Jenny M Schmid-Araya

Jenny M Schmid-Araya
Bournemouth University | BU · School of Applied Sciences

Doctor of Philosophy

About

57
Publications
7,630
Reads
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2,138
Citations
Additional affiliations
January 1990 - November 1995
Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW)
Position
  • Research Assistant
July 1997 - August 2012
Queen Mary University of London
Position
  • Professor (Associate)
July 1997 - August 2012
University of London
Position
  • Professor (Associate)

Publications

Publications (57)
Research
Full-text available
This scientific investigation is the first of its kind that considers the impacts of a proposed landfill on aquatic systems, its biodiversity, food-web structure and its vulnerability under the special climatic, geological and soil conditions in the north of the island from Chiloé. We examined five fluvial systems within the catchment of the river...
Article
Full-text available
Meiofaunal organisms are diverse, and so is their diet comprising bacteria, fungi, micro-algae, flagellates, ciliates, and other meiofauna. Studies have inferred diet from correlative evidences, observations of feeding or gut contents. Incubation experiments have also helped to link meiofauna’s role to microbially mediated ecosystem processes, repo...
Article
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Much has been published about different aspects of body-size distribution resting on the assumptions of metabolic scaling, although a number of studies in aquatic ecosystems have questioned its generality. This study considers the effects of individual body-mass and biomass variability on scaling properties of multi-species communities (protists, m...
Article
Full-text available
Freshwater meiofauna occupies a central role in stream food webs, not always as intermediary but also as top consumers. Consequently, the meiofauna’s transient dynamical patterns and turnover are vital to understand its contribution to the overall production and energy flow within benthic freshwater systems. Here, we revise the current methodologic...
Article
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Never heard of harpacticoids, ostracods, gastrotrichs or microturbellarians? This is no surprise, they are so tiny! Yet these taxa and many others more famous (nematodes, rotifers, or tardigrades) show complex behaviours and extraordinary physiologies that allow them to colonize inland waters worldwide. This exuberant fauna is better known as the m...
Article
Despite important advances in the ecology of river food-webs, the strength and nature of the connection between the meio- and macrofaunal components of the web are still debated. Some unresolved issues are the effects of the inclusion of meiofaunal links and their temporal variations on the overall river food web properties, and the significance of...
Article
Full-text available
A new species of Rotifera belonging to the genus Encentrum (Monogononta, Dicranophoridae) is described from benthos of the Blackwater River, East Anglia, Essex, England, UK. Encentrum essexis sp. n. is characterised by the in dorsal view more or less conical toes having three elongate drop-shaped, light-refracting bodies leading to the tip of the t...
Article
Food web analyses have been fundamental in understanding community organization and ecosystem functioning. To date, a number of studies demonstrate that stream food webs depend to a large extent on allochthonous detritus, but there are more recent studies that show a high degree of autochthony. Our food‐web study was carried out in three Andean riv...
Article
1. Protozoans are important consumers within microbial food webs and, in turn, they represent potential prey for small metazoans. However, feeding interactions within these food webs are rarely characterised and this is especially true for freshwater sediments. 2. We aimed to quantify the feeding links between a freshwater meiofaunal copepod and ci...
Article
Microbial activity, bacterial and invertebrate densities and particulate organic matter (POM) content were assessed using a modified freeze-coring technique in a Welsh mountain stream. Bacterial cell densities ranged between 0.22 × 108 and 4.47 × 108 cells cm−3 and increased with sediment depth reaching maxima in depths between 30 and 40-cm. In con...
Article
Full-text available
The production of heterotrophic biomass is an important aspect of overall ecosystem functioning. However, single‐celled organisms or microscopic metazoans are often ignored in studies of secondary production, despite being very abundant and possessing high mass‐specific population growth rates, relative to the more widely studied larger taxa. Here,...
Article
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The whole metazoan community inhabiting macrophyte stands and gravel beds of the English chalk stream River Lambourn were sampled for 1 yr. Secondary production estimates for specific taxa of macrofauna and meiofauna, usually at species or genus level, were made using the size-frequency method. Annual standing biomass and production to biomass rati...
Article
1. The ciliate and metazoan meiofaunal assemblages of two contrasting lowland streams in south-east England were examined over the period of a year, using a high taxonomic resolution. Monthly samples were taken from an oligotrophic, acid stream (Lone Oak) and a circumneutral, nutrient-rich stream (Pant) between March 2003 and February 2004. 2. We a...
Chapter
Ecologists have long struggled to predict features of ecological systems, such as the numbers and diversity of organisms. The wide range of body sizes in ecological communities, from tiny microbes to large animals and plants, is emerging as the key to prediction. Based on the relationship between body size and features such as biological rates, the...
Article
The spatial and temporal distributions of the most abundant bdelloid rotifer, Embata laticeps (Murray), inhabiting the sediment surface and the hyporheic interstitial of a gravel stream were investigated between October 1991 and October 1992. Three temporal peaks of population density occurred during the year at the sediment surface differing in th...
Article
We investigated abundance–size spectra and body size–density allometry using an exceptionally detailed data set from a stony stream. The body size distribution of the whole metazoan community was expressed in terms of both density and biomass over a 14‐month survey, and the relationships of body size with population density and taxon richness were...
Article
The benthic communities of streams contain invertebrates of a wide range of body size and from many taxa. Owing mainly to methodological problems, however, the contribution of smaller and more obscure metazoans to community structure and dynamics, including production, is poorly known compared with that of larger size fractions and, particularly, i...
Article
Full-text available
The interstitial sediments of streams and rivers, the 'hyporheic zone', have a diverse and numerous fauna though the relative contribution of the subsurface and surface assemblages to total productivity remains poorly understood. Our main aim was to determine the contribution of hyporheic invertebrates to overall, reach-scale estimates of density a...
Article
1. Three predatory chironomid species constituted numerically 8.8% (± 95% CL 2.2) of the macro‐ and meiobenthic community at the sediment surface and in the hyporheic zone of Oberer Seebach, a gravel stream in Lower Austria. Larvae of Thienemannimyia geijskesi (Goetghebuer) and Nilotanypus dubius (Meigen) occurred in higher densities in sediment de...
Article
SUMMARY 1. The whole metazoan community (i.e. including the meiofauna) of an acidic, fishless stream in south-east England was surveyed over 14 months between March 1999 and April 2000. Invertebrate density, biomass and taxonomic richness were assessed on each sampling occasion in relation to physico-chemical variables. 2. The meiofauna were more n...
Article
Full-text available
Scaling relationships between population density (N) and body size (W), and of their underlying size distributions, can contribute to an understanding of how species use resources as a function of size. In an attempt to resolve the controversy over the form of scaling relationships, an extensive dataset, comprising 602 invertebrate species, was obt...
Article
The properties of food webs are important both in theoretical ecology and environmental management, yet remain elusive. Here, we examined 12 new stream food webs of higher taxonomic resolution and completeness than any previously published data set and combined them with other 10 published stream webs. Compared with most previously published food w...
Article
Full-text available
Seasonal food webs were constructed for the whole invertebrate assemblage (meio- and macrofauna) inhabiting Broadstone Stream (southeast England). High and uniform taxonomic resolution was applied in a dietary analysis, by resolving the complete benthic community to species, including the meiofauna, protozoa, and algae. Meiofauna accounted for 70%...
Article
1. The Rotifera assemblage inhabiting the streambed surface and the hyporheic zone of a gravel stream was investigated between October 1991 and October 1992. Forty-two species of Monogononta and 27 of Bdelloidea were identified. Within these two classes, dominant species differed between the surface and the hyporheic zone. At the streambed surface,...
Article
Seasonal food webs were constructed for the whole invertebrate assemblage (meio- and macrofauna) inhabiting Broadstone Stream (southeast England). High and uniform taxonomic resolution was applied in a dietary analysis, by resolving the complete benthic community to species, including the meiofauna, protozoa, and algae. Meiofauna accounted for 70%...
Article
Summary This special issue focuses on the meiofauna of lotic freshwater systems, providing a review of the biology and ecology of this relatively poorly studied constituent of the benthos in running waters. Six papers review the biology and ecology of the major groups of lotic meiofauna: microturbellarians; rotifers and gastrotrichs; nematodes; wat...
Article
Summary There is a paucity of research on epigean freshwater lotic meiofauna. This may result from a previous emphasis on interstitial (groundwater and hyporheic) meiofauna and/or a reliance on sampling methodologies in lotic systems which are inappropriate for meiofauna. Meiofauna contribute much to the diversity of lotic ecosystems. Species lists...
Article
Summary This paper summarises the most important contributions on trophic relationships of lotic meiofauna. In contrast to marine research, the few quantitative studies of the freshwater meiobenthos have shown that these invertebrates not only take up particulate/fine organic matter, but also dissolved organic substances attached to organic particl...
Article
Full-text available
The existence of a general relation between population density and body size in animal assemblages has been debated because of known biases and ambiguities in the published data and data handling. Using new comprehensive data sets from two geographically separated stream communities that encompass 448 and 260 invertebrate taxa with a wide range of...
Article
Full-text available
Invertebrate recolonization at short-term exposures (2-192 h) in the hyporheic zone of a gravel stream revealed significant depth-specific differences. In the shallow hyporheic zone (0-20 cm), mean meiofaunal density increased asymptotically stabilizing within 66 h, a similar but nonsignificant pattern was found for macrofauna. Permanent meiofaunal...
Article
From July, 1994 to November, 1995 we sampled the benthos of the Green and Colorado Rivers of Canyonlands National Park, Utah at the request of the United States National Park Service. This study was conceived with a goal of establishing baseline densities of invertebrates in these rivers in preparation for a long-term biomonitoring program. Four re...
Article
Rotifers have long been known to inhabit interstitial sediments, thus confirming the high species richness of the group in a variety of habitats. This paper reviews the ecological role of rotifers within the interstitial environment (e.g. hyporheos, psammon, bed sediments) in lakes and running waters. Population densities, assemblage structure, pat...
Chapter
Rotifers have long been known to inhabit interstitial sediments, thus confirming the high species richness of the group in a variety of habitats. This paper reviews the ecological role of rotifers within the interstitial environment (e.g. hyporheos, psammon, bed sediments) in lakes and running waters. Population densities, assemblage structure, pat...
Chapter
Aquatic ecosystems have formed the focus of several UNESCO research projects because of the impact on them of human activities such as intensification of agricultural activity, erosion and sedimentation due to irrigation projects, groundwater pollution and eutrophication. Interfaces, or ecotones, between terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems were foun...
Article
Rotifers inhabiting the sediment surface and the hyporheic interstitial of a gravel stream were investigated between October 1991 and October 1992. At the sediment surface, samples were taken with a modified Hess sampler at five randomly chosen sites and at roughly weekly intervals. In the hyporheic interstitial, samples were collected using standp...
Article
Abstract Densities of microfauna,(large heterotrophic flagellates and three ciliate size classes) inhabiting surface sediments and the hyporheic zone of a gravel-bed brook were investigated at 14-d sampling intervals between,October 1991 and October 1992. Abundances,of both flagellates and ciliates were higher in the hyporheic,zone than in surface...
Article
During the last decade much information has been produced about the zooplankton communities in southern Chile; however, most of this is related to the crustacean assemblages. The present communication examines the spatial and temporal distribution of rotifer assemblages and their relation to the environmental variables during one-year period in fou...
Article
Full-text available
69 Rotifera species (42 Monogononta and 26 Bdelloidea species) were recorded in the bed sediments of the mountain gravel stream Oberer Seebach, between October 1991 and October 1992. 30% of the total number of species were present in a debris dam area between April and October 1992. Moreover, 19% of all species occurred at the sediment surface (0-1...
Chapter
During the last decade much information has been produced about the zooplankton communities in southern Chile; however, most of this is related to the crustacean assemblages. The present communication examines the spatial and temporal distribution of rotifer assemblages and their relation to the environmental variables during one-year period in fou...
Article
It is often assumed that the use of a two-stage chemostat yields algal food with a well-defined nutritional composition that can maintain herbivores in a steady state of growth. In this study I investigated two bacteriafree culture techniques, continuous flow chemostats and batch cultures, to determine whether the biochemical composition of the rot...

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