Florian Altermatt

Researchers from #Eawag have conducted an extensive meta-analysis of field studies worldwide to better understand how land-cover changes in the watershed influence freshwater food webs.

👉 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

@florianaltermatt.bsky.social #foodwebs #landuse

Totally agree! will never forget my first brown pelican observations just off Point Reyes during my postdoc @ucdavis.bsky.social, more than 15 years ago. They make you feel you timetravelled into a different era.

On the lookout for entomological treasures, yet only finding their remains....

Fresh off the press! 🚨

What happens to species with different mobility when we replace urban green spaces with green roofs? Can they migrate to rooftops? 🏙️

TL;DR: Not really, but green roofs still offer unique and improvable habitats!

Now out: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

1/6

Nutria - Wikipedia

they seem to have many comon names, at least in German and English we call them nutria, yet I saw it in France...
To avoid confusion, scientific names come in handy, aka Myocaster coypus. See the interesting etymology
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutria

@stephenbheard.bsky.social

A nutria family happily grazing & munching duckweed in an oxbow overgrown as it were the tropics.

Do we think enough about parents who care for sick or disabled children – and how not to make things harder? | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett Mina Holland’s book about parenting her seriously unwell daughter sheds light on the complicated psychology at play, says Guardian columnist Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Do we think enough about parents who care for sick or disabled children – and how not to make things harder? | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Job Alert eDNA

Urbanization drives the decoupling, simplification, and homogenization of aquatic and terrestrial food webs Aquatic and terrestrial communities often co-occur at close distance, enabling biotic interactions across ecosystem boundaries. While such interactions in natural habitats contribute to complex, coupl...

Here, by combining trophiCH with #eDNA based sampling of #biodiversity, @kperrelet.bsky.social et al* show that #urbanisation decouples and simplifies aquatic-terrestrial #foodwebs. doi.org/10.22541/au....

* @laurenmcook.bsky.social, myself😁, @florianaltermatt.bsky.social & Marco Moretti

4/6

Thrilled to announce the publication of the trophiCH database: a multi-trophic, species-level #metaweb for #Switzerland🇨🇭

Out now in #ScientificData 📃 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Want to explore the dataset? 🔍 webapps.wsl.ch/trophiCH/

#OpenData #Ecology #FoodWebs 🌐

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Species loss in key habitats accelerates regional food web disruption - Communications Biology Simulating extinctions across regional food webs reveals that losing species from one habitat— especially wetlands—can cascade to others, accelerating multi-habitat food web collapse, highlighting the...

@merinrejichacko.bsky.social , @loicpellissier.bsky.social , @ele-ethwsl.bsky.social , @usysethz.bsky.social , @camilleethz.bsky.social @florianaltermatt.bsky.social @consecol.bsky.social #extinction www.nature.com/articles/s42...

You will advance eDNA metabarcoding sampling to be used in current monitoring programs, develop unified indicators for nationwide application, and develop ready-to-use toolboxes for real-world change in freshwater monitoring in strong collaboration with stakeholders @bafu.admin.ch

NRP 82

As part of the National Research Program (NRP82, www.nfp82.ch/en), the project will advance implementable eDNA approaches to future-proof environmental monitoring of aquatic ecosystems in Switzerland 🇨🇭, as necessary basis for policy making and to ensure their diversity & functionality.

Apply now: #PhD #position “Advancing environmental DNA (#eDNA) approaches to future-proof #environmental #monitoring of #aquatic #ecosystems” 🧬 🔎 🦐 🧪 🐟 (4 years position)

➡️ apply.refline.ch/673277/1268/...

Thanks for sharing to suitable candidates! @eawag.bsky.social

Species loss in key habitats accelerates regional food web disruption - Communications Biology Simulating extinctions across regional food webs reveals that losing species from one habitat— especially wetlands—can cascade to others, accelerating multi-habitat food web collapse, highlighting the...

🚨 Hot off the press! We show that species loss from key habitats (like wetlands) accelerates secondary extinction in regional multi-habitat food webs. Also, we show the importance of common species to regional food web robustness. doi.org/10.1038/s420...
#Ecology #FoodWebs #Biodiversity #Metaweb

But it goes further: we happily give legal entities & rights to coorporations. Shouldn't we treat the very foundation of our life—nature—equally, and grant these rights as well? Make rivers part of a blue commons, and use their state as an indicator of how we treat our surroundings, incl. ourselves.

Still looking for an inspiring #book 📚for your summer break?
Read this: "Is a river alive" by Robert Macfarlane. 🏞️🐟🌳🦫🐜🍁🦐

Sounds like a strange question, but all kids rightly answer it with yes, as rivers are vivid, full of life. And we all know how a dead river looks like🧪☠️🛢️☣️.

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4/4 Overall, our work places known drivers of the decomposition of leaf litter into a phenological context, providing evidence that changes in the timing or strength of these drivers could drive temporal shifts of this central ecological process.

@eawag.bsky.social @bes-aquaticgroup.bsky.social

3/4 We observed higher decomposition rates in summer in most combinations of ecosystem, litter species, and decomposer type, indicating positive effects of higher temperatures and low standing crops of labile litter. Furthermore, forests showed lower decomposition rates than streams.

2/4 Decomposition of leaf litter is a major ecological process in terrestrial & aquatic ecosystems. Leaf litter enters ecosystems in annual pulses and is subsequently decomposed . Yet investigations are rarely conducted in parallel in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems and over the full year.

The #phenology of leaf litter decomposition in #aquatic & #terrestrial compartments of #headwater streams
@asn-amnat.bsky.social:
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...
🌐🌍🌿🍂⏱️

We studied how blue-green 🟦🟩 systems are connected by resource flows and how ecosystem processes vary seasonally.
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Scientific progress & solutions are one of many reasons to stay optimistic: recycling of carbon-fiber compounds (materials long thought to be a pile up waste..) possible at scale, both cost-effective & massively reducing production-related greenhouse gas emissions. Circular economy is the way to go.

5/5 186 spatial layers produced and openly accessible. Outputs provided for both terrestrial and aquatic realms, including versions adjusted for species richness, and integrated into composite indices.

@eawag.bsky.social @wslresearch.bsky.social @usyseth.bsky.social

4/5 These three indicators capture (1) the contribution of landscapes to taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity, (2) species vulnerability to extinction and (3) ecological connectivity.

3/5 Here, we present a 25-meter resolution dataset for Switzerland, encompassing three key biodiversity indicators (Complementarity, Extinction Risk, and Ecological Connectivity) developed across 17 major taxonomic groups, using habitat suitability maps for approximately 7,500 individual species.

2/5 Spatially explicit indicators that quantify to which extent landscapes support key dimensions of biodiversity are essential for guiding evidence-based conservation planning.

Adde et al.: Spatial #Biodiversity Indicators and a Composite #Index for #Conservation #Prioritization in Switzerland 🇨🇭@biorxivpreprint.bsky.social
🌍🌐🐟🦐🦋🌳🪰

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/5 🧵 as part of speed2zero.ethz.ch/de/ & great thanks to everyone involved who moved this forward!

Utilizing aquatic environmental DNA to address global biodiversity targets - Nature Reviews Biodiversity Aquatic eDNA-based technologies offer the potential for universal and standardized biodiversity monitoring. In this Perspective, Altermatt et al. discuss how these technologies can help to achiev...

🌊🧬Revolutionizing Biodiversity Monitoring?🧪

Could aquatic #eDNA be a game-changer for tracking biodiversity loss? From detecting invasive species to restoring ecosystems...🌍

Study by Altermatt, F., Couton, M., Carraro, L. et al.: www.nature.com/articles/s44...

4/4 Our research reveals the reference spatial scales at which major FFGs are linked to the surrounding terrestrial landscape, providing spatially explicit evidence of the cross-ecosystem linkages needed for conservation design and management.

@eawag.bsky.social @UniversityZurich

3/4 We identified the scale of terrestrial-aquatic linkages (few hundred m to >10 km). Collectors, filterers, shredders, and invertebrate predators having local-scale associations, while invertebrate-eating fish, grazers, and scrapers having landscape-scale associations.