Blinded by the light? Nearshore energy pathway coupling and relative predator biomass increase with reduced water transparency across lakes.

Habitat coupling is a concept that refers to consumer integration of resources derived from different habitats. This coupling unites fundamental food web pathways (e.g., cross-habitat trophic linkages) that mediate key ecological processes such as biomass flows, nutrient cycling, and stability. We consider the influence of water transparency, an important environmental driver in aquatic ecosystems, on habitat coupling by a light-sensitive predator, walleye (Sander vitreus), and its prey in 33 Canadian lakes. Our large-scale, across-lake study shows that the contribution of nearshore carbon (δ13C) relative to offshore carbon (δ13C) to walleye is higher in less transparent lakes. To a lesser degree, the contribution of nearshore carbon increased with a greater proportion of prey in nearshore compared to offshore habitats. Interestingly, water transparency and habitat coupling predict among-lake variation in walleye relative biomass. These findings support the idea that predator responses to changing conditions (e.g., water transparency) can fundamentally alter carbon pathways, and predator biomass, in aquatic ecosystems. Identifying environmental factors that influence habitat coupling is an important step toward understanding spatial food web structure in a changing world.

Stressor-response functions as a generalizable model for context dependence.

Defining the context dependence of ecological states or processes is a fundamental goal of ecology. Stressor-response functions are the quantitative representation of context dependence, where the context (environmental contingency) is defined by location on the stressor (x) axis, and represents a unifying concept in biological science.

Undergraduate nursing students' experiences and attitudes towards working with patients with opioid use disorder in the clinical setting: A qualitative content analysis.

BACKGROUND: With the US facing an opioid epidemic, undergraduate nursing students are increasingly encountering patients with opioid use disorder in the clinical setting. Yet, nursing curriculums have not adapted to meet this need. Previous research indicates students are exposed to negative messages that might influence their views about patients with opioid use disorder. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to examine nursing students' experiences encountering patients with opioid use disorder in the clinical setting, their attitudes about their encounters, and their perceptions of their educational preparedness to care for this population. METHOD: Purposive sampling was used to identify participants. Semi-structured interviews were conducted until saturation. Krippendorff's method for qualitative content analysis was used to cluster units within the data to identify emergent themes. PARTICIPANTS: Eleven senior nursing students from a public university in New England participated. RESULTS: Analysis revealed six themes, including: navigating ethical dilemmas, gaining comfort with time and experience, avoiding the "elephant in the room," learning from real-world scenarios, witnessing discriminatory care, and recognizing bias and stigma. CONCLUSIONS: Students were most likely to experience bias and internal conflict in maternity clinical rotations. Education should include practical communication strategies to reduce avoidance behaviors among nursing students as well as techniques to manage difficult situations and reduce moral distress. Nurses must be mindful of their power to influence students and should model non-judgmental language and behavior. Students ultimately expressed a desire to provide informed and empathetic care.

Early warning signals detect critical impacts of experimental warming.

Earth's surface temperatures are projected to increase by ~1-4°C over the next century, threatening the future of global biodiversity and ecosystem stability. While this has fueled major progress in the field of physiological trait responses to warming, it is currently unclear whether routine population monitoring data can be used to predict temperature-induced population collapse. Here, we integrate trait performance theory with that of critical tipping points to test whether early warning signals can be reliably used to anticipate thermally induced extinction events. We find that a model parameterized by experimental growth rates exhibits critical slowing down in the vicinity of an experimentally tested critical threshold, suggesting that dynamical early warning signals may be useful in detecting the potentially precipitous onset of population collapse due to global climate change.