Soil is a limited resource often contaminated with heavy metals. Recently, several soil remediation processes have been developed, including an EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) chelating agent extraction that results in high removal efficiency of the contaminants. There is a limited knowledge on how this procedure affects soil microorganisms, including plant root endosymbiotic arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi. In this paper we present data on the mycorrhizal potential of soil after the remediation procedure, as well with the molecular characterization of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal diversity before and after soil remediation, and before and after soil inoculation with commercial and indigenous (local) fungal inocula using an examination of 18S rRNA clone libraries. After the remediation treatment soils had very low mycorrhizal potential. Functional mycorrhizal symbiosis with plants was established either by commercial or local (grassland roots and rhizosphere soil) inoculum addition to the soil and remediated soil was successfully revitalized after the treatment. The use of the local inoculum resulted in a higher arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal diversity in the roots of plants growing in the remediated soil compared to the ones revitalized with the commercial inoculum.
COBISS.SI-ID: 8445305
Locally extreme environments are a powerful tool for the study of slow ecological and evolutionary processes, largely because they enable longterm insight into adaptation of the natural communities and their ecological networks. These systems allow the conceptual compression of both time and space, allowing the investigation of important questions at manageable spatio-temporal scales. Here a case study of mofettes as natural sites with constant geogenic CO2 exhalations and soil hypoxia acting on the biological communities is presented, with a review of a wide range of studies from potential analogues for climate change, model ecosystems for environmental impact assessments for carbon capture and storage (CCS), to plant ecophysiological, and ecological studies of distinct groups of organisms from micro to macro scale. The paper also shows where the greatest advances in using discrete extreme environments with long-term and constant selective pressures in the context of global change ecology is likely to appear in the future.
COBISS.SI-ID: 8491129
The protection, preservation and restoration of aquatic ecosystems and their functions are of global importance. For European states it became legally binding mainly through the EUWater Framework Directive (WFD). In order to assess the ecological status of a given water body, aquatic biodiversity data are obtained and compared to a reference water body. The quantified mismatch obtained determines the extent of potential management actions. Novel genomic tools can overcome many of the problems and could complement or even replace traditional bioassessment. The goal of this COST Action is to nucleate a group of researchers across disciplines with the task to identify gold-standard genomic tools and novel ecogenomic indices for routine application in biodiversity assessments of European fresh- and marine water bodies. Furthermore, DNAqua-Net will provide a platform for training of the next generation of European researchers preparing them for the new technologies.
COBISS.SI-ID: 4141135