Measurements of dissolved monomethylmercury (MeHg) (which included both the dissolved part and the part leached from the particles by addition of 2 M HCl) were carried out in natural waters of various origin and composition (fresh, estuarine saline and brackish water, saline coastal water and groundwater). Following a proper water sampling procedure, MeHg was leached by hydrochloric acid, preco...

Aerobic ammonia oxidation plays a key role in the nitrogen cycle, and the diversity of the responsible microorganisms is regulated by environmental factors. Abundance and composition of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) were investigated in the surface waters along an environmental gradient of the Yong River in Ningbo, East China. Water samples were collected ...

We show that a reduction in vertical mixing applied inside the Atlantic basin can drastically increase North Antlantic Deep Water (NADW) stability with respect to fresh water perturbations applied to the North Atlantic. This is contrary to the notion that the stability of the ocean’s thermohaline circulation simply scales with vertical mixing rates. An Antarctic Intermediate Water (AAIW) revers...

Fresh water is required to sustain life. However, the world is facing a global challenge to reliably supply its population with safe water due to shortages stemming from population growth, climate change, contamination of available fresh water supplies, and public policy. Presently, the United Nations estimates that one third of the world’s population ( 2.4 billion people) is living in water-st...

Shrimp production in Thailand has historically been undertaken in the saline and brackish waters of coastal mangroves. In recent years rising demand and prices for shrimp and falling productivity of mangrove areas have motivated an expansion of shrimp production into the fresh-water margins of river estuaries that were previously used for rice cultivation. Generalised additive models, which off...

Both effective population size and life history may influence the efficacy of purifying selection, but it remains unclear if the environment affects the accumulation of weakly deleterious nonsynonymous polymorphisms. We hypothesize that the reduced energetic cost of osmoregulation in brackish water habitat may cause relaxation of selective constraints at mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation ...

A role for the rectum in the ionoregulatory homeostasis of larval Chironomus riparius was revealed by rearing animals in different saline environments and examining: (1) the spatial distribution and activity of keystone ionomotive enzymes Na(+)-K(+)-ATPase (NKA) and V-type H(+)-ATPase (VA) in the alimentary canal, and (2) rectal K(+) transport with the scanning ion-selective electrode technique...

Previous studies on non-diadromous euryhaline teleosts introduced a hypothesis that the lowest level of gill Na(+)/K(+)-ATPase (NKA) activity occurs in the environments with salinity close to the primary natural habitats of the studied species. To provide more evidence of the hypothesis, two medaka species, Oryzias latipes and O. dancena, whose primary natural habitats are fresh water (FW) and ...