Tag Archives: invertebrates

Open PhD position in Ecology- Fully funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand

Join a dynamic team in Aotearoa New Zealand exploring biodiversity-ecosystem functioning across meta-ecosystem boundaries. The University of Waikato is recruiting two motivated PhD students to study stream-riparian food webs and ecosystem processes.

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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. 

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Can 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.

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How 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.

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Most microplastics in rocky intertidal snails stem from paint

In this blogpost, Sonja Ehlers reports how microplastic loads in rocky intertidal snails from the North Sea, Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean are consistent across space and time. The majority of the contained microplastics consisted of paint chips that likely derived from ships or maritime equipment. Such paint chips can contain toxic antifouling substances and heavy metals.

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Year in Review – Part 3

In the third installment of the ‘Year in Review’ series, we present our readers a glimpse of the last lot of most visited posts in the year 2021. 

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Can clay minerals make copper oxide nanoparticles toxic?

In this blogpost by Jonas Fischer, springtails were exposed to copper oxide nanoparticles at realistic field concentrations in four soils of varying properties. Toxic effects occurred only in loamy soils and mostly at the lowest test concentrations. Reduced nanoparticle agglomeration and clay-nanoparticle interactions were considered being responsible for this observation.

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