Providing generic and cost effective modelling approaches to reconstruct and forecast freshwater temperature using predictors as air temperature and water discharge is a prerequisite to understanding ecological processes underlying the impact of water temperature and of global warming on continental aquatic ecosystems. Using air temperature as a simple linear predictor of water temperature can ...

Ecological indicators are useful tools to analyse and communicate historical changes in ecosystems and plausible future scenarios while evaluating environmental status. Here we introduce a new plug-in to the Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) food web modelling approach, which is widely used to quantitatively describe aquatic ecosystems. The plug-in (ECOIND) calculates standardized ecological indicators...

BACKGROUND DNA sequencing techniques used to estimate biodiversity, such as DNA barcoding, may reveal cryptic species. However, disagreements between barcoding and morphological data have already led to controversy. Species delimitation should therefore not be based on mtDNA alone. Here, we explore the use of nDNA and bioclimatic modelling in a new species of aquatic beetle revealed by mtDNA se...

Modelling the spatial distributions of human parasite species is crucial to understanding the environmental determinants of infection as well as for guiding the planning of control programmes. Here, we use ecological niche modelling to map the current potential distribution of the macroparasitic disease, lymphatic filariasis (LF), in Africa, and to estimate how future changes in climate and pop...

A key challenge in ecological research is to integrate data from different scales to evaluate the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms that influence current patterns of biological diversity. We build on recent attempts to incorporate phylogenetic information into traditional diversity analyses and on existing research on beta diversity and phylogenetic community ecology. Phylogenetic beta di...

Fifteen years after the term ‘ecohydrology’ came into use to describe integrative research spanning the two parent disciplines, we discuss methodological traditions of the parent disciplines and assess trends in the methodologies utilized in the young hybrid field of ecohydrology. In particular, we explore whether the marriage between the disciplines is built on a marriage of methodological str...

The combination of GIS with fuzzy set theory and deterministic models is known as GIS Fuzzy Modelling (GISFM). GISFM was adopted for support sustainable land use planning. In particular GISFM is applied for solution of the problem of investment allocation into worse part of the land drainage systems located in the Saint-Petersburg suburbs. The missing data about loads on water bodies by agricul...

Population cycling is a widespread phenomenon, observed across a multitude of taxa in both laboratory and natural conditions. Historically, the theory associated with population cycles was tightly linked to pairwise consumer-resource interactions and studied via deterministic models, but current empirical and theoretical research reveals a much richer basis for ecological cycles. Stochasticity ...

Most studies that forecast the ecological consequences of climate change target a single species and a single life stage. Depending on climatic impacts on other life stages and on interacting species, however, the results from simple experiments may not translate into accurate predictions of future ecological change. Research needs to move beyond simple experimental studies and environmental en...