Biological Communities Respond to Multiple Human-Induced Aquatic Environment Change

Dear Colleagues,

Perturbations linked to the direct and indirect impacts of human activities during the so-called Anthropocene, affect the structure and functioning of aquatic ecosystems to varying degrees. Some of these events stress aquatic life, including soil and water acidification, soil erosion, loss of base cations, release of trace metals or organic compounds, and application of essential nutrients capable of stimulating primary productivity. Superimposed on these changes, climate warming directly impacts aquatic environments via altering species’ metabolic processes, and indirectly by modifying food web interactions. Many stressors interact in a manner that can be difficult to predict. In part, this difficulty arises from the different possible responses by species or entire taxonomic groups to stressors, which may interact additively, synergistically or antagonistically. Entire food webs can be restructured if different trophic levels have consistently different responses to climate warming. However, the consequences of warming-induced changes in food web structure for the long-term population dynamics of different trophic levels remain poorly understood. Such changes may be particularly important to understand in lakes, where food web production is socio-economically important and most organisms are ectotherms that are highly sensitive to changes in their surrounding environment. To understand the degree and mechanisms through which stressors impact lakes biological communities and alter ecosystem, functioning long-term analyses by means of contemporary and palaeo data are essential. Due to its remarkable physical inertia, including thermal stability, global warming is expected to also have a profound effect on groundwater ecosystems. The degree to which alterations can affect aquatic ecosystem structure and functioning also requires the addressing of functional diversity at the molecular level, to reconstruct the role different species play in  the transfer of material and energy through the food web. In this Special Issue, we will present examples of the impact of different stressors on aqautic ecosystems and their interactions, providing long-term, metabolic, molecular and paleolimnological analyses.

Dr. Marina Manca
Dr. Roberta Piscia
Guest Editors

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