Raviv Gal, PhD student at NRRV, will give a seminar about freshwater mussels as ecosystem engineers. Freshwater mussels are a highly endangered group with a fascinating life history and an important role in the ecosystem. Raviv will tell us about what we know about the role of mussels in freshwaters, with a focus on his own research into their interactions with the rest of the benthic macroinvertebrate community and decomposition processes. Date and Time: Tuesday 19 September 2023 at 13:15 CET. You can join this seminar live on Zoom (https://kau-se.zoom.us/j/63110430909) or in Room 5D306 at Karlstad University campus. You are all invited.
Sebastian Rock (Ph.D. Student) at Karlstad University and others from the Department oF Environmental and Life Sciences and Lund University, Department of Biology – Aquatic Ecology have recently published a review article entitled “Effects of parasitic freshwater mussels on their host fishes: a review”.
The findings are heavily biased towards Margaritifera margaritifera, a unique mussel not well suited for cross-species generalizations.
The Scanian river Vramsån (Fig 1) has been a stage for RivEM research before, but not with the wide range of methods that Ph.D. candidate Sebastian, visiting intern Hanna Paikert and Ph.D. candidate Jacqueline tried out in May this year!
Fig. 1 View on river Vramsån, Scania, Sweden
Vramsån has long been used for hydropower purposes but is now in the process of being restored to a more natural flow regime. It is one of seven rivers of interest to the LIFE Connects conservation project, which aims to improve their ecosystem functions and ecosystem services. Under six years the project will work with removal of hydropower plants and dams, create fauna passages and improve migration paths at barriers. The project also works on innovative passage solutions that enables both hydropower production and fish migration as well as riverbed restorations to gain more natural habitats and improved water quality. The goal is to improve survival and production of threatened fish species such as Atlantic salmon and European eel as well as the endangered mussel species Freshwater pearl mussel and Thick-shelled river mussel. Research and information efforts linked to river restorations within the project will constitute an important part of the project, that you can read more about on https://lifeconnects.se/!
With that in mind, the first goal of this research adventure was to collect fish and mussel specimens for a study on the impact of light pollution on the host-parasite relationship of the endangered Thick-shelled river mussel (Unio crassus) and its host the common Eurasian minnow (Phoxinus phoxinus).
This incredibly endangered, and ecologically significant mussel has rapidly diminishing populations, something that LIFE Connects is trying to change. While many people don’t think much of these simple bivalves they play a key role in keeping environmental conditions stable. By filtering suspended particulates from the water column large populations of mussels can keep water cleaner, a benefit to both fish and humans. When they need to poop, the majority goes into the surrounding sediment, fertilizing it and improving both benthic fauna communities and plant growth. Together, these help fortify fish and bird populations. Not only does the increased plant growth provide habitat but the increase in benthic fauna provides more food sources as a large part of benthic fauna communities are comprised of the larval forms of terrestrial insects.
One of the main ways we try to prevent the Thick-shelled river mussel from going extinct is to increase the chances of their reproductive success, a complex cycle and significant factor in their population decline. These mussels are partial parasites on fish, with this extra step making their reproduction rate be quite a bit slower than other freshwater bivalves. We can help by forcefully infecting host fish with mussel larvae and keeping them safe for a large part of the reproductive cycle before releasing them back into the wild. As such the first part of this study was to go electrofishing for fish to use as hosts in for the mussels to be reintroduced, primarily minnows and trout. The trout got to stay in the river (Fig 2) while the minnows were destined to come back to KAU to be used in some experiments. More on that in another blog post
Fig. 2 Field assistant Anna Elmlund on her way to bring trout to their new place to stay
Re-naturalizing the flow regime of a river doesn’t just affect the fish and their ecological functions in it, but other processes as well. Dispersal is one of these processes, and is thought to be important for the composition of all plant communities, including those that we find in-water and in the riparian zone. There are many ways in which plants disperse (Fig 3), and a large part of Jacqueline’s Ph.D. project focuses on dispersal via water. Most of this dispersal is in the direction of the water flow, but many people overlook a tiny component: the animals in the water that swim in the opposite direction! These animals can carry seeds on their outsides or, via foraging, in their bodies. This relatively little-studied function called endozoochory builds on the thought that animals spread other species by eating them in one place and pooping them out elsewhere.
Fig. 3 Different modes of plant dispersal throughout an ecosystem. Derived from Haldre S Rogers, Noelle G Beckman, Florian Hartig, Jeremy S Johnson, Gesine Pufal, Katriona Shea, Damaris Zurell, James M Bullock, Robert Stephen Cantrell, Bette Loiselle, Liba Pejchar, Onja H Razafindratsima, Manette E Sandor, Eugene W Schupp, W Christopher Strickland, Jenny Zambrano, The total dispersal kernel: a review and future directions, AoB PLANTS, Volume 11, Issue 5, October 2019, plz042, https://doi.org/10.1093/aobpla/plz042
A second goal of this week was finding out whether this pathway is an important route for riparian vegetation in Vramsån. The fish that we were catching thus had a double function: not only will they be used for mussel larva infestation, but we collected their poop to compare the seeds therein with seeds and vegetation in other parts of the ecosystem (Fig 4).
Fig. 4 Hanna and Jacqueline surrounded by tanks with pooping trout and minnows
Which other parts, you ask? Well, of course, fish stomachs are not the only place where you find seeds – far from that! Given that there are so many ways in which plants disperse, we planned a comparison of the seed composition in different parts of the ecosystem. So, equipped with self-built traps to filter seeds from the water (Fig. a), to catch seeds from the air (Fig. b) and loads of boxes to sample riparian litter, riparian soil and aquatic soil, we went to work!
a
b
(Fig. a) shows the wind traps in place for 40 hours of seed catching while (Fig. b) shows one of the water traps, just taken out of the water
It took some hours to get everything in place, but while Seb will spend his spring infesting his fish in Karlstad University’s (KAUs) aquarium facility, Hanna and Jacqueline are running a germination study to see which species pop up in the samples of the different ecosystem parts. After two weeks in KAUs plant growing room, over 200 seeds of at least 10 different species have germinated across the different sample types. We are giving the samples a few more weeks to see what else poops up before we’re going to try and sniff out if there’s anything interesting in there!
Sebastian Rock, a LIFEConnects funded Ph.D. candidate at RivEM, will be giving a seminar on the impacts of parasitic Unionid mussels on their host fishes! These incredibly endangered freshwater bivalves are considered keystone species in their native ecosystems and are heavily protected, but will the returning salmon be able to survive in an ecosystem full of parasites? Will local anglers be upset with the habitat restoration efforts because their favorite fish are now less healthy than they were before? To find out the answers to all these questions and more! Join the seminar live on zoom https://kau-se.zoom.us/my/kaubiology at 1315 CET on 22nd February 2022.
On 15-6-2021 Sebastian Rock will be giving a talk introducing his work on the host-parasite interactions of unionid mussels. Within the broader LifeConnects projects, this work will improve mussel conservation and reintroduction efforts of this little studied order of bivalves in Sweden and around the world.
River Vramsån, a spot for future mussel reintroduction (photo by Sebastian Rock).
The seminar starts at 13.15 and will be streamed live over Zoom. Contact Olle Calles (olle.calles@kau.se) to receive the zoom link to this seminar.
A group of international researchers, among which Martin Österling, have a new paper out! The authors, led by Ronaldo Sousa from the University of Minho in Portugal, investigated the role of anthropogenic habitats as refuges for freshwater mussels. The dataset of 709 sites comprised 228 mussel species, of which 34 are threatened, in a broad variety of anthropogenic habitat types. The authors assessed the conservation importance of these anthropogenic habitats, which included both refuges and ecological traps, and provide guidance for the conservation of freshwater mussels. Read the full paper here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.15549
Irrigation canal in Morocco (river Bouhlou) colonized by Margaritifera marocana, one of the rarest species on the planet. Photo by Ronaldo Sousa.
Today (Tuesday 7 April) Raviv Gal, NRRV PhD-student, will give a seminar entitled Mussels and ecosystem functioning in streams. The Seminar is held online via the video conference system zoom.
Karlstad University invites applications for three full-time PhD positions in ecology!
Two of the positions focus on applied aquatic conservation biology and aim to examine:
Position 1) Ecological effects of remedial measures in regulated rivers, e.g. implementation of fish passage solutions and dam removal, on diadromous fish species in southern Sweden.
Position 2) Reintroduction ecology of the freshwater pearl mussel and the thick-shelled river mussel and their host fishes in southern Sweden.
The third position is on ecological and individual-based modelling and aims to:
i) Develop high-resolution spatially explicit maps of physical habitats in rivers, (ii) assess river hydraulic conditions using 2- or 3-D hydraulic models, (iii) develop and apply individual based models of fish population in rivers to assess the effects of river regulation.
The doctoral program consists of 240 higher education credits (4 years), including the doctoral thesis. Doctoral students may also be assigned department duties (up to 20 % of full time), such as teaching, which will extend the PhD position accordingly.
Two PhD positions (1: vegetation ecology, 2: ecosystem function/host-parasite interactions) are now open for applicants at Karlstad University. Both positions are full time for five years within the River Ecology and Management (NRRV) research group and include 80 % research and 20 % department duties (mainly teaching).
The applications for both positions close on 31 January 2019.
PhD position in vegetation ecology
River Klarälven, Värmland
The project will study which factors control diaspore dispersal and plant community composition along boreal streams, which in turn may have cascading effects on functional plant diversity and ecosystem functioning. The specific research questions to be addressed will be decided in consultation with the candidate. Areas of particular interest are (1) the effects of local and landscape-scale factors for plant species composition and diversity and cascading effects on ecosystem functioning and (2) studies of factors promoting or constraining plant dispersal along streams.
The position will focus on either the role of mussels for ecosystem function or host-parasite interactions. Areas of interest are (1) the role of mussels for stream ecosystem function and (2) host-parasite interactions between mussels and their host fish. The specific research questions to be addressed will be decided in consultation with the candidate.
On 28 May (tomorrow), 