Roberto Molowny-Horas

Contrasting winter and summer VOC mixing ratios at a forest site in the Western Mediterranean Basin: the effect of local biogenic emissions

Atmospheric volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are involved in ozone and aerosol generation, thus having implications for air quality and climate. VOCs and their emissions by vegetation also have important ecological roles as they can protect plants from stresses and act as communication cues between plants and between plants and animals. In spite of these key environmental and biological roles, the reports on seasonal and daily VOC mixing ratios in the literature for Mediterranean natural environments are scarce. We conducted seasonal (winter and summer) measurements of VOC mixing ratios in an elevated (720 m a.s.l.) holm oak Mediterranean forest site near the metropolitan area of Barcelona (NE Iberian Peninsula). Methanol was the most abundant compound among all the VOCs measured in both seasons. While aromatic VOCs showed almost no seasonal variability, short-chain oxygenated VOCs presented higher mixing ratios in summer, presumably due to greater emission by vegetation and increased photochemistry, both enhanced by the high temperatures and solar radiation in summer. Isoprenoid VOCs showed the biggest seasonal change in mixing ratios: they increased by one order of magnitude in summer, as a result of the vegetation’s Correspondence to: R. Seco (roger@creaf.uab.cat) greater physiological activity and emission rates. The maximum diurnal concentrations of ozone increased in summer too, most likely due to more intense photochemical activity and the higher levels of VOCs in the air. The daily variation of VOC mixing ratios was mainly governed by the wind regime of the mountain, as the majority of the VOC species analyzed followed a very similar diel cycle. Mountain and sea breezes that develop after sunrise advect polluted air masses to the mountain. These polluted air masses had previously passed over the urban and industrial areas surrounding the Barcelona metropolitan area, where they were enriched in NO x and in VOCs of biotic and abiotic origin. Moreover, these polluted air masses receive additional biogenic VOCs emitted in the local valley by the vegetation, thus enhancing O 3 formation in this forested site. The only VOC species that showed a somewhat different daily pattern were monoterpenes because of their local biogenic emission. Isoprene also followed in part the daily pattern of monoterpenes, but only in summer when its biotic sources were stronger. The increase by one order of magnitude in the concentrations of these volatile isoprenoids highlights the importance of local biogenic summer emissions in these Mediterranean forested areas which also receive polluted air masses from nearby or distant anthropic sources. Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union. 13162 R. Seco et al.: The effect of local biogenic emissions

Effect of temperature regime on diapause intensity in an adult-wintering Hymenopteran with obligate diapause

Osmia lignaria is a solitary bee that over-winters as a fully eclosed, cocooned, unfed adult. Our objective is to understand the effect of wintering temperature on diapause maintenance and termination in this species. We measure respiration rates and weight loss in individuals exposed to various wintering temperatures (0, 4, 7, 22 degrees C, outdoors) and durations (28, 84, 140, 196, 252 days). We use time to emerge and respiration response (respiration rate measured at 22 degrees C) as indicators of diapause intensity. Adults spontaneously lower their respiration rates to approximately 0.1 ml/gh within 1 month after adult eclosion, indicating obligatory diapause. Non-wintered individuals maintain low respiration rates, but lose weight rapidly and die by mid-winter. In wintered adults, two phases can be distinguished. First, respiration response undergoes a rapid increase and then reaches a plateau. This phase is similar in bees wintered at 0, 4 and 7 degrees C. In the second phase, respiration response undergoes an exponential increase, which is more pronounced at the warmer temperatures. Composite exponential functions provide a good fit to the observed respiration patterns. Adults whose respiration response has reached 0.45 ml/gh emerge promptly when exposed to 20 degrees C, indicating diapause completion. Individuals wintered for short periods do not reach such respiration levels. When exposed to 20 degrees C these individuals lower their metabolic rate, and their emergence time is extended. The relationship between respiration rates and emergence time follows a negative exponential function. We propose two alternative models of diapause termination to interpret these results.

Synergistic mortality between a neonicotinoid insecticide and an ergosterol‐biosynthesis‐inhibiting fungicide in three bee species

BACKGROUND Neonicotinoid insecticides have been identified as an important factor contributing to bee diversity declines. Nonetheless, uncertainties remain about their impact under field conditions. Most studies have been conducted on Apis mellifera and tested single compounds. However, in agricultural environments, bees are often exposed to multiple pesticides. We explore the synergistic mortality between a neonicotinoid (clothianidin) and an ergosterol-biosynthesis-inhibiting fungicide (propiconazole) in three bee species (A. mellifera, Bombus terrestris, Osmia bicornis) following oral exposure in the laboratory. RESULTS We developed a new approach based on the binomial proportion test to analyse synergistic interactions. We estimated uptake of clothianidin per foraging bout in honey bees foraging on seed-coated rapeseed fields. We found significant synergistic mortality in all three bee species exposed to non-lethal doses of propiconazole and their respective LD10 of clothianidin. Significant synergism was only found at the first assessment times in A. mellifera (4 and 24 h) and B. terrestris (4 h), but persisted throughout the experiment (96 h) in O. bicornis. O. bicornis was also the most sensitive species to clothianidin. CONCLUSION Our results underscore the importance to test pesticide combinations likely to occur in agricultural environments, and to include several bee species in environmental risk assessment schemes.

Global patterns of phosphatase activity in natural soils

Soil phosphatase levels strongly control the biotic pathways of phosphorus (P), an essential element for life, which is often limiting in terrestrial ecosystems. We investigated the influence of climatic and soil traits on phosphatase activity in terrestrial systems using metadata analysis from published studies. This is the first analysis of global measurements of phosphatase in natural soils. Our results suggest that organic P (Porg), rather than available P, is the most important P fraction in predicting phosphatase activity. Structural equation modeling using soil total nitrogen (TN), mean annual precipitation, mean annual temperature, thermal amplitude and total soil carbon as most available predictor variables explained up to 50% of the spatial variance in phosphatase activity. In this analysis, Porg could not be tested and among the rest of available variables, TN was the most important factor explaining the observed spatial gradients in phosphatase activity. On the other hand, phosphatase activity was also found to be associated with climatic conditions and soil type across different biomes worldwide. The close association among different predictors like Porg, TN and precipitation suggest that P recycling is driven by a broad scale pattern of ecosystem productivity capacity.

Uncoupling the Effects of Seed Predation and Seed Dispersal by Granivorous Ants on Plant Population Dynamics

Secondary seed dispersal is an important plant-animal interaction, which is central to understanding plant population and community dynamics. Very little information is still available on the effects of dispersal on plant demography and, particularly, for ant-seed dispersal interactions. As many other interactions, seed dispersal by animals involves costs (seed predation) and benefits (seed dispersal), the balance of which determines the outcome of the interaction. Separate quantification of each of them is essential in order to understand the effects of this interaction. To address this issue, we have successfully separated and analyzed the costs and benefits of seed dispersal by seed-harvesting ants on the plant population dynamics of three shrub species with different traits. To that aim a stochastic, spatially-explicit individually-based simulation model has been implemented based on actual data sets. The results from our simulation model agree with theoretical models of plant response dependent on seed dispersal, for one plant species, and ant-mediated seed predation, for another one. In these cases, model predictions were close to the observed values at field. Nonetheless, these ecological processes did not affect in anyway a third species, for which the model predictions were far from the observed values. This indicates that the balance between costs and benefits associated to secondary seed dispersal is clearly related to specific traits. This study is one of the first works that analyze tradeoffs of secondary seed dispersal on plant population dynamics, by disentangling the effects of related costs and benefits. We suggest analyzing the effects of interactions on population dynamics as opposed to merely analyzing the partners and their interaction strength.

Thermal characterization of European ant communities along thermal gradients and its implications for community resilience to temperature variability

Ecologists are increasingly concerned about how climate change will affect biodiversity yet have mostly addressed the issue at the species level. Here, we present a novel framework that accounts for the full range and complementarity of thermal responses present in a community; it may help reveal how biological communities will respond to climatic (i.e., thermal) variability. First, we characterized the thermal niches of 147 ant species from 342 communities found along broad temperature gradients in western Europe. Within each community, species’ mean thermal breadth and the difference among species’ thermal optima (thermal complementarity) were considered to define community thermal niche breadth—our proxy for community thermal resilience. The greater the range of thermal responses and their complementarity within a community, the greater the likelihood that the community could cope with novel conditions. Second, we used simulations to calculate how robust community thermal resilience was to random species extinctions. Community resilience was considered to be robust when random species extinctions largely failed to constrict initial community thermal breadth. Our results indicate that community thermal resilience was negatively and positively correlated with mean temperature and temperature seasonality, respectively. The pattern was reversed for robustness. While species richness did not directly affect community resilience to thermal variability, it did have a strong indirect effect because it determined community resilience robustness. Consequently, communities in warm, aseasonal regions are the most vulnerable to temperature variability, despite their greater number of species and resultant greater resilience robustness.

A multivariate fractional regression approach to modeling land use and cover dynamics in a Mediterranean landscape

Abstract The way landscapes change in time reveal a great deal of information about the interplay between the forces of nature and the impact of human-driven changes in a Mediterranean landscape. To understand the dynamics behind the process of polygon fragmentation in land use and cover vector maps we illustrate the potential of a novel regression methodology to cope with multivariate fractional data. An overlay of two vector-based land cover maps separated by a time interval of several years (1956 and 1993) show polygons that have become fragmented. Those fragments thus form a multivariate fractional bounded data set. An extension of the Papke and Wooldridge (1996) fractional regression estimation to the case of multivariate response variables has been subsequently developed to study the processes of polygon fragmentation between the two land use and cover maps. The methodology has been applied to a representative set of vector maps from the Barcelona province, Spain. Several explanatory variables have been used, among them the land cover type of the most important adjacent 1956 polygon. The results of our study indicate that the dynamics of fragmentation are determined not only by geographical and environmental variables but also by the neighboring landscape. We discuss its potential use when employed with techniques of landscape modeling.

Investigating the Use of Multi-Gaussian Nonlinear Regressions to Separate Collembolan Size Classes for Soil Quality Assessment

Previous studies with bioindicator organisms have used somatic length distributions, i.e., population structure, to understand the effects of management, environment, or a potential contaminant on populations. We describe a statistical approach to separate somatic length classes of Folsomia candida juveniles as an endpoint for the assessment of changes in population structure. Reproduction-survival bioassays were carried out with five different biochars applied at increasing concentrations. Multi-Gaussian models parameterized juvenile size class cohorts, and the biomass of each size class cohort was estimated. Population structure was modified by both material type as well as concentration. Both biomass and population structure were sensitive to effects not reflected in juvenile number, the classic endpoint. Treatments with more size classes and larger individuals were taken to represent favorable conditions, and less size classes and smaller individuals indicated less favorable conditions. This extension of the standardized test provided additional information about the demography of the population.

Projecting the distribution and abundance of Mediterranean tree species under climate change: a demographic approach

Aims Distribution and abundance patterns of species arise from the spatiotemporal dynamics of demographic processes. Population rates of birth, death, growth and patterns of dispersal are, in turn, influenced by environmental conditions and biotic interactions. However, current approaches for modelling large-scale geographical patterns often bypass these simple premises. centred in the mainland territory of Spain and using Pinus halepensis as a case study, our goal was to gain insight into the main drivers affecting local demographic processes, and how large-scale distribution and abundance patterns are shaped by these local variations in vital rates. Methods We applied the integral projection methodology to develop a spatially explicit demographic model of tree species in mainland Spain, using individual-level data from a national forest inventory. In our integral projection model, environmental conditions and competitive interactions influence the survival, growth and reproduction of trees, and we model explicitly the dynamic colonization of new patches. With this framework, the projected distribution and abundance patterns of P. halepensis up to 2090 were evaluated under two different climate scenarios. Important Findings When environmental conditions were kept constant, populations tended to decrease in net number of adults and to increase in net basal area, thus consisting in fewer and bigger individuals. Accounting for climate change in our simulations exacerbated the trend in mortality, causing widespread losses in number of trees, and few locations maintained populations of >100 adult individuals per hectare. the expected increase in mortality under climate change, on the other hand, prompted a higher degree of regeneration via the release of niche space, although not enough to maintain current abundance levels. colonization spatial patterns did not vary significantly with climatic conditions, but the species was able to increase its distribution under climate change more than in a constant climate scenario. Our approach yields relevant information at different spatial scales, from plot-level processes to large-scale abundance patterns. With it, we clearly indicate the strong role that climate change could have in shaping future forest communities through its differential influence on demographic processes.

Severe Wildfire in a Mediterranean Forest

This case study illustrates the equivalency analysis for estimating ex post environmental damage and appropriate compensatory remediation following a severe wildfire caused by a power line in a forest protected under the European Union Habitats Directive (HD). The study addresses long-term environmental damage (e.g., over several decades) by a large-scale disturbance in a terrestrial ecosystem, and includes an analysis of uncertainty associated with the potential occurrence of natural future fire events in the area. Accounting for the probability of natural future forest fires directly affects both baseline and compensatory remediation options by reducing the habitat area compared to an assumption of no future forest fires. Only natural forest fires, i.e., 10% of all forest fires, have been included in the calculations of both the baseline and the compensatory remediation, since the operator may not be made liable for accidental or provoked forest fires. The impact of this hypothesis is tested by means of a sensitivity analysis. The case study illustrates: Considerations in selecting a metric from various potential ones (hectares, trees, biomass, habitat quality) for terrestrial habitats included in the HD; Application of a value equivalency approach (specifically, value-to-value); Analysis of key variables (e.g., differences in metrics, single/multiple metrics, on-site/off-site implementation); and Sensitivity of the results to changes in four key model parameters (i.e. area of future forest fires, tree mortality, percentage of natural forest fires and tree minimum diameter at breast height).