RESUMEN
Although wetlands contain a disproportionately high amount of earth's total soil carbon, many regions are still poorly mapped and with unquantified carbon stocks. The tropical Andes contain a high concentration of wetlands consisting mostly of wet meadows and peatlands, yet their total organic carbon stocks are poorly quantified, as well as the carbon fraction that wet meadows store compared to peatlands. Therefore, our goal was to quantify how soil carbon stocks vary between wet meadows and peatlands for a previously mapped Andean region, Huascarán National Park, Peru. Our secondary goal was to test a rapid peat sampling protocol to facilitate field sampling in remote areas. We sampled soil to calculate carbon stocks of four wetland types: cushion peat, graminoid peat, cushion wet meadow, and graminoid wet meadow. Soil sampling was conducted by using a stratified randomized sampling scheme. Wet meadows were sampled to the mineral boundary using a gouge auger, and we used a combination of full peat cores and a rapid peat sampling procedure to estimate peat carbon stocks. In the lab, soils were processed for bulk density and carbon content, and total carbon stock of each core was calculated. We sampled 63 wet meadows and 42 peatlands. On a per hectare basis, carbon stocks varied strongly between peatlands (avg. 1092 MgC ha-1) and wet meadows (avg. 30 MgC ha-1). Overall, wetlands in Huascarán National Park contain 24.4 Tg of carbon with peatlands storing 97% of the total wetland carbon and wet meadows accounting for 3% of the wetland carbon in the park. In addition, our results show that rapid peat sampling can be an effective method for sampling carbon stocks in peatlands. These data are important for countries developing land use and climate change policies as well as providing a rapid assessment method for wetland carbon stock monitoring programs.
RESUMEN
More freshwater ecosystems are drying in response to global change thereby posing serious threat to freshwater biota and functions. The production of desiccation-resistant forms is an important adaptation that helps maintain biodiversity in temporary freshwaters by buffering communities from drying, but its potential to mitigate the negative effects of drying in freshwater ecosystems could vary greatly across regions and ecosystem types. We explored this context dependency by quantifying the potential contribution of desiccation-resistance forms to invertebrate community recovery across levels of regional drying prevalence (defined as the occurrence of drying events in freshwaters in a given region) and ecosystem types (lentic, lotic) in temporary neotropical freshwaters. We first predicted that regional drying prevalence influences the selection of species with desiccation-resistant forms from the regional species pools and thus increases the ability of communities to recover from drying. Second, we predicted lentic freshwaters harbor higher proportions of species with desiccation-resistant forms compared to lotic, in response to contrasted hydrologic connectivity. To test these predictions, we used natural experiments to quantify the contribution of desiccation-resistant forms to benthic invertebrate community recovery in nine intermittent streams and six geographically isolated temporary wetlands from three Bolivian regions differing in drying prevalence. The contribution of desiccation-resistant forms to community recovery was highest where regional drying prevalence was high, suggesting the species pool was adapted to regional disturbance regimes. The contribution of desiccation-resistant forms to community recovery was lower in streams than in wetlands, emphasizing the importance of hydrologic connectivity and associated recolonization processes from in-stream refuges to recovery in lotic systems. In all regions, the majority of functional traits were present in desiccation-resistant taxa indicating this adaptation may help maintain ecosystem functions by buffering communities from the loss of functional traits. Accounting for regional context and hydrologic connectivity in community recovery processes following drying can help refine predictions of freshwater biodiversity response to global change.
RESUMEN
La fascioliasis es una zoonosis considerada endémica en la región del norte del altiplano boliviano, afecta tanto a niños como a personas adultas por igual, se tiene poca referencia bibliográfica sobre si la parasitosis afecta el estado nutricional en niños, como la talla o índice de masa corporal. De esta forma nos preguntamos: ¿Cuál es la relación del desarrollo antropométrico entre los niños parasitados con Fasciola hepática y los niños no parasitados? MATERIAL Y MÉTODOS: el estudio es una serie de casos descriptivos, en la comunidad de Ajaria, en niños de 5 a 9 años con características similares de alimentación y costumbres de pastoreo de ganado. RESULTADOS Y DISCUSIÓN: La frecuencia de la parasitosis es entre el 10 a 11.1 por ciento; Se encontró que los niños parasitados con fascioliasis tenían un menor índice de masa corporal que los niños no parasitados con fascioliasis, siendo estas diferencias significativas entre ambos grupos. No encontramos evidencia que avale, que los niños parasitados con fascioliasis tengan menor peso que los no parasitados y nuestro estudio no arroja un resultado concluyente con respecto a esta hipótesis, sin embargo, sugiere que esto podría ser así y que se debería hacer estudios con una mayor población para valorar mejor la hipótesis.
Fascioliasis is a zoonosis considered endemic in the northern region of the Bolivian altiplano, affects both children and adults alike, there is little literature reference whether the parasitosis affects nutritional status in children, such as the size or mass index bodily. Thus we ask: What is the relationship of anthropometric development among children with Fasciola liver parasitized and parasitized children? MATERIAL AND METHODS: the study is a series of descriptive cases in the community of Ajaria in children aged 5to9 years with similar characteristics and habits of feeding cattle grazing. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Parasitosis frequency is between 10 percent 11.1; It was found that children with fascioliasis parasitized had a lower body mass index that children are not parasitized with fascioliasis, being these significant differences between the two groups. We found no evidence to support that parasitized children with fascioliasis have less weight than non-parasitized and our study does notyield a conclusive result regarding this hypothesis, however, suggests that this could be and should be done studies with a population to better assess the hypothesis.