1,720,979 research outputs found
How trophic cascades and photic zone nutrient content interact to generate basin-scale differences in the microbial food web
Get PDFIn linear food chains, resource and predator control produce positive and negative correlations, respectively, between biomass at adjacent trophic levels. These simple relationships become more complex in food webs that contain alternative food chains of unequal lengths. We have used a “minimum” model for the microbial part of the pelagic food web that has three such food chains connecting free mineral nutrients to copepods: via diatoms, autotrophic flagellates, and heterotrophic bacteria. Trophic cascades from copepods strongly modulates the balance between the three pathways and, therefore, the functionality of the microbial food web in services such as food production for higher trophic levels, DOM degradation, and ocean carbon sequestration. The result is a theoretical framework able to explain, not only apparent conflicts in Arctic mesocosm experiments, but also biogeochemical features of the Mediterranean. Here, the fundamental difference between Arctic and Mediterranean microbial food webs is the way they are predator driven by seasonal migration of large copepods in the Arctic, but resource driven due to the anti-estuarine circulation in the Mediterranean. In this framework, global change effects on microbial ecosystem functions are more like to come indirectly through changes in these drivers than through direct temperature effects on the microbes.publishedVersio
Linking internal and external bacterial community control gives mechanistic framework for pelagic virus-to-bacteria ratios
Get PDFFor more than 25 years, virus-to-bacteria ratios (VBR) have been measured and interpreted as indicators of the importance of viruses in aquatic ecosystems, yet a generally accepted theory for understanding mechanisms controlling VBR is still lacking. Assuming that the denominator (total bacterial abundance) is primarily predator controlled, while viral lysis compensates for host growth rates exceeding this grazing loss, the numerator (viral abundance) reflects activity differences between prokaryotic hosts. VBR is then a ratio between mechanisms generating structure within the bacterial community and interactions between different plankton functional types controlling bacterial community size. We here show how these arguments can be formalized by combining a recently published model for co-evolutionary host-virus interactions, with a previously published “minimum” model for the microbial food web. The result is a framework where viral lysis links bacterial diversity to microbial food web structure and function, creating relationships between different levels of organization that are strongly modified by organism-level properties such as cost of resistance
Nutrient pathways through the microbial food web: principles and predictability discussed, based on five different experiments
Get PDFAlthough explanatory and predictive powers are 2 closely interconnected aspects of conceptual and mathematical models of complex systems, the two are not equivalent. The 2 aspects are discussed here for the microbial part of photic zone food webs of the marine pelagic. We focus on the specific question of how limiting nutrients are transferred from the dissolved form, through the microbial food web, to mesozooplankton. For this purpose, 5 different nutrient addition experiments are reviewed and compared to a ‘simplest possible’ conceptual food web model. The experiments range in scale from artificial food webs constructed in laboratory chemostats, via mesocosm experiments, to a Lagrangian open-ocean addition experiment and cover time scales from days to weeks. We conclude that main system responses in all cases can be explained within the framework of the simple model, and that each experiment therefore also adds credibility to the basic concepts of this model. However, different system attributes profoundly affect the pathway and speed of nutrient transfer in each experiment. A re-occurring theme seems to be how the interactions between flexible stoichiometry and predatory processes modify experimental outcomes. Understanding the flexibility in the behavior of the system has thus increased with each experiment, but the requirement for new ad hoc assumptions to be added to the basic model structure in each case makes reliable predictions of the experimental outcome appear only possible with further model elaboration
Fractal Hypothesis of the Pelagic Microbial Ecosystem—Can Simple Ecological Principles Lead to Self-Similar Complexity in the Pelagic Microbial Food Web?
Get PDFTrophic interactions are highly complex and modern sequencing techniques reveal enormous biodiversity across multiple scales in marine microbial communities. Within the chemically and physically relatively homogeneous pelagic environment, this calls for an explanation beyond spatial and temporal heterogeneity. Based on observations of simple parasite-host and predator-prey interactions occurring at different trophic levels and levels of phylogenetic resolution, we present a theoretical perspective on this enormous biodiversity, discussing in particular self-similar aspects of pelagic microbial food web organization. Fractal methods have been used to describe a variety of natural phenomena, with studies of habitat structures being an application in ecology. In contrast to mathematical fractals where pattern generating rules are readily known, however, identifying mechanisms that lead to natural fractals is not straight-forward. Here we put forward the hypothesis that trophic interactions between pelagic microbes may be organized in a fractal-like manner, with the emergent network resembling the structure of the Sierpinski triangle. We discuss a mechanism that could be underlying the formation of repeated patterns at different trophic levels and discuss how this may help understand characteristic biomass size-spectra that hint at scale-invariant properties of the pelagic environment. If the idea of simple underlying principles leading to a fractal-like organization of the pelagic food web could be formalized, this would extend an ecologists mindset on how biological complexity could be accounted for. It may furthermore benefit ecosystem modeling by facilitating adequate model resolution across multiple scales
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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