Particle backtracking improves breeding subpopulation discrimination and natal-source identification in mixed populations.

We provide a novel method to improve the use of natural tagging approaches for subpopulation discrimination and source-origin identification in aquatic and terrestrial animals with a passive dispersive phase. Our method integrates observed site-referenced biological information on individuals in mixed populations with a particle-tracking model to retrace likely dispersal histories prior to capture (i.e., particle backtracking). To illustrate and test our approach, we focus on western Lake Erie's yellow perch (Perca flavescens) population during 2006-2007, using microsatellite DNA and otolith microchemistry from larvae and juveniles as natural tags. Particle backtracking showed that not all larvae collected near a presumed hatching location may have originated there, owing to passive drift during the larval stage that was influenced by strong river- and wind-driven water circulation. Re-assigning larvae to their most probable hatching site (based on probabilistic dispersal trajectories from the particle backtracking model) improved the use of genetics and otolith microchemistry to discriminate among local breeding subpopulations. This enhancement, in turn, altered (and likely improved) the estimated contributions of each breeding subpopulation to the mixed population of juvenile recruits. Our findings indicate that particle backtracking can complement existing tools used to identify the origin of individuals in mixed populations, especially in flow-dominated systems.

Community and ecosystem responses to a pulsed pesticide disturbance in freshwater ecosystems.

Pesticides have been shown to be detrimental to key groups of freshwater organisms including cladocerans, odonates, and amphibians. However, less is known about the response of freshwater communities and ecosystems to pesticide disturbances as they occur in nature. Using outdoor aquatic mesocosms, we assembled identical and diverse replicate freshwater plankton food webs obtained from an adjacent pond. We established three pesticide treatments consisting of pulses of a common pesticide Sevin with the active ingredient carbaryl, at concentrations of 0.1, 1 and 20 microg carbaryl/ml, and a pesticide-free control treatment. We monitored the response of microbial, phytoplankton, and zooplankton communities in addition to oxygen concentrations. Carbaryl concentrations peaked shortly after Sevin application and degraded quickly and treatment differences were undetectable after 30 days. Zooplankton richness, diversity, abundance, and oxygen concentrations all decreased in pulsed treatments, while phytoplankton and microbial abundance increased. Zooplankton composition in the high pesticide treatment consisted primarily of rotifers as compared to dominance by copepods in the other three treatments. While many of the community and ecosystem properties showed signs of recovery within 40 days after the pulsed pesticide disturbance, important and significant differences remained in the microbial, phytoplankton and zooplankton communities after the pesticide degraded.