Filetype
While many bumblebee species decline due to climate and land-use changes, others cope well with contemporary conditions. One example is Bombus terrestris, which is common in intensively managed agricultural landscapes. During the 20th century its subgenus, which includes the B. lucorum complex (B. lucorum, B. cryptarum and B. magnus) came to dominate Scandinavian bumblebee communities, but the spe
The loss of long-tongued pollinator species and dominance of a few short-tongued generalist species, related to agricultural intensification in recent decades, may have consequences for the quality, quantity, and stability of yields in insect-pollinated crops. Interestingly, the changes in pollinator community coincide with an increase in poor and variable seed yield in red clover, an important cr
The collective impacts of farmers' land management decisions on above ground ecosystem services (ES) and their implications for agriculture are poorly understood. Managing habitat to provide ES is costly but at the same time it can support higher yields through, e.g., pollination or natural pest control. Due to the mobility of ES-providers (bees, natural enemies) farmers providing habitat might al
Are there indications for the neoliberal hegemony in economy and society to come to an end? Are people already imagining a future within environmental limits and beyond the growth imperative? Theoretically, building upon Marx and Bourdieu, we reconstruct the ideological impact that capitalism, in general, and neoliberalism, in particular, has on the ways we think, feel and make sense of our enviro
Dig a teaspoon into your nearest clump of soil, and what you’ll emerge with will contain more microorganisms than there are people on Earth. We know this from lab studies that analyse samples of earth scooped from the microbial wild to determine which forms of microscopic life exist in the world beneath our feet.
Soil organic matter (SOM) constitutes the largest terrestrial C pool. An emerging, untested, view is that oxidation and depolymerization of SOM by microorganisms promote the formation of SOM-mineral associations that is critical for SOM stabilization. To test this hypothesis, we performed laboratory-scale experiments involving one ectomycorrhizal and one saprotrophic fungus that represent the two
Boreal trees rely on their ectomycorrhizal fungal symbionts to acquire growth-limiting nutrients, such as nitrogen (N), which mainly occurs as proteins complexed in soil organic matter (SOM). The mechanisms for liberating this N are unclear as ectomycorrhizal fungi have lost many genes encoding lignocellulose-degrading enzymes present in their saprotrophic ancestors. We hypothesized that hydroxyl
Land-use changes, pollution and climate warming during the 20th century havecaused changes in biodiversity across the world. However, in many cases, the environmental drivers are poorly understood. To identify and rank the drivers currentlycausing broad-scale floristic changes in N Europe, we analysed data from two vascularplant surveys of 200 randomly selected 2.5 9 2.5 km grid-squares in Scania,
Based on the experience of the author and analyses of citation frequences of papers published in various biological journals, the use of citation counts and journal Impact Factors as a measure of scientific quality is discussed. It is concluded that citation frequency differ not only among biological sub-disciplines such as ecology and taxonomy, but also among taxonomic papers on highly similar toBased on my experience and analyses of citation frequencies of papers published in various biological journals, I discuss the use of citation counts and journal Impact Factors as measures of scientific quality. I conclude that citation frequency differs not only among biological sub-disciplines such as ecology and taxonomy, but also among taxonomic papers on highly similar topics, and that these l
Improving our understanding of the relationships between biodiversity and the delivery of ecosystem services is crucial for the development of sustainable agriculture. We introduce a novel framework that is based on the identification of indicator species for single or multiple ecosystem services across taxonomic groups based on indicator species analyses. We utilize multi-species community data (
The assessment of effects of anthropogenic disturbance on biodiversity (BD) and ecosystem services (ES) and their relationships are key priorities of the Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Agricultural landscapes and their associated BD provide multiple ES and it is crucial to understand how relationships between ES and BD components change along gradients of landscap
Reliable safe water supply is a pillar of society and a key to public health. The Nordic countries have an abundance of clean fresh water as a source for drinking water supplies. They have followed developments in safeguarding water, both the recommendations of the World Health Organization framework for safe drinking water and European legislation. Worldwide, including the Nordic countries, small
Bumble bees are important crop pollinators but are negatively impacted by agricultural intensification and concomitant loss of floral resources. Flower strips can increase the abundance and sometimes the diversity of bumble bees at local scales, but the importance of flower strips for bumble bee populations at larger scales remains poorly understood. We investigated the effect of flower strips on
From a theoretical point of view, result-based agri-environmental payments are clearly preferable to action-based payments. However, they suffer from two major practical disadvantages: costs of measuring the results and payment uncertainty for the participating farmers. In this paper, we propose an alternative design to overcome these two disadvantages by means of modelling (instead of measuring)
Anthropogenic nitrogen (N) enrichment in boreal forests has been shown to enhance aboveground net primary production and downregulate soil respiration, but it is not well understood if these effects are driven by reduced belowground C allocation or shifts between biomass production and respiration in fine-roots and ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF). We utilized an experiment in a Pinus sylvestris (L.) f
When you think of fungi, you’ll probably picture a huddle of chubby brown mushrooms, or the large, red-capped toadstools you stumble across in the woods. In doing so, you’re reducing fungi to their reproductive organs – tasty or striking as they may often be.
Air-starved combustion of biomass and fossil fuels releases aerosols, including airborne carbonaceous particles, causing negative climatic and health effects. Radiocarbon analysis of the elemental carbon (EC) fraction can help apportion sources of its emission, which is greatly constrained by the challenges in isolation of EC from organic compounds in atmospheric aerosols. The isolation of EC usin
The spatial extent of ecological processes has consequences for the generation of ecosystem services related to them. However, management often fails to consider issues of scale when targeting ecological processes underpinning ecosystem services generation. Here, we present a framework for conceptualizing how the amount and spatial scale (here discussed in terms of extent) of management interventi
