Biota

Two high performance flow atomic absorption (HPF-AAS) related techniques were chosen to assess their suitability for the determination of several trace elements in complex environmental and biological samples. The technique selected were the Hydraulic High Pressure Nebulization Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (HHPN-AAS), and the Hydraulic High Pressure Nebulization Flame Furnace Atomic Absorption Spectrometry (HHPN-FF-AAS), which were applied directly, or after using off line liquid-liquid separation-preconcentration-back extraction procedures. Analytical methodologies were developed for Be, Sr, Ba, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Mo, Cd, Ag, Al, Tl, Pb, and Bi, for a variety of samples such as river and seawater, river and marine sediments, soft tissue of mussels, tunicate siphons, aquatic plants, and human samples of clinical interest such as placentas, umbilical cords, and cardiovascular tissues from surgical procedures. The analytical efficiency of the techniques was also proved in a proposed trace metal fractionation approach for river and seawater samples. All samples collected in this work were obtained from the North of Chile, where the most important economic activity is the mining industry.

Organisms respond to changes in their environment by evolutionary adaptations in form and behaviour. At present, we face great survival challenges as both these factors have come under undue stress due to our unbridled demands of high national economic growth and expanding individual needs and desires.

Food availability is a primary driver of avian population regulation. However, few studies have considered the effects of what is essentially a massive supplementary feeding experiment: the practice of wild bird feeding. Bird feeding has been posited as an important factor influencing the structure of bird communities, especially in urban areas, although experimental evidence to support this is almost entirely lacking. We carried out an 18-mo experimental feeding study at 23 residential properties to investigate the effects of bird feeding on local urban avian assemblages. Our feeding regime was based on predominant urban feeding practices in our region. We used monthly bird surveys to compare avian community composition, species richness, and the densities of local species at feeding and nonfeeding properties. Avian community structure diverged at feeding properties and five of the commonest garden bird species were affected by the experimental feeding regime. Introduced birds part...

While the presence of steroid estrogens in the environment has become a major environmental and health concern, their occurrence in coastal sediments remains poorly characterized. In this study, we measured the levels of three natural (estrone, 17β-estradiol, estriol) and one synthetic (17α-ethinylestradiol) estrogens in 54 coastal sediment samples collected from nine locations off central-southern Chile. Steroid estrogens were found in every sample. Remarkably high levels of 17α-ethinylestradiol were detected, reaching up to 48.14 ng/g dry weight. As a result, the global estrogenic loads were estimated to be high at all sites. Interestingly, they were found to correlate with the size of human populations served by sewage plants. Our study indicates that 17α-ethinylestradiol may accumulate in coastal sediments. The possible impact of this highly potent synthetic estrogen on the biota of the marine ecosystem off central-south Chile and on human health remains an open question.

s Mangrove is kind of plant which has a living place near to the sea. Many spesies of mangroves are highly distributed around the coastal area of tropical zone, especially in Indonesia. Usually, mangrove are have a good adaptation in the high salinity condition. For many faunas, mangrove has been used in ecosystem as a house, it's because mangrove act as a spawning ground, nursery ground and feeding ground. This research is aimed to determine the value of diversity index by Shannon-Wienner, Evenness Index, Simpsons Dominance Index, Margalef Index, Density Index, and Morisita Index for mangrove association's biota in Pramuka Island, Kepulauan Seribu. Sample had been collected from mangrove ecosystem in Pramuka Island, Kepulauan Seribu. In each plot, we took the sample using quadran (1 x 1m). The result showed that the fourth plot has highest value of diversity, Margalef, and density index. On the other side, plot with the highest value of evenness was fifth, and second plot for the highest value for Dominance Index and Morisita index. Mangrove ecosystem in Pramuka Island is highly dominated by macrozoobenthos from gastropods class and cardinal fish group.

Current meta-omics developments provide a portal into the functional potential and activity of the intestinal microbiota. The comparative and functional meta-omics approaches have made it possible to get a molecular snap shot of microbial function at a certain time and place. To this end, metagenomics is a DNA-based approach, metatranscriptomics studies the total transcribed RNA, metaproteomics focuses on protein levels and metabolomics describes metabolic profiles. Notably, the metagenomic toolbox is rapidly expanding and has been instrumental in the generation of draft genome sequences of over 1000 human associated microorganisms as well as an astonishing 3.3 million unique microbial genes derived from the intestinal tract of over 100 European adults. Remarkably, it appeared that there are at least 3 clusters of co-occurring microbial species, termed enterotypes, that characterize the intestinal microbiota throughout various continents. The human intestinal microbial metagenome fu...

Organic matter in modern saline systems tends to accumulate in bottom sediments beneath a density-stratified mass of saline water where layered hydrologies are subject to oscillations in salinity and brine level. Organic matter is not produced at a constant rate in such systems; rather, it is generated in pulses by a halotolerant community in response to relatively short times of less stressful conditions (brackish to mesohaline) that occur in the upper part of the layered hydrology. Accumulations of organic matter can occur in any layered brine lake or epeiric seaway when an upper less-saline water mass forms on top of nutrient-rich brines, or in wet mudflats wherever waters freshen in and above the uppermost few millimetres of a microbial mat. A flourishing community of halotolerant algae, bacteria and archaeal photosynthesizers drives the resulting biomass bloom. Brine freshening is a time of “feast” characterized by very high levels of organic productivity. In a stratified brine column (oligotrophic and meromictic) the typical producers are planktonic algal or cyanobacterial communities inhabiting the upper mesohaline portion of the stratified water mass. In mesohaline holomictic waters, where light penetrates to the water bottom, the organic-producing layer is typically the upper algal and bacterial portion of a benthic laminated microbialite characterized by elevated numbers of cyanobacteria.
Short pulses of extremely high productivity in the upper freshened part of a stratified brine column create a high volume of organic detritus settling through the column and/or the enhanced construction of benthic microbial mats in regions where freshened waters reach the hypersaline base of the column. With the end of the freshening event, ongoing intensely arid conditions mean that salinity, temperature and osmotic stress increase rapidly in the previously freshened water mass. This leads to a time of mass die-off of the once flourishing mesohaline community (“famine”). First, these increasingly salty waters no longer support haloxene forms. Then, halotolerant life dies back, and finally by the halite precipitation stage, only a few halophilic archaea and bacteria remain in the brine column (typically acting as heterotrophs and fermenters). Repeated pulses of organic matter, created during a feasting event followed by a famine event, create laminated organic-enriched sediment on an anoxic bottom.
There are three, possibly four, major mesohaline density-stratified settings where organic-rich laminites (petroleum source rocks) accumulated in ancient “famine or feast” saline settings: (1) basin-centre lows in marine-fed evaporitic drawdown basins, associated with basinwide evaporites; (2) mesohaline intra-shelf lows on epeiric platforms, associated with platform evaporites; (3) saline-bottomed lows in under-filled perennial saline lacustrine basins; (4) closed seafloor depressions in halokinetic deep-water marine slope and rise terrains. An inherently restrictive hydrology means that the same mesohaline settings show a propensity to evolve into regions characterized by the accumulation of widespread evaporite salts. If this happens soon after deposition of a layer of organic-rich sediment there is an increased likelihood of evaporite plugging in the source-rock layer, this in-turn decreases expulsion efficiency and downgrades the laminite bed’s ability to act as a prolific source rock.

Christianti, Y.A., J.S. Datula’bi, M. Tandiongan, V.V. Makawaehe, M.M. Adrian, S.I. Hengkengbala, R.B.S. Roring, R.K. Mangaro, K.S. Hatumena dan F. Daud. 2019. TUGAS TOKSIKOLOGI LAUT Jenis Biota Laut Beracun. Program Studi Ilmu Kelautan. Universitas Sam Ratulangi. Manado. (Halaman 1-2)

Many black meristematic fungi persist on rock surfaces-hostile and exposed habitats where high doses of radiation and periods of desiccation alternate with rain and temperature extremes. To cope with these extremes, rock-inhabiting black fungi show phenotypic plasticity and produce melanin as cell wall pigments. The rather slow growth rate seems to be an additional prerequisite to oligotrophic conditions. At least some of these fungi can undergo facultative, lichen-like associations with photoautotrophs. Certain genera presenting different lifestyles are phylogenetic related among the superclass Dothideomyceta. In this paper, we focus on the genus Lichenothelia, which includes border-line lichens, that is, associations of melanised fungi with algae without forming proper lichen thalli. We provide a first phylogenetic hypothesis to show that Lichenothelia belongs to the superclass Dothideomyceta. Further, culture experiments revealed the presence of co-occurring fungi in Lichenotheli...

Produced water has been described as the largest volume waste stream in the exploration and production process of oil and gas. It is accompanied by discharges of naturally occurring radionuclides raising concerns over the potential radiological impacts of produced water on marine biota. In the Northern European marine environment, radioactivity in produced water has received substantial attention owing to the OSPAR Radioactive Substances Strategy which aims at achieving 'concentrations in the environment near background values for naturally occurring radioactive substances'. This review provides an overview of published research on the impacts to biota from naturally occurring radionuclides discharged in produced water by the offshore oil and gas industry. In addition to summarising studies and data that deal directly with the issue of dose and effect, the review also considers studies related to the impact of added chemicals on the fate of discharged radionuclides. The revi...

Prompted by the thesis that an organism’s umwelt possesses not just a descriptive dimension, but a normative one as well, some have sought to annex semiotics with ethics. Yet the pronouncements made in this vein have consisted mainly in rehearsing accepted moral intuitions, and have failed to concretely further our knowledge of why or how a creature comes to order objects in its environment in accordance with axiological charges of value or disvalue. For want of a more explicit account, theorists writing on the topic have relied almost exclusively on semiotic insights about perception originally designed as part of a sophisticated refutation of idealism. The end result, which has been a form of direct givenness, has thus been far from convincing. In an effort to bring substance to the right-headed suggestion that values are rooted in the biological and conform to species-specific requirements, we present a novel conception that strives to make explicit the elemental structure underlying umwelt normativity. Building and expanding on the seminal work of Ayn Rand in metaethics, we describe values as an intertwined lattice which takes a creature’s own embodied life as its ultimate standard; and endeavour to show how, from this, all subsequent valuations can in principle be determined.

Limbah tahu yang dibuang kelingkungan tanpa ada proses pengolahan terlebih dahulu berbahaya bagi kondisi lingkungan perairan dan dapat menyebabkan perubahan lingkungan, terutama bagi ekosistem perairan termasuk juga biota air di dalamnya. Limbah cair industri tahu mengandung zat-zat organik yaitu protein 40% - 60 %, karbohidrat 25%–50%, lemak 10% dan padatan tersuspensi lainnya yang di alam dapat mengalami perubahan fisika, kimia dan hayati yang akan menghasilkan zat toksik atau menciptakan media tumbuh bagi mikroorganisme patogen. Untuk mengukur limbah tah di perairan digunakan uji toksisitas akut. Uji Toksisitas akut adalah uji yang dilakukan untuk mengevaluasi konsentrasi bahan kimia atau durasi pemaparan (Limbah Tahu) yang dibutuhkan terhadap satu sampel uji (Ikan Nila) yang diamati dalam kurun waktu 24 jam dengan kondisi yang disesuaikan.