Consumption of emergent aquatic insects by terrestrial invertebrates is a poorly resolved, but potentially important, mechanism of contaminant flux across ecosystem borders leading to contaminant exposure in terrestrial invertivores. We characterized the spatial extent and magnitude of contaminant transfer from aquatic sediments to terrestrial invertebrate predators by examining riparian aranei...

Tool-use research has focused primarily on land-based animals, with less consideration given to aquatic animals and the environmental challenges and conditions they face. Here, we review aquatic tool use and examine the contributing ecological, physiological, cognitive and social factors. Tool use among aquatic animals is rare but taxonomically diverse, occurring in fish, cephalopods, mammals, ...

Biodiversity is one of the most important characteristics of the aquatic ecosystem for maintaining its stability and resilience [1]. Aquatic macrophytes are macroscopic forms of aquatic vegetation, including macroalgae, mosses, ferns and angiosperms found in aquatic habitat. They have evolved from many diverse groups and often demonstrate extreme flexibility in structure and morphology in relat...

Heavy metal pollution in aquatic environments is a critical environmental concern, as the metals can accumulate in aquatic organisms and humans via the food chain, creating a risk to human health. Among the metals, Pb is one of the most toxic to aquatic organisms[1]. Pb is a naturally occurring substance, released as a consequence of geological weathering and volcanic activity, however, high co...

The use of aquatic plants for phytoremediation is an important method for restoring polluted ecosystems. We sought to analyze the capacity of different aquatic plant species to absorb heavy metals and to summarize available relevant scientific data on this topic. We present a meta-analysis of Cu, Zn, and Cd absorption capacities of aquatic plants to provide a scientific basis for the selection ...

Lipid analysis of aquatic plants from lakes on Mt. Kenya, E. Africa, revealed that non-emergent (submerged and ̄oating-leaved) species displayed enhanced abundances of mid-chain length, C23 and C25 n-alkanes. In contrast, the emergent aquatic plants had n-alkane distributions similar to those of the terrestrial vegetation, typically dominated by the long-chain length homologues (>C29). A proxy r...

The distribution and abundance of high aquatic plants in the Gorganroud River was examined at five stations in four seasons (20 samples) over one year period during 2009-2010. We identified 21 species of aquatic plants from 21 genera, belonging to 9 families. These species were determined as 3 halophytic species (14.2%) and 18 high aquatic plants (85.7%).The highest species diversity was observ...

Aquatic birds exceed other terrestrial vertebrates in the diversity of their adaptations to aquatic niches. For many species this has created difficulty in understanding their evolutionary origin and, in particular, for the flamingos, hamerkop, shoebill and pelecaniforms. Here, new evidence from nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences and DNA-DNA hybridization data indicates extensive morpholog...

Terrestrial spiders transfer methyl mercury (MeHg) to terrestrial consumers such as birds, but how spiders become contaminated with MeHg is not well understood. In the present study, the authors used stable isotopes of nitrogen in combination with MeHg to determine the source of MeHg to terrestrial long-jawed orb weaver spiders (Tetragnatha sp). The authors collected spiders and a variety of ot...