previous studies analyzed the importance of old leaves conservancy for wintergreen species plant growth only after early spring old leaves elimination. However, carbon and nutrient resources for growth could have already been translocated from old leaves to shoots during autumn. In this work, the effect of old leaves absence on the leaf mass per area (LMA, g m⁻²) and nutrient concentration of new spring leaves, shoot growth, and flowering was studied in Aristotelia chilensis, an Andean Patagonic woody wintergreen species of Argentina. Plants were studied after autumn defoliation (AD) or late winter defoliation (WD) and results were compared to those of undamaged control plants (CO). The new leaves LMA and mineral nutrient (N, P, K, and Mg) concentration values did not decrease in AD or WD compared to CO plants. Conversely, CO plants showed higher flowering intensity and shoot lengthening compared to AD or WD plants. There were not remarkable differences regarding the defoliation time, though non-flowering shoots grew in a lesser degree than the flowering shoots in WD plants. It was concluded that A. chilensis old leaves cohort is an important source to shoot growth and flowering but their absence does not affect the new leaves structure or nutritional status from early spring in either AD or in WD plants. New leaves formation probably is guaranteed by resources (carbon and nutrients) previously stored in stems or even in the buds containing the preformed leaves since March, by the end of summer. Provided the availability of complete resources for the new leaf flush independently of the old leaves A. chilensis would restore the carbon balance as soon as possible to resume the growth of heterotrophic tissues at normal rates. Endogenous response to counterbalance the old leaves absence on non-flowering shoots was more effective when there was greater lag time between defoliation and shoot growth resume. Flowering and non-flowering shoots compete for the available resources when A. chilensis have not yet expanded leaves and shoots supporting reproductive structures were stronger sinks compared to non-flowering shoots in WD plants.     

Latitudinal gradient of nestedness and its potential drivers in stream detritivores

Understanding what mechanisms shape the diversity and composition of biological assemblages across broad‐scale gradients is central to ecology. Litter‐consuming detritivorous invertebrates in streams show an unusual diversity gradient, with α‐diversity increasing towards high latitudes but no trend in γ‐diversity. We hypothesized this pattern to be related to shifts in nestedness and several ecological processes shaping their assemblages (dispersal, environmental filtering and competition). We tested this hypothesis, using a global dataset, by examining latitudinal trends in nestedness and several indicators of the above processes along the latitudinal gradient. Our results suggest that strong environmental filtering and low dispersal in the tropics lead to often species‐poor local detritivore assemblages, nested in richer regional assemblages. At higher latitudes, dispersal becomes stronger, disrupting the nested assemblage structure and resulting in local assemblages that are generally more species‐rich and non‐nested subsets of the regional species pools. Our results provide evidence that mechanisms underlying assemblage composition and diversity of stream litter‐consuming detritivores shift across latitudes, and provide an explanation for their unusual pattern of increasing α‐diversity with latitude. When we repeated these analyses for whole invertebrate assemblages of leaf litter and for abundant taxa showing reverse or no diversity gradients we found no latitudinal patterns, suggesting that function‐based rather than taxon‐based analyses of assemblages may help elucidate the mechanisms behind diversity gradients.     

DFT calculation of the electronic properties of fluorene-1,3,4-thiadiazole oligomers

Thiadiazole derivatives have been widely employed in the areas of pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial, and polymer chemistry. The electronic and molecular structures of thiadiazoles are of interest because they have an equal number of valence electrons and similar molecular structures to thiophenes, which are currently used in the construction of organic solar cells due to their relatively high hole mobilities and good light-harvesting properties. For this reason, the electronic properties of fluorene-1,3,4-thiadiazole oligomers warrant investigation. In the present work, the structure of fluorene-1,3,4-thiadiazole with one thiadiazole unit in the structure was analyzed. This molecule was then expanded until there were 10 thiadiazole units in the structure. The band gap, HOMO and LUMO distributions, and absorption spectrum were analyzed for each molecule. All calculations were performed by applying the B3LYP/6-31G(d) chemical model in the Gaussian 03W and GaussView software packages. The electronic properties were observed to significantly enhance as the number of monomeric units increased, which also caused the gap energy to decrease from 3.51 eV in the oligomer with just one thiadiazole ring to 2.33 eV in the oligomer with 10 units. The HOMO and LUMO regions were well defined and separated for oligomers with at least 5 monomer units of thiadiazole.

Global patterns of stream detritivore distribution: implications for biodiversity loss in changing climates

Aim We tested the hypothesis that shredder detritivores, a key trophic guild in stream ecosystems, are more diverse at higher latitudes, which has important ecological implications in the face of potential biodiversity losses that are expected as a result of climate change. We also explored the dependence of local shredder diversity on the regional species pool across latitudes, and examined the influence of environmental factors on shredder diversity. Location World‐wide (156 sites from 17 regions located in all inhabited continents at latitudes ranging from 67° N to 41° S). Methods We used linear regression to examine the latitudinal variation in shredder diversity at different spatial scales: alpha (α), gamma (γ) and beta (β) diversity. We also explored the effect of γ‐diversity on α‐diversity across latitudes with regression analysis, and the possible influence of local environmental factors on shredder diversity with simple correlations. Results Alpha diversity increased with latitude, while γ‐ and β‐diversity showed no clear latitudinal pattern. Temperate sites showed a linear relationship between γ‐ and α‐diversity; in contrast, tropical sites showed evidence of local species saturation, which may explain why the latitudinal gradient in α‐diversity is not accompanied by a gradient in γ‐diversity. Alpha diversity was related to several local habitat characteristics, but γ‐ and β‐diversity were not related to any of the environmental factors measured. Main conclusions Our results indicate that global patterns of shredder diversity are complex and depend on spatial scale. However, we can draw several conclusions that have important ecological implications. Alpha diversity is limited at tropical sites by local factors, implying a higher risk of loss of key species or the whole shredder guild (the latter implying the loss of trophic diversity). Even if regional species pools are not particularly species poor in the tropics, colonization from adjacent sites may be limited. Moreover, many shredder species belong to cool‐adapted taxa that may be close to their thermal maxima in the tropics, which makes them more vulnerable to climate warming. Our results suggest that tropical streams require specific scientific attention and conservation efforts to prevent loss of shredder biodiversity and serious alteration of ecosystem processes.