Abstract Background The European environmental risk assessment of plant protection products considers aquatic model ecosystem studies (microcosms/mesocosms, M/M) as suitable higher tier approach to assess treatment-related effects and derive regulatory acceptable concentrations (RAC). However, it is under debate what extent these artificial test systems reflect the risks pesticidal substances w...

We studied how multiple-stresssors in tributaries affect function, diversity, and physical habitat of recipient downstream ecosystems. Using a mesocosm model stream network, we manipulated sediment nutrients individually combination second-order channels, to test the effect complex stressor interactions within on channels. Sedimentation channels increased with level disturbance tributaries. Mor...

Foraging modalities (e.g. passive, sit-and-wait, active) and traits are plastic in some species, but the extent to which this plasticity affects interspecific competition remains unclear. Using a long-term laboratory mesocosm experiment, we quantified competition strength and the plasticity of foraging traits in a guild of generalist predators of arthropods with a range of foraging modalities. ...

During phytoplankton growth a fraction of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) assimilated by phytoplankton is exuded in the form of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), which can be transformed into extracellular particulate organic carbon (POC). A major fraction of extracellular POC is associated with carbon of transparent exopolymer particles (TEP; carbon content = TEPC) that form from dissolved poly...

Responses to ocean acidification in plankton communities were studied during a CO2-enrichment experiment in the Arctic Ocean, accomplished from June to July 2010 in Kongsfjorden, Svalbard (78562 N, 11536 E). Enclosed in 9 mesocosms (volume: 43.9–47.6 m3), plankton was exposed to CO2 concentrations, ranging from glacial to projected mid-next-century levels. Fertilization with inorganic nutrients...

The prediction of pest-control functioning by multi-predator communities is hindered by the non-additive nature of species functioning. Such non-additivity, commonly termed an emergent multi-predator effect, is known to be affected by elements of the ecological context, such as the structure and composition of vegetation, in addition to the traits of the predators themselves. Here we report mes...

Concentrations of heme b were determined in a mesocosm experiment situated in Gullmar Fjord off Sweden. The mesocosm experiment lasted for ca. one hundred days and was characterised by the growth of a primary nutrient replete and a secondary nutrient deplete phytoplankton bloom. Heme b varied between 40 ± 10 pmol L-1 in the prebloom period up to a maximum of 700 ± 400 pmol L-1 just prior to the...

Dynamic environments like seagrass habitats are characterised by continuous local erosion and burial processes, which may induce seagrass decline if disturbances become too intense or frequent. We aim to quantify for Zostera noltii the resilience of both the edge of a meadow and individual propagules to local-scale burial and erosion events. In a set of mesocosm and in situ manipulation experim...