New paper suggests methodological improvements to enhance the use of the mitochondrial CO1 gene region for detecting freshwater invertebrates in eDNA

I was lucky enough to spend the last 10 days in Northland sampling streams like this for a Marsden-funded project on cross-ecosystem effects of biodiversity on system functioning.

Interesting "global" meta-analysis exploring what drives trophic niche breadth in freshwater fishes. Not a single study from Aotearoa New Zealand included.

If you are at the joint NZFSS/AFSS conference in Ōtautahi Christchurch are in interested in stream ecology I recommend you attend my students' talks on Wednesday.

We can map the world's existing forests with incredible accuracy now, but clearly we cannot (or will not) stop them from disappearing at rapid rates almost everywhere. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🌎

Invasive species can disrupt food web energy dynamics by altering pelagic-benthic pathways. In this example, interactions between invasive species and nutriment enrichment influenced concentrations of LC-PUFAs in key consumers, indicating functional shifts in resource fluxes.

Impressed to see a whole tree snagged mid-channel below the Victoria Bridge in Hamilton. The Waikato River is running very high at the moment.

Concentrations of an omega-6 LC-PUFA in stream biofilms was greatly decreased in open, well-lit conditions when compared to a shaded treatment - suggesting that riparian shading can improve the nutritional quality of biofilms

Understanding the specificity of algal-consumer interactions in stream food webs may be crucial for better understanding how essential LC-PUFAs are acquired from dietary sources #fattyacids

Molecular analyses revealed that the microbiomes of hydropsychid caddisfly biostructures differ taxonomically and functionally from adjacent rock biofilms (~2 cm distant). They were enriched in microbial taxa associated with ecosystem functions including denitrification #ecosystemengineers

Interested in applying fatty acid biomarkers and functional traits to understand landscape drivers in stream-riparian food webs? Look no further than our recent paper published here: esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

How does trophic connectivity between different ecosystems work at a landscape scale? We applied a novel conceptual framework with functional traits and fatty acid biomarkers to assess direct and indirect effects of landscape drivers on cross-ecosystem connectivity in stream-riparian #foodwebs

Warming of aquatic ecosystems disrupts aquatic–terrestrial linkages in the tropics - a natural experiment using geothermally-warmed streams showed how increased temperature reduced emerging adult insects, thus affecting terrestrial predators that rely on this prey subsidy #foodwebs

Interesting study considers how climate change might interact with two plant species to affect litter decomposition - could such responses cross ecosystem boundaries when decomposition happens in aquatic receiving environments?

Indirect ecological interactions are everywhere in nature, with species influencing another through a third species or the environment. Such interactions are rarely connected to rapid evolutionary change. Here, aphid-driven herbivory of duckweed drove adaptive evolutionary change in Daphnia.

Japanese researchers were able to use a ViT model to successfully achieve high accuracy in identifying mayfly families from images. This demonstrated the potential for machine learning and image analysis to automate the taxonomic identification of macroinvertebrates in freshwater biomonitoring.

Restoration ecology that considers biotic interactions is essential if goals include restoring species. Constructed wetlands complement adjacent streams by supplying emergent aquatic insect subsidies asynchronously, extending the foraging window for terrestrial consumers #foodweb #landscapediversity

Andrew Barnes @barnesecodiv.bsky.social will present our next seminar: "Deciphering the Multitrophic Consequences of Biodiversity Change Through an Energetic Lens" Join us online Thursday 26th June 1pm AEST! Sign up to our mailing list to receive the zoom link forms.gle/24Y557Cjeu6w...

Aquatic-terrestrial food webs are inextricably linked through reciprocal exchanges of subsidies. New synthesis explores their benefits as limiting resources that increase consumer fitness and ecosystem production, but also their dark side by vectoring contaminants, often in human-impacted watersheds

I was happy to be a contributing author for this new publication from the DecoDiv globally-coordinated experiment. Warming drives microbial decomposition of leaves in a way consistent with metabolic theory, and may contribute to positive climate feedbacks onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

The landscape theory of food web architecture (LTFWA) describes relationships between body size, trophic position, mobility, and energy channels that couple habitats, which in turn promotes stability. This study in Lake Michigan explores evidence for the LTFWA doi.org/10.1002/ecy.... Image: NASA

Today, Greenpeace #Italy released a report featuring our glacier projections for all Italian #glaciers. See the future of these icy giants with an interactive map 🌍🔍 Explore now: maps.greenpeace.org/maps/gpit/de... #WorldGlaciersDay #GlacierPreservation #GreenpeaceItaly

Urban gullies, with their associated seepages and streams are important ecosystems that support native biodiversity in Hamilton. Here two new caddisfly species are described from an urban stream that I have used in my Rewilding Rivers SCIEN301 capstone course www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Interesting post on decreasing male student participation in higher education. This phenomenon is noticeable in the biological sciences.

Interesting food web interaction across ecosystem boundaries: stream decapods feeding on inputs of terrestrial fruit in neotropical forest catchments

Climate change may be altering the distribution of flows in river networks - with greater flood disturbance in headwaters and more low flows in downstream basin outlets. This potentially affects erosion, sedimentation, and ecological communities

Global biogeochemical cycles are interconnected. Alterations to the carbon cycle are akin to inflation with too much money in supply. The same problem is happening with water - freshwater stocks are depleted as more enters the atmosphere, reinforcing climate forcing and driving intense rain events

Interested in freshwater food webs and keen to connect with like-minded researchers on Bluesky? Give me a shout-out and I will add you to the Freshwater Food Webs starter pack. go.bsky.app/R2WU99T

I have been inundated with peer review requests this year, and my patience with the system is growing weary

New study explores how stream pollution might shift the diet composition of riparian spiders by altering aquatic insect prey assemblages. This study includes cutting-edge applications of molecular methods to detect prey in spider guts and thus help describe cross-ecosystem food webs

Interested in freshwater food webs and keen to connect with like-minded researchers on Bluesky? Give me a shout-out and I will add you to the Freshwater Food Webs starter pack. go.bsky.app/R2WU99T

Salmon are an archetypal spatial subsidy transporting marine-derived nutrients and contaminants to inland freshwater and terrestrial food webs. When considering past and present ecosystems in Aotearoa, we should appreciate the role of diadromy in connecting multiple ecosystems #metaecosystems

Conceptualizing heterogenous landscapes - spatial properties like landscape topology and dendritic aggregation provide substrates for ecological interactions. These substrates influence multispecies coexistence and foster spatial ecological patterns #metacommunities www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

The Aquatic Ecology Special Interest Group of the BES (@britishecolsoc.bsky.social) is now here! Follow for updates on aquatic ecology events and opportunities! @besag.bsky.social #Ecology #freshwater #marine

Ever get that moment when you realize people have it all wrong?

New study shows positive biodiversity effects on biomass and mass of essential fatty acids in aquatic and terrestrial consumers. In impacted landscapes, predator biomass and PUFAs were lower for a given level of species richness - suggested a negative impact on ecosystem function

The Living Planet Report published yesterday continues to paint a sobering picture of freshwater #biodiversity decline. We need to take further action with pressing issues like climate change and intensive land uses to bend the curve! livingplanet.panda.org

The latest Ring of Fire paper led by @MichCJackson highlights niche compression mechanisms in naturally-warmed stream food webs, with an increasing reliance on autochthonous carbon #SIA #IsoWeb

Habitat heterogeneity influences mechanisms that exert complementary positive effects on individual functions which, in turn, collectively enhance ecosystem multifunctionality #biodiversity #ecosystemfunctioning #BEF

Connectivity is a really important concept in ecology that is multi-faceted. There hasn't been a definitive conceptual synthesis or review to date but this paper comes close #metasystem

The mechanisms by which litter diversity affects decomposition are sensitive to environmental heterogeneity at multiple scales - suggesting that global change drivers like warming may alter the functioning of aquatic ecosystems

Interesting reproductive behavior in a small benthic marine fish

Shading experiment shows that diatom-based periphyton communities in streams have greater nutritional quality with a higher proportion of PUFAs. Thus, shading associated with riparian plantings may enhance high-quality carbon transfer to consumers in higher trophic levels through bottom-up effects

Interesting story on kōura and their significance to Māori in Aotearoa. It reminds me of the kräftskiva celebrations in Sweden, a traditional summertime eating and drinking event featuring native and introduced freshwater crayfish on the menu (and snaps)

Testing the landscape theory of #foodweb architecture in a massive lake shows evidence that large, mobile predators integrate energy from different trophic pathways. Traits such as body size and foraging behavior help predict the structure of food webs

Network-based #restoration strategies maximize ecosystem recovery: #biodiversity recovery following collapse is maximized when extirpated species are reintroduced based solely on their total number of connections in the original interaction network

Just looking at a long-term record of fish in the Rangitukia Stream and there are some interesting declines in key species. Here's a photo of a headwater tributary on the Rangitukia

Here's that paper on ecosystem synchrony – defined as the similarity in the temporal fluctuations of an ecosystem function between multiple ecosystems. Ecosystem synchrony may help detect responses to global change drivers

I just saw a new paper on ecosystem synchrony in TREE, and it made me think about this study where massive inputs of kelp wrack led to spatially synchronous subsidy effects on beach food webs

Three kinds of scientific research