10 documents found, page 1 of 1
Perspectives and pitfalls in preserving subterranean biodiversity through prote...
Mammola, Stefano; Altermatt, Florian; Alther, Roman; Rosário, Isabel Amorim Do; Bancila, Raluca; Borges, Paulo A. V.; Brad, Traian; Brankovits, DavidSubterranean ecosystems (comprising terrestrial, semi-aquatic, and aquatic components) are increasingly threatened by human activities; however, the current network of surface-protected areas is inadequate to safeguard subterranean biodiversity. Establishing protected areas for subterranean ecosystems is challenging. First, there are technical obstacles in mapping three-dimensional ecosystems with uncertain bou...
EU needs groundwater ecosystems guidelines
Di Lorenzo, Tiziana; Lunghi, Enrico; Aanei, Cristina Mihaela Tereza; Altermatt, Florian; Alther, Roman; Rosário, Isabel Amorim Do; Bancila, RalucaNegotiations are underway on the new European Union (EU) Water Directive (1), which will regulate the protection and sustainable use of Europe’s water resources. However, the proposal foregoes environmental quality standards specifically tailored to sensitive groundwater species and fails to require biomonitoring for groundwater ecosystems. Despite repeated calls for consideration (2, 3) since the first Water F...
Groundwater is a hidden global keystone ecosystem
Saccò, Mattia; Mammola, Stefano; Altermatt, Florian; Alther, Roman; Bolpagni, Rossano; Brancelj, Anton; Brankovits, David; Fišer, CeneGroundwater is a vital ecosystem of the global water cycle, hosting unique biodiversity and providing essential services to societies. Despite being the largest unfrozen freshwater resource, in a period of depletion by extraction and pollution, groundwater environments have been repeatedly overlooked in global biodiversity conservation agendas. Disregarding the importance of groundwater as an ecosystem ignores ...
The global EPTO database: Worldwide occurrences of aquatic insects
Grigoropoulou, Afroditi; Hamid, Suhaila Ab; Acosta, Raúl; Akindele, Emmanuel Olusegun; Al‐Shami, Salman A.; Altermatt, Florian; Amatulli, GiuseppeMotivation: Aquatic insects comprise 64% of freshwater animal diversity and are widely used as bioindicators to assess water quality impairment and freshwater ecosystem health, as well as to test ecological hypotheses. Despite their importance, a comprehensive, global database of aquatic insect occurrences for mapping freshwater biodiversity in macroecological studies and applied freshwater research is missing....
The recovery of European freshwater biodiversity has come to a halt
Haase, Peter; Bowler, Diana E.; Baker, Nathan J.; Bonada, Núria; Domisch, Sami; Garcia Marquez, Jaime R.; Heino, Jani; Hering, Daniel; Jähnig, Sonja C.Owing to a long history of anthropogenic pressures, freshwater ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to biodiversity loss1. Mitigation measures, including wastewater treatment and hydromorphological restoration, have aimed to improve environmental quality and foster the recovery of freshwater biodiversity2. Here, using 1,816 time series of freshwater invertebrate communities collected across 22 European coun...
A comparative analysis reveals weak relationships between ecological factors an...
Heino, Jani; Melo, Adriano Sanches; Bini, Luis Mauricio; Altermatt, Florian; Al-Shami, Salman Abdo; Angeler, David G.; Bonada, Núria; Brand, CeciliaThe hypotheses that beta diversity should increase with decreasing latitude and increase with spatial extent of a region have rarely been tested based on a comparative analysis of multiple datasets, and no such study has focused on stream insects. We first assessed how well variability in beta diversity of stream insect metacommunities is predicted by insect group, latitude, spatial extent, altitudinal range, a...
The future of biotic indices in the ecogenomic era: Integrating (e)DNA metabarc...
Pawlowski, Jan; Kelly-Quinn, Mary; Altermatt, Florian; Apothéloz-Perret-Gentil, Laure; Beja, Pedro; Boggero, Angela; Borja, Angel; Bouchez, AgnèsThe bioassessment of aquatic ecosystems is currently based on various biotic indices that use the occurrence and/or abundance of selected taxonomic groups to define ecological status. These conventional indices have some limitations, often related to difficulties in morphological identification of bioindicator taxa. Recent development of DNA barcoding and metabarcoding could potentially alleviate some of these ...
Why we need sustainable networks bridging countries, disciplines, cultures and ...
Leese, Florian; Bouchez, Agnes; Abarenkov, Kessy; Altermatt, Florian; Borja, Angel; Bruce, Kat; Ekrem, Torbjorn; Ciampor, Fedor, Jr.Aquatic biomonitoring has become an essential task in Europe and many other regions as a consequence of strong anthropogenic pressures affecting the health of lakes, rivers, oceans and groundwater. A typical assessment of the environmental quality status, such as it is required by European but also North American and other legislation, relies on matching the composition of assemblages of organisms identified us...
DNAqua-Net: developing new genetic tools for bioassessment and monitoring of aq...
Leese, Florian; Altermatt, Florian; Bouchez, Agnès; Ekrem, Torbjørn; Hering, Daniel; Meissner, Kristian; Mergen, Patricia; Pawlowski, JanThe protection, preservation and restoration of aquatic ecosystems and their functions are of global importance. For European states it became legally binding mainly through the EUWater Framework Directive (WFD). In order to assess the ecological status of a given water body, aquatic biodiversity data are obtained and compared to a reference water body. The quantified mismatch obtained determines the extent of ...
A comparative analysis reveals weak relationships between ecological factors an...
Heino, Jani; Melo, Adriano S.; Bini, Luis Mauricio; Altermatt, Florian; Al-Shami, Salman A.; Angeler, David G.; Bonada, Nuria; Brand, CeciliaMade available in DSpace on 2015-10-21T13:13:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2015-03-01. Added 1 bitstream(s) on 2015-10-22T09:52:00Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 WOS000351458500010.pdf: 1109708 bytes, checksum: 67b46d77c556852b6b2a5bf0a606d9e1 (MD5); Academy of Finland; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq); FRGS of Ministry of Higher Education, Malaysia; Spanish M...