In this second installment of the ‘Glimpse of the year 2022’ series, we give our readers a glance of another 3 most visited posts in this year.
Continue readingGlimpse of 2022 (Part 2)
Category Archives: Research
Glimpse of 2022 (Part 1)
In the first part of the ‘Glimpse of the year 2022’ series, we give our readers a glance of 3 most visited posts about scientific publications in this year.
Continue readingCan heterogeneous landscapes mitigate pesticide stress?
In this blogpost, Moritz Link reports how pesticide toxicity affects stream ecosystems in Transylvania, Romania, a region where traditional agriculture prevails. The researchers analyzed macroinvertebrate communities, leaf litter decomposition and parasite prevalence in relation to physico-chemical stressors in the stream and the landscape.
Continue readingPenguins among microplastics!
Interest in microplastic contamination in Antarctica is very recent. For this reason, researchers from University of Koblenz – Landau (Germany) and Universidad de Concepcion (Chile) decided to find out a little more about what is happening in the land of the penguins.
Continue readingExcursion to Mals in South Tyrol: Pesticide monitoring along an altitudinal gradient
In May 2022, a couple of M.Sc. Ecotoxicology students along with Carsten Brühl went to South Tyrol (Italy) to investigate the distribution of pesticides in alpine environments. A part of the group were students from the module Methods in Ecotoxicology, that includes a block lecture and a laboratory test and this year also a field part to perform exposure measurements. The Landau group met with Johann Zaller from BOKU Vienna, author of Daily Poison.
In this blogpost, two of those students, Ken Mauser and Nina Engelhard, present the reason for going to South Tyrol, some brief details about the study and their experience.
Continue readingHow will insecticides affect streams under climate change?
How climate change will alter the effects of toxicants is a key concern in the 21st Century. Rising water temperature can increase the toxicity of some contaminants to stream-dwelling animals in laboratory conditions, as has been shown for the most widely used insecticides in the world – the neonicotinoids. But until this study, whether this translates to more realistic environmental scenarios remained to be tested. In this blogpost, Sam Macaulay talks about his mesocosm experiment studying the effects of rising water temperatures and neonicotinoids on stream invertebrate communities.
Continue readingFood web rewiring drives long-term compositional differences and late-stressor interactions at the community level
In this blogpost, Francesco Polazzo talks about how pesticides can cause a drastic change in the organisation and strength of interactions of aquatic food webs. Particularly, after pesticide exposure, changes in the strength of trophic interactions seem to be driving long-lasting effects in community structure. When multiple pesticides act together, they modify both food web structure and interaction’s strength, causing late-stage non-additive effects between stressors.
Continue reading2 PhD positions in Ecotoxicology at the University of Ghent
The University of Ghent in Belgium is offering 2 paid PhD positions in the field of ecotoxicology.
Continue readingFinding needles in haystacks – Detection of TiO2 nanoparticles in soil
In a recent publication from the Environmental and Soil Chemistry group, we present a method enabling us to detect anthropogenic TiO2 nanoparticles in soil despite the presence of a high natural background. The method relies of colloidal extraction and trace elements ratio using ICP-MS.
Continue readingEmerging midges transport pesticides from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems
In this blogpost, Alex Roodt talks about how pesticides which are accumulated by emerging aquatic insects during their development can be retained after metamorphosis and may increase the dietary exposure of terrestrial insectivores.
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