Zacchaeus Compson

Zacchaeus Compson
University of North Texas | UNT · Department of Biological Sciences and Advanced Environmental Research Institute (AERI)

PhD
Food web ecology and environmental genomics.

About

65
Publications
21,662
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1,273
Citations
Additional affiliations
September 2005 - December 2013
Northern Arizona University
Position
  • PhD Student

Publications

Publications (65)
Article
Full-text available
Background Conventional management (CM), substantial fertilization and flooding irrigation, has led to soil acidification, the decrease in soil bacterial diversity in bamboo forests. Integration of water and fertilizer management (IWF) can effectively improve the efficiency of water and fertilizer use, but its effect on soil environment, especially...
Article
Full-text available
(1) Background: Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis (Carrière) J. Houz.) expansion has seriously altered the species composition and structure of adjacent forest ecosystems in subtropical regions. However, the shift in phosphorus (P) biogeochemical cycling has yet to be assessed, which is a critical gap considering the great variation in ecophysiolog...
Article
Full-text available
Studies of stream macroinvertebrates traditionally use sampling methods that target benthic habitats. These methods could underestimate biodiversity if important assemblage components exist outside of the benthic zone. To test the efficacy of different sampling methods, we collected paired reach‐wide benthic and edge samples from up to 10 study rea...
Article
Full-text available
Aims Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens) invasions into native forest cause a series of ecological problems, including the alteration of soil microorganism community composition. Additionally, it has been established that variation changes in leaf litter types can drive changes in soil microorganism communities. We have previously demonstrated di...
Article
Full-text available
Background Si can be important for the growth, functioning, and stoichiometric regulation of nutrients for high-Si-accumulating bamboo. However, other trees do not actively take up dissolved silicic acid [Si(OH)4] from the soil, likely because they have fewer or no specific Si transporters in their roots. It is unclear what causes differential grow...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction Considerable evidence indicates that some trees are more vulnerable than others during bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) expansion, which can affect plant community structure and alter the environment, but there has been insufficient research on the growth status of surviving individuals in colonized forests. Methods In this study, we com...
Article
Full-text available
Background and aims Subtle morphological traits, such as leaf litter curling, may have unexpected legacy effects on ecosystems. We tested the hypotheses that litter curling is influenced by plant species, hybridization and genotype, and has extended consequences for associated organisms and soil processes. Methods A novel litter curling index (LCI...
Article
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DNA‐based aquatic biomonitoring methods show promise to provide rapid, standardized, and efficient biodiversity assessment to supplement and in some cases replace current morphology‐based approaches that are often less efficient and can produce inconsistent results. Despite this potential, broad‐scale adoption of DNA‐based approaches by end‐users r...
Article
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The delivery of consistent and accurate fine-resolution data on biodiversity using metabarcoding promises to improve environmental assessment and research. Whilst this approach is a substantial improvement upon traditional techniques, critics note that metabarcoding data are suitable for establishing taxon occurrence, but not abundance. We propose...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background Silicon (Si), while not an essential element for plant growth, can be important for high Si-accumulating Poaceae, such as Moso bamboo. However, other trees do not actively take up dissolved silicic acid [Si(OH)4] from the soil, likely because they have fewer or no specific Si transporters in their roots. It is unclear what causes the dif...
Article
Full-text available
The aim of this study was to understand the encroachment order, spatial patterns, interspecific associations, and species diversity of a Cunninghamia lanceolata plantation and to provide context for how to improve the spatial structure of C. lanceolata plantations. We investigated a Guanshan (C. lanceolata) Plantation in the Jiangxi Province. The C...
Article
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The biodiversity–ecosystem function hypothesis postulates that higher biodiversity is correlated with faster ecosystem process rates and increased ecosystem stability in fluctuating environments. Exhibiting high spatiotemporal habitat diversity, floodplains are highly productive ecosystems, supporting communities that are naturally resilient and hi...
Preprint
Full-text available
Aims Silicon (Si), while not an essential element for plant growth, can be important for high Si-accumulating Poaceae, such as Moso bamboo. However, other trees do not actively take up dissolved silicic acid [Si(OH)4] from the soil, likely because they have fewer or no specific Si transporters in their roots. It is unclear what causes the different...
Article
Full-text available
The introduction of non-native predators is a matter of great concern, but their impacts on ecosystem functions remain poorly understood. We investigated how changes in fish diversity following the invasion of Cichla kelberi affected ecosystem functions generated by fish populations. Fish assemblages were sampled in macrophyte patches in a Neotropi...
Article
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Efforts to maintain the function of critical ecosystems under climate change often begin with foundation species. In the southwestern United States, cottonwood trees support diverse communities in riparian ecosystems that are threatened by rising temperatures. Genetic variation within cottonwoods shapes communities and ecosystems, but these effects...
Article
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Natural hydrological fluctuations within river floodplains generate habitat diversity through variable connections between habitat patches and the main river channel. Human modification of floodplains can alter the magnitude and frequency of large floods and associated sediment movement by interrupting these floodplain connections. The lower Wolast...
Article
Full-text available
Despite abounding evidence that leaf litter traits can predict decomposition rate, the way these traits influence trophic efficiency and element transfer to higher trophic levels is not resolved. Here, we used litter labeled with 13 C and 15 N stable isotopes to trace fluxes of litter C and N from four leaf types to freshwater invertebrate communit...
Article
Full-text available
Floodplains are disturbance-driven ecosystems with high spatial and temporal habitat diversity, making them both highly productive and hosts to high biodiversity. The unpredictable timing of flood and drought years creates a mosaic of habitat patches at different stages of succession, while water level fluctuation directly influences macrophyte com...
Article
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Metabarcoding is capable of delivering consistent and accurate fine-resolution biodiversity data, and offers great promise for improving aspects of environmental assessment and research. Even so, many ecologists are keen to make further inferences about species’ abundances and the number of sequence reads has proven to be a poor proxy for abundance...
Chapter
River bioassessment programs require robust methods to accurately observe the status of aquatic biodiversity, as it is well understood that physico-chemical monitoring alone is not sufficient to support current policy and management objectives. Whereas traditional microscopy-based identification of organisms can be expensive and laborious, direct s...
Article
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Global biodiversity loss is unprecedented, and threats to existing biodiversity are growing. Given pervasive global change, a major challenge facing resource managers is a lack of scalable tools to rapidly and consistently measure Earth's biodiversity. Environmental genomic tools provide some hope in the face of this crisis, and DNA metabarcoding,...
Article
Full-text available
Freshwater macroinvertebrates play key ecological roles in riverine food webs, such as the transfer of nutrients to consumers and decomposition of organic matter. Although local habitat quality drives macroinvertebrate diversity and abundance, little is known about their microbiota. In most animals, the microbiota provides benefits, such as increas...
Article
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In freshwater ecosystems, habitat alteration contributes directly to biodiversity loss. Dragonflies are sentinel species that are key invertebrate predators in both aquatic (as larvae) and terrestrial ecosystems (as adults). Understanding the habitat factors affecting dragonfly emergence can inform management practices to conserve habitats supporti...
Preprint
Full-text available
The Biodiversity-Ecosystem Function hypothesis postulates that higher biodiversity is correlated with ecosystem function by providing a high number of filled niches through species response types and resource use patterns. Through their high spatio-temporal habitat diversity, floodplains are highly productive ecosystems, supporting communities that...
Article
Full-text available
Litter decomposition plays a key role in nutrient cycling across ecosystems, yet to date, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the nonadditive decomposition effects in leaf litter mixing experiments. To fill that gap, we compiled 69 individual studies with the aim to perform two meta‐analyses on nonadditive effects. We show that a significant s...
Article
Full-text available
The complexity and natural variability of ecosystems present a challenge for reliable detection of change due to anthropogenic influences. This issue is exacerbated by necessary trade-offs that reduce the quality and resolution of survey data for assessments at large scales. The Peace–Athabasca Delta (PAD) is a large inland wetland complex in north...
Article
Full-text available
Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is an increasingly popular method for rapid biodiversity assessment. As with any ecological survey, false negatives can arise during sampling and, if unaccounted for, lead to biased results and potentially misdiagnosed environmental assessments. We developed a multi-scale, multi-species occupancy model for the...
Article
Full-text available
Classical biomonitoring techniques have focused primarily on measures linked to various biodiversity metrics and indicator species. Next-generation biomonitoring (NGB) describes a suite of tools and approaches that allow the examination of a broader spectrum of organizational levels—from genes to entire ecosystems. Here, we frame 10 key questions t...
Article
Full-text available
Threatened freshwater ecosystems urgently require improved tools for effective management. Food web analysis is currently under-utilized, yet can be used to generate metrics to support biomonitoring assessments by measuring the stability and robustness of ecosystems. Using a previously developed analysis pipeline, we combined taxonomic outputs from...
Article
Full-text available
An ongoing challenge for ecological studies has been the collection of data with high precision and accuracy at a suitable scale to detect and manage critical global change processes. A major hurdle has been the time-consuming and challenging process of sorting and identification of organisms, but the rapid development of DNA metabarcoding as a bio...
Preprint
Full-text available
The complexity and natural variability of ecosystems present a challenge for reliable detection of change due to anthropogenic influences. This issue is exacerbated by necessary trade-offs that reduce the quality and resolution of survey data for assessments at large-scales. The Peace-Athabasca Delta (PAD) is a large inland wetland complex in north...
Preprint
Full-text available
Environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding is an increasingly popular method for rapid biodiversity assessment. As with any ecological survey, false negatives can arise during sampling and, if unaccounted for, lead to biased results and potentially misdiagnosed environmental assessments. We developed a multi-scale, multi-species occupancy model for the...
Preprint
Full-text available
An ongoing challenge for ecological studies has been the collection of data with high precision and accuracy at a sufficient scale to detect effects relevant to management of critical global change processes. A major hurdle for many workflows has been the time-consuming and challenging process of sorting and identification of organisms, but the rap...
Article
p>A workshop was held in Wageningen, The Netherlands, in September 2017 to collate data and literature on three aquatic ecosystem types (agricultural drainage ditches, urban floodplains, and urban estuaries), and develop a general framework for the assessment of multiple stressors on the structure and functioning of these systems. An assessment fra...
Article
Full-text available
Freshwater floodplains are dynamic, diverse ecosystems that represent important transition zones between terrestrial, riparian, subsurface and aquatic habitats. Given their historic importance in human development, floodplains have been exposed to a variety of pressures, which in combination have been instrumental in driving changes within these ec...
Article
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Understanding the physical and biological mechanisms contributing to flow velocity–ecology relationships is crucial for successful river management. The application of an ecological traits‐based approach offers the potential to explore mechanistic linkages between aquatic communities and a hydrological gradient. To date, however, studies focused on...
Article
Full-text available
Ecologists often equate litter quality with decomposition rate. In soil and sediments, litter that is rapidly decomposed by microbes often has low concentrations of tannin and lignin and low C:N ratios. Do these same traits also favor element transfer to higher trophic levels in streams, where many insects depend on litter as their primary food sou...
Article
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Leaf litter provides an important nutrient subsidy to headwater streams, but little is known about how tree genetics influences energy pathways from litter to higher trophic levels. Despite the charge to quantify carbon
Article
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Disruptions of natural flow impair rivers and streams worldwide. Those conducting restoration efforts have rarely explored how and when stream ecosystems can recover after reinstating natural flows. We quantified responses of ecosystem metabolism and N dynamics to the decommissioning and removal of a 100-y-old diversion dam in a desert stream, Foss...
Chapter
Ecological networks are powerful tools for visualizing biodiversity data and assessing ecosystem health and function. Constructing these networks requires considerable empirical efforts, and this remains highly challenging due to sampling limitations and the laborious and notoriously limited, error-prone process of traditional taxonomic identificat...
Article
Full-text available
Aridisols are the dominant soil type in drylands, which occupy one-third of Earth's terrestrial surface. We examined controls on biogeographical patterns of Aridisol prokaryotic (Bacterial and Archaeal) communities at a regional scale by comparing communities from 100 Aridisols throughout the southwestern United States using high-throughput sequenc...
Article
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Terrestrial leaf litter provides aquatic insects with an energy source and habitat structure, and species differences in litter can influence aquatic insect emergence. Emerging insects also provide energy to riparian predators. We hypothesized that plant genetics would influence the composition and timing of emerging insect communities among indivi...
Article
Full-text available
Dissolved organic C (DOC) leached from leaf litter contributes to the C pool of stream ecosystems and affects C cycling in streams. We studied how differences in leaf-litter chemistry affect the optical properties and decomposition of DOC. We used 2 species of cottonwoods (Populus) and their naturally occurring hybrids that differ in leaf-litter ph...
Article
Community genetics studies frequently focus on individual communities associated with individual plant genotypes, but little is known about the genetically based relationships among taxonomically and spatially disparate communities. We integrate studies of a wide range of communities living on the same plant genotypes to understand how the ecologic...
Chapter
Full-text available
In many ecosystems, the genetic variation within foundation tree species drive key ecological processes. Here we present four key findings from community genetics research that can be applied to the preservation of forest biodiversity and improvement of management policy. (1) Different tree genotypes support different communities and different ecos...
Article
Full-text available
Leaf litter decomposition plays a major role in nutrient dynamics in forested streams. The chemical composition of litter affects its processing by microorganisms, which obtain nutrients from litter and from the water column. The balance of these fluxes is not well known, because they occur simultaneously and thus are difficult to quantify separate...
Article
Full-text available
The effects of plant genetics on predators, especially those not living on the plant itself, are rarely studied and poorly understood. Therefore, we investigated the effect of plant hybridization and genotype on litter-dwelling spiders. Using an 18-year-old cottonwood common garden, we recorded agelenid sheet-web density associated with the litter...
Article
Full-text available
Decomposing leaf litter in streams provides habitat and nutrition for aquatic insects. Despite large differences in the nutritional qualities of litter among different plant species, their effects on aquatic insects are often difficult to detect. We evaluated how leaf litter of two dominant riparian species (Populus fremontii and P. angustifolia) i...
Conference Paper
Background/Question/Methods Plant litter quantity, quality, and physical structure are important because they influence plant, microbial, and invertebrate community composition and ecosystem function. The study of plant litter is often conducted in the context of the importance of plant species or functional groups influencing decomposition rates...
Article
Full-text available
Few investigators have examined simultaneous bacterial and fungal responses to leaf-litter chemistry in fresh water. We tested the hypothesis that bacteria would be more abundant on labile litter with lower concentrations of defensive compounds, whereas fungi would be more abundant on recalcitrant litter. We used quantitative-polymerase chain react...
Article
Full-text available
Reciprocal subsidies between rivers and terrestrial habitats are common where terrestrial leaf litter provides energy to aquatic invertebrates while emerging aquatic insects provide energy to terrestrial predators (e.g., birds, lizards, spiders). We examined how aquatic insect emergence changed seasonally with litter from two foundation riparian tr...
Article
Full-text available
We examined how the galling aphid Pemphigus batae manipulates resource translocation patterns of resistant and susceptible narrowleaf cottonwood Populus angustifolia. Using carbon-14 ((14)C)-labeling experiments in common garden trials, five patterns emerged. First, although aphid galls on resistant and susceptible genotypes did not differ in their...
Article
Full-text available
The linkages between fluvial geomorphology and aquatic ecosystems are commonly conceptualized as a one-way causal chain in which geomorphic processes create the physical template for ecological dynamics. In streams with a travertine step-pool morphology, however, biotic processes strongly influence the formation and growth of travertine dams, creat...
Article
Full-text available
Leaf retention is important in transferring energy from riparian trees to stream food webs. Retention increases with geomorphic complexity such as substrate coarseness, sinuosity, and the presence of debris dams. High discharge can reduce retention, particularly when streams lack physical trapping features. Travertine formations, caused by calcium...
Article
The linkages between fluvial geomorphology and aquatic ecosystems are commonly modeled as a linear causal chain in which geomorphic processes create the physical template for ecological dynamics. In a variety of settings, however, biotic processes may strongly influence channel morphodynamics, creating the potential for numerous feedbacks. For exam...
Article
Measuring micro-morphological change of bed topography in a fluvial setting is often done by installing erosion pins or drilling holes that serve as fixed reference points. A shortcoming to these methods is that protruding pins and open holes can influence the local processes that alter the channel bed. Here we report on the development of a new me...
Conference Paper
Travertine formations along a stretch of Fossil Creek, a tributary to the Verde River in central Arizona, occur as small dams producing step-pool morphology along the stream. Precipitation of CaCO3 is focused at dams due to positive feedbacks involving CO2 degassing in high velocity flow and biogeochemical processes resulting from algae growth and...