Researchers at Yale and Portland State Universities conducted a study of the effects of fertilizers on ponds in residential areas. They found that human waste from septic systems were not only contributing nitrogen to the ponds, but that pond organisms were primarily feeding from it. Max Lambert, one of the paper's co-authors stated "“Our study highlights that, by choosing to live in and landscape particular places, human neighborhoods are creating fundamentally unique ecosystems by changing how water and food move around, and even what kind of food is available. Suburban animals behave, look, and function differently because of this”
More on this story at Yale News at https://news.yale.edu/2017/12/11/study-suburban-ponds-are-septic-buffet
Monday, December 18, 2017
Monday, December 11, 2017
Wait, wait....don't clean that street gutter!
“In most cities, streets are designed for collecting and
transporting dirt, litter, debris, storm water and other wastes as a municipal
sanitation system. Microbial mats can develop on street surfaces and form
microbial communities that have never been described. Here, we performed the
first molecular inventory of the street gutter-associated eukaryotes across the
entire French capital of Paris and the non-potable waters sources. We found
that the 5782 OTUs (operational taxonomic units) present in the street gutters
which are dominated by diatoms (photoautotrophs), fungi (heterotrophs), Alveolata
and Rhizaria, includes parasites, consumers of phototrophs and epibionts that
may regulate the dynamics of gutter mat microbial communities. Network analyses
demonstrated that street microbiome present many species restricted to gutters,
and an overlapping composition between the water sources used for street
cleaning (for example, intra-urban aquatic networks and the associated rivers)
and the gutters. We propose that street gutters, which can cover a significant
surface area of cities worldwide, potentially have important ecological roles
in the remediation of pollutants or downstream wastewater treatments, might
also be a niche for growth and dissemination of putative parasite and
pathogens.”
From: Aquatic urban ecology at the scale of a capital: community structure and interactions in street gutters
by Vincent Hervé, Boris Leroy, Albert Da Silva Pires & Pascal Jean Lopez
The ISME Journal
doi:10.1038/ismej.2017.166
Friday, December 8, 2017
Urban Bird Feeders Dominated by a Few Species and Individuals
“Our study highlights that individual and species-specific
differences in feeder use are present within feeder-visiting bird communities,
importantly demonstrating this across seasons within an urban system. These
intraspecific and interspecific asymmetries support the likelihood of
competitive interactions operating to regulate access to food, and suggest that
the effects of supplementary feeding are unlikely to be equivalent across all
birds within communities of feeder visitors. In New Zealand resource dominance
by introduced species is particularly important, with negative outcomes for
native species conservation in cities possible. Individual differences in
feeder use observed here are likely to affect the population-level impacts of
bird feeding, and consequently should be considered in future studies of garden
bird feeding.”
"Urban Bird Feeders Dominated by a Few Species and
Individuals"
Josie A. Galbraith, Darryl N. Jones, Jacqueline R. Beggs,
Katharina Parry and Margaret C. Stanley
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