Methodologies for Surveying Herpetofauna Mortality on Rural Highways

Abstract: Road mortality can contribute to local and regional declines in amphibian and reptile populations. Thus, there is a need to accurately and efficiently identify hotspots of road-mortality for hazard assessment and mitigation. In 2002, we conducted walking and driving surveys throughout an extensive rural highway network in northern New York, USA, to evaluate survey methods and to quantify spatial and temporal patterns of herpetofauna road-mortality. In 2004, we repeated the surveys at a subset of locations to quantify interannual repeatability. Reptile and amphibian species had different peak periods of road-mortality because they differed in the causes of movements that resulted in crossings. Spatial locations of herpetofauna road-mortality were concentrated at a limited number of hotspots. Hotspots overlapped across species and were located at consistent locations across years. Results of walking and driving surveys were highly repeatable among survey teams, but driving surveys underestimated the density of road-mortality because many animals were missed. Detection failure was higher in some taxa (e.g., frogs) than others (e.g., turtles). Our results indicate that it is possible to design a valid, efficient methodology for locating hotspots of reptile and amphibian road-mortality along a road network and, thus, pinpoint priority sites for mitigation.     

The use of acetone and methanol in the estimation of chlorophyll in the presence of phaeophytin

(1)Where grinding or maceration of plant tissue is impractical, immersion in methanol should be used. (2)The adaption to aqueous methanol of existing techniqus for distinguishing chlorophyll and phaeophytin in aqueous acetone was studied in detail. In methanol the spectra of both phaeophytin a and b were found to be pH sensitive. A method developed involving changes in absorbance at 665 nm is less precise than similar methods using acetone. (3)The spectra of phaeophytin b in methanol at different pH levels are anomalous. Changes in absorbance between 440 and 410 nm cannot be used for the estimation of phaeophytin. (4)Plant pigments can be transferred from methanol to aqueous acetone without degradation of chlorophyll. Modified standard techniques may then be used to measure chlorophyll a and phaeophytin a content.     

The Site of Synthesis of Sucrose in Green Plant Cells

Glycollic acid-1-¹⁴C, glyoxylic acid-2-¹⁴C, glycine-1-¹⁴C, andglycine-2-¹⁴C were fed to illuminated excised leaves of Pisumsativum and the distribution of ¹⁴C determined in the glycine,serine, sucrose, and insoluble polyglucan formed. Carboxyl-labelledglycollic acid and glycine gave rise to randomly labelled polyglucanand sucrose although the serine formed was predominantly carboxyllabelled. By contrast glyoxylic acid and glycine labelled inthe -carbon did not give rise to randomly labelled serine, sucrose,or polyglucan.     

Suspension and settlement of particles in flowing water: comparison of the effects of varying water depth and velocity in circulating channels

SUMMARY. 1. An experimental study is described, designed to test the hypothesis that the loss of particles from suspension in flowing water follows an exponential decay function, the exponent of which is influenced more by water depth than water velocity. Successive experiments employed suspensions of Lycopodium spores which were introduced into one of the FBA's circulating channels maintained at its Watcrston site, Dorset, under different combinations of water depth and pumping rate.
2. In each experiment, the concentration of introduced spores indeed declined exponentially through time. The bulked, transformed data-set also conformed well to a single regression against a common time scale and which explained over 94% of the accumulated variances.
3. The variance unexplained by the regression was apportioned among components distinguishing between experiments, experimental differences in starting concentration, water depth and pumping rate (velocity). This analysis revealed that, after elimination of different initial concentrations, only water depth produced a significant effect, through its relation to the settling velocity of the Lycopodium . Thus, the hypothesis was not invalidated: water depth and not Row velocity proved to be the main controlling variable determining the rale of sinking loss in these experiments. Flow velocity is, nevertheless, an important component only in the sense that it influences the horizontal distance travelled by the residual spore suspension through the time period required for complete settlement.
4. The consequences of experimental findings are applied to the maintenance of planktonic diatoms in rivers: both the survival of a potential growth inoculum and its downstream dispersion are strongly time-dependent and are enhanced by greater channel depths.     

The seasonal variation in silicon concentration in chalk-streams in relation to diatom growth

SUMMARY. Changes in silicon concentration were used to investigate the seasonal cycle of diatoms in chalk-streams. Bore-hole water shows no significant variation in silicon concentration. Five kilometres downstream there is a significant reduction between March and May. Further downstream the cumulative effect of biological silicon removal shows more complex patterns. There is a considerable variation in the seasonal pattern from year to year but an analysis of the seasonal pattern averaged over thirteen years on the River Frome confirms a later summer silicon reduction in August-September, in addition to a much larger reduction in the spring.
The negative correlation between suspended chlorophyll-α and silicon concentrations confirms that suspended chlorophyll-α concentrations respond more closely to changes in the loosely attached diatom flora than to other sources of chlorophyll-α. However, neither variable is always suitable for monitoring changes in benthic diatoms. In headwaters, for example, transitory changes in diatoms do not have a significant impact on silicon concentration, while further downstream the suspended solids are affected by many other factors.
Estimates of diatom production, based on changes in silicon concentration, gave rates of 1–2 g Si m_-2 day_-1 in a small headwater chalkstream during the spring.