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Freshwater Biology Special Issues

Freshwater Biology publishes 2-3
Freshwater Biology publishes 2-3 special themed issues each year which are available at the special single-issue price of £25.00 each. To order any of the following Freshwater Biology special issues please contact Customer Services.

Recently published special issues include:
 
  Special Issues
If you are interested in publishing a special issue or special section devoted to a contemporary aquatic biology subject, please contact Dr. Dave Strayer at an early stage to discuss the possibilities of publishing in Freshwater Biology.
  Special Issue: Multiple Stressors in Freshwater Ecosystems
Multiple Stressors in Freshwater EcosystemsVolume 55 Issue s1 - January 2010
Guest Editors: S. J. Ormerod, M. Dobson, A. G. Hildrew and C. R. Townsend

The fundamental importance of freshwaters, the rapid extinction rate of freshwater species and the real sensitivity of freshwater ecosystems to global change together bring an urgent need for renewed scientific focus, resources and evidence to support their management. Against this background, the Freshwater Biological Association in 2008 launched a new series of 'summit' Conferences in Aquatic Biology intended to develop and showcase the application of ecological science to major issues in freshwater ecosystems. The inaugural meeting part-sponsored by the Environment Agency and Freshwater Biology, was held in the Association's newly refurbished premises at Windermere. Papers from the first conference on ?Multiple stressors? are now freely available online in Freshwater Biology.

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  Special Issue: Environmental Flows: Science and Management
Environmental Flows: Science and ManagementVolume 55 Issue 1 - January 2010
Guest Editors: A.H. Arthington, R.J. Naiman, M.E. McClain and C. Nilsson

Environmental flows - the flow regimes left in rivers, or restored to developed rivers - are a central tool helping resource managers to protect the biodiversity, resilience and ecological goods and services provided by healthy riverine ecosystems. Yet for many thousands of streams and rivers we cannot answer the question - how much water does a river need, when and how often? This Special Issue reports new findings and provides novel insights in the science and management of environmental flows, including: synoptic reviews, methodological innovations, flow restoration experiments, modelling techniques and broader principles to support sustainable use of basin-wide freshwater resources. Based on contributions to this Special Issue, the action agenda of the 2007 Brisbane Declaration on environmental flows and the wider literature, the Editors propose an invigorated global research programme to construct and calibrate hydro-ecological models that quantify environmental flows and thereby protect the ecological goods and services provided by healthy rivers in various hydro-climatic settings across the globe.

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  Special Issues Section: European High Mountain Lakes: Regionalisation and Ecological Status
European High Mountain Lakes: Regionalisation and Ecological StatusVolume 54 Issue 12 - December 2009

Global change issues increasingly require ecological assessments and predictions to be made at large spatial scales, even though it often is not feasible to investigate all ecosystems of interest in such large regions. In this Special Issue, an international team of 49 scientists describes the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of ca. 350 remote high-mountain lakes from 12 different regions across Europe. The aim of this broad-scale survey was to evaluate the true range of diversity and environmental variability that exists in these sensitive ecosystems. The papers in this Special Issue investigate climate, nutrient and major ion chemistry, organic pollutants, trace metals and the contemporary and subfossil biota of the lakes and their catchments. The studies in this Special Issue show that there is a strong regional element to patterns of
co-variation in environmental factors, including climate and pollution, and to the biological responses to this environmental variation. From a management perspective, it is clear that lake classification, the development of useful typologies and assessments of reference conditions should be undertaken at regional rather than pan-European scales. Climate warming already affects most of the lake districts and there are considerable uncertainties as to how this will modify conditions in remote European mountain systems. The papers in this Special Issue indicate that the lake district concept is more than a mere geographical construct and merits further theoretical and experimental development as an ecological concept. This Special Issue will interest limnologists, lake managers, biogeographers and paleoecologists.

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  Special Issues Section: Structure-Function Relationships in Running Waters: From Theory to Application
Structure-Function Relationships in Running Waters: From Theory to ApplicationVolume 54 Issue 10 - October 2009
Guest Editors: Leonard Sandin and Angelo G. Solimini

In this issue we aimed to answer the questions: (i) under what circumstances are functional variables better than structural ones for assessing ecosystem health? and (ii) are there good indicators of change in ecological functioning along perturbation gradients?

Of the numerous functional indicators tested in this issue, several show a response to anthropogenic stress and could be included in assessments of ecosystem health and integrity in running waters.

In three of eight studies, function showed a stronger response to anthropogenic stress than structure, whereas one study showed a response in structure and not function, and four studies showed responses in both structure and function. Thus structure alone could not detect all types of impairment and functional aspects should also be included and further developed for assessing running-water ecosystem health and integrity. Functional variables may be especially useful in situations where there is a stronger response among organisms not usually included in stream assessment (e.g. fungi and bacteria) than the commonly used invertebrate, macrophytes and fish indicators.

Leading research questions related to the use of functional indicators in running waters include: (i) how large is natural and operator-induced variation for functional indicators? (ii) how small of an effect size (delta) can be detected using structural versus functional indicators? and (iii) how do we efficiently improve theories as well as predictive ability for functional measures to assess the effects of anthropogenic stressors?

To advance the use of functional indicators in applied running-water studies, we need to supplement the approach of using large-scale datasets and correlation with ecosystem manipulations.

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  Special Issues Section: Assessing and Conserving Groundwater Biodiversity
Assessing and Conserving Groundwater BiodiversityVolume 54 Issue 4 - April 2009
Guest Editors: Janine Gibert and David C.Culver

Groundwater biodiversity is vastly underestimated and underappreciated. Clearly, however, aquatic subterranean habitats are varied and harbour unique biological communities of remarkable diversity, with organisms ranging widely in taxonomic affiliation and body size, from less than 1 μm in groundwater microbes to vertebrates that reach more than 10 cm. Freshwater Biology have recently published a special issue which synthesises information on the first comprehensive, broad-scale examination of aquatic subterranean diversity in both karstic and non-karstic aquifers. Data are mainly derived from a survey carried out across multiple regions in Europe and a data base elaborated within the European PASCALIS project (Protocol for the ASsessment and Conservation of Aquatic Life In the Subsurface), but information from studies elsewhere in Europe, North America and Australia is also included.

Three reviews are devoted to the biology and ecology of groundwater bacteria and archaea, oligochaetes, and copepods - all poorly investigated but important subterranean taxa. Five papers address broad-scale diversity patterns across European regions, spatial partitioning of species richness, cryptic diversity, sampling methodology, and the use of surrogate taxonomic groups for assessing total species richness of groundwater communities. These analyses are complemented by four papers exploring biodiversity patterns in selected regions and by two papers addressing conservation issues. Three additional papers expand on the central themes of adequate sampling and dispersal, and a final synthesis summarizes the advances made in elucidating groundwater biodiversity patterns and points to important challenges that lie ahead. Collectively, the papers in this special issue should provide a solid foundation on which to build future investigations and effective strategies for protecting the astonishing diversity hidden in subterranean environments.

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  Special Issues Section: Viruses in Freshwater Ecosystems
Viruses in Freshwater EcosystemsVolume 53 Issue 6 - June 2008
Guest Editors: Mathias Middelboe, Stéphan Jacquet and Markus Weinbauer

Viruses have become widely recognized as the most abundant biological entities and important players in aquatic environments, and this realization has profoundly changed our conceptual understanding of the functioning and regulation of aquatic ecosystems in the last two decades. However, most of this research has focussed on marine viruses, especially in pelagic environments.

Here we introduce a special issue of Freshwater Biology dealing with viruses in freshwater ecosystems. It represents the first attempt to summarize progress in freshwater viral ecology made by diverse research groups and to direct attention of viral ecologists towards fresh waters.

Six review-type articles and ten original research papers cover a wide range of aspects of freshwater viral ecology. This includes reports on the distribution of freshwater viral communities in contrasting habitats (e.g. sediments, wetlands, littoral zone, open waters), on different roles of viruses in freshwater ecosystems (e.g. mortality rates of bacteria and phytoplankton, transduction, influence on bacterial diversity and organic matter), and on different types of viruses (bacteriophages, cyanophages, algal viruses, and a fish-pathogenic virus).

Collectively the series of papers presented in this special issue indicates that freshwater environments cover great habitat diversity and that the significance of some of the mechanisms controlling viral dynamics and impacts may differ between freshwater and marine habitats.

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