Detection of faecal bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes in biofilms attached to plastics from human-impacted coastal areas.

Plastics have been proposed as vectors of bacteria as they act as a substrate for biofilms. In this study, we evaluated the abundance of faecal and marine bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) from biofilms adhered to marine plastics. Floating plastics and plastics from sediments were collected in coastal areas impacted by human faecal pollution in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea. Culture and/or molecular methods were used to quantify faecal indicators (E. coli, Enterococci and crAssphage), and the ARGs sulI, tetW and blaTEM and the 16S rRNA were detected by qPCR assays. Pseudomonas and Vibrio species and heterotrophic marine bacteria were also analysed via culture-based methods. Results showed that, plastic particles covered by bacterial biofilms, primarily consisted of marine bacteria including Vibrio spp. Some floating plastics had a low concentration of viable E. coli and Enterococci (42% and 67% of the plastics respectively). Considering the median area of the plastics, we detected an average of 68 cfu E. coli per item, while a higher concentration of E. coli was detected on individual plastic items, when compared with 100 ml of the surrounding water. Using qPCR, we quantified higher values of faecal indicators which included inactive and dead microorganisms, detecting up to 2.6 × 102 gc mm-2. The ARGs were detected in 67-88% of the floating plastics and in 29-57% of the sediment plastics with a concentration of up to 6.7 × 102 gc mm-2. Furthermore, enrichment of these genes was observed in biofilms compared with the surrounding water. These results show that floating plastics act as a conduit for both the attachment and transport of faecal microorganisms. In contrast, low presence of faecal indicators was detected in plastic from seafloor sediments. Therefore, although in low concentrations, faecal bacteria, and potential pathogens, were identified in marine plastics, further suggesting plastics act as a reservoir of pathogens and ARGs.

Bringing rehabilitation home with an e-health platform to treat stroke patients: study protocol of a randomized clinical trial (RGS@home).

BACKGROUND: There is a pressing need for scalable healthcare solutions and a shift in the rehabilitation paradigm from hospitals to homes to tackle the increase in stroke incidence while reducing the practical and economic burden for patients, hospitals, and society. Digital health technologies can contribute to addressing this challenge; however, little is known about their effectiveness in at-home settings. In response, we have designed the RGS@home study to investigate the effectiveness, acceptance, and cost of a deep tech solution called the Rehabilitation Gaming System (RGS). RGS is a cloud-based system for delivering AI-enhanced rehabilitation using virtual reality, motion capture, and wearables that can be used in the hospital and at home. The core principles of the brain theory-based RGS intervention are to deliver rehabilitation exercises in the form of embodied, goal-oriented, and task-specific action. METHODS: The RGS@home study is a randomized longitudinal clinical trial designed to assess whether the combination of the RGS intervention with standard care is superior to standard care alone for the functional recovery of stroke patients at the hospital and at home. The study is conducted in collaboration with hospitals in Spain, Sweden, and France and includes inpatients and outpatients at subacute and chronic stages post-stroke. The intervention duration is 3 months with assessment at baseline and after 3, 6, and 12 months. The impact of RGS is evaluated in terms of quality of life measurements, usability, and acceptance using standardized clinical scales, together with health economic analysis. So far, one-third of the patients expected to participate in the study have been recruited (N = 90, mean age 60, days after stroke ≥ 30 days). The trial will end in July 2023. DISCUSSION: We predict an improvement in the patients' recovery, high acceptance, and reduced costs due to a soft landing from the clinic to home rehabilitation. In addition, the data provided will allow us to assess whether the prescription of therapy at home can counteract deterioration and improve quality of life while also identifying new standards for online and remote assessment, diagnostics, and intervention across European hospitals. TRIAL REGISTRATION: C linicalTrials.gov NCT04620707. Registered on November 3, 2020.

For all audiences: Incorporating immature stages into standardised spider inventories has a major impact on the assessment of biodiversity patterns.

Although arthropods are the largest component of animal diversity, they are traditionally underrepresented in biological inventories and monitoring programmes. However, no biodiversity assessment can be considered informative without including them. Arthropod immature stages are often discarded during sorting, despite frequently representing more than half of the collected individuals. To date, little effort has been devoted to characterising the impact of discarding nonadult specimens on our diversity estimates. Here, we used a metabarcoding approach to analyse spiders from oak forests in the Iberian Peninsula, to assess (1) the contribution of juvenile stages to local diversity estimates, and (2) their effect on the diversity patterns (compositional differences) across assemblages. We further investigated the ability of metabarcoding to inform on abundance. We obtained 363 and 331 species as adults and juveniles, respectively. Including the species represented only by juveniles increased the species richness of the whole sampling in 35% with respect to those identified from adults. Differences in composition between assemblages were greatly reduced when immature stages were considered, especially across latitudes, possibly due to phenological differences. Moreover, our results revealed that metabarcoding data are to a certain extent quantitative, but some sort of taxonomic conversion factor may be necessary to provide accurate informative estimates. Although our findings do not question the relevance of the information provided by adult-based inventories, they also reveal that juveniles provide a novel and relevant layer of knowledge that, especially in areas with marked seasonality, may influence our interpretations, providing more accurate information from standardised biological inventories.

Multiproxy characterization of sedimentary facies in a submarine sulphide mine tailings dumping site and their environmental significance: The study case of Portmán Bay (SE Spain).

Mining activities are essential to our society, but ore extraction and treatment produce waste that must be stored in safe places without harm to the environment. For a long time, seafloor disposal has been viewed as a cheap option with barely visible impacts. In Portmán Bay, SE of Spain, large amounts of tailings from open pit sulphide mining were discharged directly into the coastal sea over 33 years, thus forming a massive deposit that completely infilled the bay and expanded seawards over the inner continental shelf. Here we present the first multiproxy physicochemical characterization of the submarine tailings in Portmán Bay, mostly by using non-destructive techniques, also including pre-dumping and post-dumping sediments. Eight distinct sedimentary facies, grouped in four stratigraphic units, have been thus identified in a set of up to 4.3 m long gravity cores totalling more than 60 m. Geogenic and anthropogenic geochemical proxies consistently allow differentiating pre-dumping sediments from tailings. Potentially toxic metals if made bioavailable can reach high concentrations in units including or formed exclusively by tailings (i.e. up to 3455, 2755 and 1007 mg kg-1 for Pb, As, and Zn, respectively). Some physical properties, such as magnetic susceptibility, are particularly useful as the tailings are rich in Fe-bearing minerals (>30% Fe in some layers). Estimated sedimentation rates show a strong gradient from proximal to distal locations, with rates in excess of 50 cm yr-1 to less than 1 cm yr-1. We ultimately document the history of the transformation of Portmán Bay from an almost natural state to a new condition after a long period of massive dumping of mine tailings. Our study provides guidance to further assessments in a context where the diversity of marine environments impacted by the disposal of mine waste is expected to grow in the near future.

The World Spider Trait database: a centralized global open repository for curated data on spider traits.

Spiders are a highly diversified group of arthropods and play an important role in terrestrial ecosystems as ubiquitous predators, which makes them a suitable group to test a variety of eco-evolutionary hypotheses. For this purpose, knowledge of a diverse range of species traits is required. Until now, data on spider traits have been scattered across thousands of publications produced for over two centuries and written in diverse languages. To facilitate access to such data, we developed an online database for archiving and accessing spider traits at a global scale. The database has been designed to accommodate a great variety of traits (e.g. ecological, behavioural and morphological) measured at individual, species or higher taxonomic levels. Records are accompanied by extensive metadata (e.g. location and method). The database is curated by an expert team, regularly updated and open to any user. A future goal of the growing database is to include all published and unpublished data on spider traits provided by experts worldwide and to facilitate broad cross-taxon assays in functional ecology and comparative biology. Database URL:https://spidertraits.sci.muni.cz/.

Local and downstream cumulative effects of traditional meadow management on stream-water quality and multiple riparian taxa.

Water quality and riparian communities are among the most affected stream components by agriculture. However, little is known about the effects of riparian management for both aquatic and terrestrial taxa at different spatial scales. Here, we surveyed aquatic (diatoms) and terrestrial taxa (bryophytes, vascular plants, litter-dwelling snails, and ground and volant arthropods), to compare the abundance and richness of riparian taxa and chemical quality between reference and exposed sites in two stream reaches each of c. 3.5 km in northwestern Spain. Impacts in exposed sites were mainly due to traditional farming practices (TFPs), which included traditional meadow management, weirs built for now-unused water mills and sporadic timber harvesting. Therefore, we measured ten covariates and predictors related to the intensification of TFPs at local and within-stream scales and explored associations with riparian and water-quality measures to study the potential effects of TFPs in more detail. Reference and exposed sites did not differ significantly in water properties (diatom-biotic indices, conductivity, total organic carbon and nitrates), but exposed sites had less concentrations of soil metals Cd, Cu, Ni and Zn and less cover and richness of riparian trees, as inferred by the index QBR. Exposed sites had more volant insect decomposers and reference sites a greater abundance or richness of snails, ground predators and decomposers. Bryophyte richness was greater in reference sites. Our inferences may inform the joint cumulative downstream effects of weirs, meadow uses and riparian alterations but were generally consistent with most riparian taxa benefiting from having larger forested areas. Given the contrasting responses among taxa, we argue that land snails, terrestrial flies, and centipedes may be valuable additions to current riparian assessments mostly based on plants, beetles and spiders as indicator taxa. Our study also suggests caution when inferring farming impacts on streams from the surface area of pastoral land.

A database of functional traits for spiders from native forests of the Iberian Peninsula and Macaronesia.

BACKGROUND: There is an increasing demand for databases including species trait information for biodiversity and community ecology studies. The existence of trait databases is useful for comparative studies within taxa or geographical regions, but there is low availability of databases for certain organisms. Here we present an open access functional trait database for spiders from Macaronesia and the Iberian Peninsula, recording several morphological and ecological traits related to the species life histories, microhabitat and trophic preferences. NEW INFORMATION: We present a database that includes 12 biological traits for 506 spider species present in natural forests of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain) and three Macaronesian archipelagoes (Azores, Madeira and Canary Islands). The functional trait database consists of two sections:individual-level data for six morphological traits (total body size, prosoma length, prosoma width, prosoma height, tibia I length and fang length), based on direct measurements of 2844 specimens of all spider species; andspecies-level aggregate data for 12 traits (same 6 morphological traits as in the previous section plus dispersal ability, vertical stratification, circadian activity, foraging strategy, trophic specialization and colonization status), based on either the average of the direct measurements or bibliographic searches.This functional trait database will serve as a data standard for currently ongoing analyses that require trait and functional diversity statistics.

Remobilization of dissolved metals from a coastal mine tailing deposit driven by groundwater discharge and porewater exchange.

Mining impacts on coastal environments have been extensively studied around the world. However, the role of Submarine Groundwater Discharge (SGD) and Porewater Exchange (PEX) as pathways for pollutants from mining waste deposits into seawater has been largely overlooked. Portmán Bay is located in the Cartagena-La Unión Pb-Zn sulphur mining district in Murcia, SE of Spain. The disposal of about 60 million tons of metal-rich mine tailings from 1957 to 1990 led to the infill of most of the bay. Although the effects of metals on indicator organisms have been shown previously, there is a major lack of knowledge on the release of dissolved metals from the emerged tailing deposit into the sea, more than 25 years after the closure of the mining activities. Samples for Ra isotopes (223Ra, 224Ra, 226Ra and 228Ra) and dissolved metals (Ag, Cd, Co, Pb, Zn) were analyzed in porewaters and seawater in order to separately estimate SGD and PEX driven dissolved metal fluxes. Our results show a continuous release of dissolved metals into the sea driven by both PEX and SGD. Most of dissolved metals are remobilized and released into the water column by PEX, which is a ubiquitous mechanism acting along the shoreline. Although SGD only represents 13% of the water flow, it drives large fluxes of dissolved Fe into the sea, mainly restricted to the west side of the bay. Large inputs of dissolved Fe2+ from the anoxic tailings deposit trigger a massive precipitation of iron hydroxides that enables the removal of most dissolved metals from the water column. This study highlights the role of PEX and SGD as significant mechanisms for the land to ocean transfer of dissolved metals from coastal mine tailings deposits.

A DNA barcode-assisted annotated checklist of the spider (Arachnida, Araneae) communities associated to white oak woodlands in Spanish National Parks.

BACKGROUND: A large scale semi-quantitative biodiversity assessment was conducted in white oak woodlands in areas included in the Spanish Network of National Parks, as part of a project aimed at revealing biogeographic patterns and identify biodiversity drivers. The semi-quantitative COBRA sampling protocol was conducted in sixteen 1-ha plots across six national parks using a nested design. All adult specimens were identified to species level based on morphology. Uncertain delimitations and identifications due to either limited information of diagnostic characters or conflicting taxonomy were further investigated using DNA barcode information. NEW INFORMATION: We identified 376 species belonging to 190 genera in 39 families, from the 8,521 adults found amongst the 20,539 collected specimens. Faunistic results include the discovery of 7 new species to the Iberian Peninsula, 3 new species to Spain and 11 putative new species to science. As largely expected by environmental features, the southern parks showed a higher proportion of Iberian and Mediterranean species than the northern parks, where the Palearctic elements were largely dominant. The analysis of approximately 3,200 DNA barcodes generated in the present study, corroborated and provided finer resolution to the morphologically based delimitation and identification of specimens in some taxonomically challenging families. Specifically, molecular data confirmed putative new species with diagnosable morphology, identified overlooked lineages that may constitute new species, confirmed assignment of specimens of unknown sexes to species and identified cases of misidentifications and phenotypic polymorphisms.

Constraining the temporal variations of Ra isotopes and Rn in the groundwater end-member: Implications for derived SGD estimates.

Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) has been recognized as an important supplier of chemical compounds to the ocean that may influence coastal geochemical cycles. Radium isotopes (223Ra, 224Ra, 226Ra,228Ra) and radon (222Rn) have been widely applied as tracers of SGD. Their application requires the appropriate characterization of both the concentrations of tracers in the discharging groundwater and their distribution in the coastal water column. This study evaluates the temporal evolution of Ra isotopes and 222Rn concentrations in a dynamic subterranean estuary of a microtidal Mediterranean coastal aquifer that experiences large displacements of the fresh-saltwater interface as a necessary initial step in evaluating the influence of SGD in coastal waters. We show that changes in groundwater salinities due to the seaward displacement of the fresh-saltwater interface produced large variations in Ra activities in groundwater (by a factor of ~19, ~14, ~6, and ~11 for 223Ra, 224Ra, 226Ra and 228Ra, respectively), most importantly during rainfall events. In contrast, the 222Rn activities in groundwater oscillated only by a factor of 3 during these rainy periods. The large temporal variability in Ra activities hampers the characterization of the SGD end-member when using Ra isotopes as tracers, and thus presents a challenge for obtaining accurate SGD estimates. This study emphasizes the need to understand the hydrodynamics of coastal aquifers to appropriately constrain the Ra isotopes and 222Rn concentrations in groundwater and when applying both tracers in dynamic microtidal coastal systems.