Beáta Szabó

Hungarian Academy of Sciences | HAS · Balaton Limnological Institute

Temporary ponds are among the most sensitive aquatic habitats to climate change. Their microbial communities have crucial roles in food webs and biogeochemical cycling, yet how their communities are assembled along environmental gradients is still understudied. This study aimed to reveal the environmental drivers of diversity (OTU-based richness, e...

Temporary ponds are among the most sensitive aquatic habitats to climate change. Their microbial communities have crucial roles in food webs and biogeochemical cycling, yet how their communities are assembled along environmental gradients is still understudied. This study aimed to reveal the environmental drivers of diversity (OTU-based richness, e...

Aim: Waterbirds are important dispersal vectors of multicellular organisms; however, no study to date has focused on their potential role in dispersing aquatic microbial communities. We explicitly studied endozoochory of prokaryotes and unicellular mi-croeukaryotes by waterbirds using DNA metabarcoding. By directly comparing the dispersed set of or...

Aim: Waterbirds are important dispersal vectors of multicellular organisms such as macrophytes, aquatic macroinvertebrates, and zooplankton. However, no study to date has focused on their potential role in dispersing aquatic microbial communities (i.a., bacteria, algae, protozoa). Here, we explicitly studied passive transport (endozoochory) of prok...

Land-use imposes an important potential threat on the aquatic ecosystems of riverine habitats. In this study, DNA metabarcoding was used to assess the effect of land-use on diatom assemblages, with a special focus on cropland area as an integrative proxy for several direct-acting pressures. The so-called taxonomy-free approach was tested using exac...

Nowadays, when aquatic habitats are threatened by human and climatic disturbances leading to reductions in biodiversity and ecosystem functions, the study of the abundance–occupancy relationships of species traits and their underlying mechanisms is of great importance to future conservation management. To study the distribution patterns of benthic...

Agriculture and urbanisation, the two forms of land use, represent serious threats to the ecological status of aquatic ecosystems, especially in the case of small streams at low altitudes. In this study, 75 Hungarian streams were analysed to explore the effects of these land use types on the composition of benthic diatom communities and their richn...

Picocystis salinarum is a globally widespread picoplanktonic green alga of saline lakes. This tiny alga has been recorded in four continents, and in some cases, it has become the dominant phytoplankton species. We examined the ecophysiology of a Kenyan strain of P. salinarum, collected from Lake Nakuru. The photosynthetic activity of the species wa...

In this study, driving forces and diversity patterns of a benthic diatom metacommunity across small freshwater lakes exhibiting environmental heterogeneity were investigated. Furthermore, local (LCBD) and species (SCBD) contributions to β-diversity and their driving parameters were assessed with abundance- and incidence-based analyses. Our results...

Shallow, saline inland lakes occur over large areas in Central-Europe and they bear exceptionally high biological conservation values. Climate change and anthropogenic activities threaten their natural conditions, or even their existence. These aquatic ecosystems are exposed to multiple stress like naturally high conductivity, pH and nutrient load...

Small soda lakes represent one of the most vulnerable ecosystem types due to their high hydrological sensitivity to climate change and anthropogenic interventions. Since diatoms are excellent bioindicators, determining the β-diversity and the structuring dynamics of diatom metacommunities can provide valuable information for conservation planning f...

Photosynthetic performances of two fresh water red algal populations from freshwaters of the Carpathian basin were measured in this study. Populations were collected from different habitats: Bangia atropurpurea from Lake Balaton and Batrachospermum gelatinosum from the Tapolca stream. Their photosynthesis was studied in a wide range of temperature...

Global warming affects the thermal stratification of freshwater lakes, and thus can lead to thermocline deepening. To follow the direct and indirect effects of thermocline shifts on processes at the sediment–water interface, the thermoclines in six of twelve lake enclosures were deepened by pumping warm surface water below the thermocline. Hypolimn...

Phytoplankton and planktonic centric diatoms of Lake Stechlin have been extensively studied, while attached diatoms have received much less scientific interest. In the present study, the composition of benthic diatoms and their diversity metrics were determined and compared along the shoreline of the lake in spring 2013 and autumn 2014. Overall, 11...

The number of shallow soda pans decreased drastically all over the world and their conservation needs to be urgently forced. Due to their unique physical and chemical features, the lack of appropriate management plans has been a worldwide issue. The aim of present paper was to study the efficiency of the applied water management in three Central Eu...