Wave flume facilities that are primarily designed for engineering studies often complex and expensive to operate, hence not ideal long-term replicated experiments as commonly used in biology. This study describes a low-cost small wave can be biological purposes using fresh- or seawater with without sediment. The mesocosm interactions between hydrodynamics benthic organisms aquatic ecosystems. l...

A greenhouse mesocosm experiment, representing earthworm-free North American Acer-dominated forest Xoor and soil conditions, was used to examine the individual and combined eVects of initial invasion by three European earthworm species (Dendrobaena octaedra, Lumbricus rubellus and Lumbricus terrestris) on the forest Xoor and upper soil horizons, N and P availability, and the mortality and bioma...

Coastal ecologists and managers have frequently used nitrogen stable isotopes (delta15N) to trace and monitor sources of anthropogenic nitrogen (N) in coastal ecosystems. However, the interpretation of delta15N data can often be challenging, as the isotope values fractionate substantially due to preferential retention and uptake by biota. There is a growing body of evidence that carbon isotopes...

Differences in how organisms modify their environment can evolve rapidly and might influence adaptive population divergence. In a common garden experiment in aquatic mesocosms, we found that adult stickleback from a recently diverged pair of lake and stream populations had contrasting effects on ecosystem metrics. These modifications were caused by both genetic and plastic differences between p...

Seagrasses are distributed across the globe and their communities may play key roles in the coastal ecosystems. Seagrass meadows are expected to benefit from the increased carbon availability which might be used in photosynthesis in a future high CO2 world. The main aim of this study was to examine the effect of elevated pCO2 on the net photosynthesis of seagrass Zostera marina in a brackish wa...

Through the use of mesocosm experiments, we show that an unusually early spring phytoplankton bloom can be induced by intermittent high-light periods. We performed mesocosm experiments where plankton assemblages from Kiel Bight (Western Baltic Sea) received a light regime based on the natural seasonal irradiance dimmed to 43% of surface irradiance of cloudless days, starting with irradiance lev...

We examined the relationship between the isolation of experimental aquatic mesocosms and the abundance of an aquatic insect colonist, Notonecta irrorata, over two years. We used a curve-fitting approach to assess whether linear or quadratic models better describe the relationship between isolation and abundance. For two measures of mesocosm isolation, distance to nearest source and distance to ...

1. Daphnia pulex and Daphnia middendorffiana are commonly found in the Toolik Lake region of arctic Alaska. These two species are very similar morphologically, although their natural distributions differ markedly: D. pulex is restricted to shallow ponds, while D. middendorffiana is widely distributed and found in a variety of ponds and lakes. We compared the reproductive capabilities of D. pule...