Global forest loss and fragmentation have strongly increased the frequency of forest patches smaller than a few hectares. Little is known about the biodiversity and ecosystem service supply potential of such small woodlands in comparison to larger forests. As it is widely recognized that high biodiversity levels increase ecosystem functionality and the delivery of multiple ecosystem services, small, isolated woodlands are expected to have a lower potential for ecosystem service delivery than large forests hosting...

Aquatic chemical ecology is an important and growing field of research that involves understanding how organisms perceive and respond to chemical cues in their environment. Research assessing the preference or avoidance of a water source containing specific chemical cues has increased in popularity in recent years, and a variety of methods have been described in the scientific literature. Two-current choice flumes have seen the greatest increase in popularity, perhaps because of their potential to address...

Introduction: Nitrogen (N) gradient studies in some cases use N deposition in throughfall as measure of N deposition to forests. For evaluating critical loads of N, however, information on total N deposition is required, i.e., the sum of estimates of dry, wet and occult deposition. Methods: The present paper collects a number of studies in Europe where throughfall and total N deposition were compared in different forest types. From this dataset a function was derived...

Context. Plant populations in agricultural landscapes are mostly fragmented and their functional connectivity often depends on seed and pollen dispersal by animals. However, little is known about how the interactions of seed and pollen dispersers with the agricultural matrix translate into gene flow among plant populations. Objectives. We aimed to identify effects of the landscape structure on the genetic diversity within, and the genetic differentiation among, spatially isolated populations of three temperate forest herbs. We...

Mercury, Hg, is one of the most problematic metals from an environmental perspective. To assess the problems caused by Hg in the environment it is crucial to understand the processes of Hg biogeochemistry, but the exchange of Hg between the atmosphere and vegetation is not sufficiently well characterised. We explored the mercury concentration, [Hg], in foliage from a diverse set of plant types, locations and sampling periods to study whether there is a continuous accumulation...