Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/C515155/1
Achieving species-level identification of fossil oospores from UK Characeae.
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Professor CD Sayer, University College London, Geography
- Grant held at:
- University College London, Geography
- Science Area:
- Freshwater
- Overall Classification:
- Freshwater
- ENRIs:
- Pollution and Waste
- Natural Resource Management
- Global Change
- Biodiversity
- Science Topics:
- Palaeobiology
- Palaeoenvironments
- Conservation Ecology
- Community Ecology
- Abstract:
- Stoneworts (Characeae) are a unique group of complex algae that often grow in profusion in lime-rich, shallow fresh-brackish waters. Under unpolluted conditions they may often form beautiful, light green meadows which cover the bottom of lakes where they perform an important role in keeping the water clear. However, due in particular to eutrophication - the enrichment of waters by more than natural quantities of the nutrients, nitrogen and phosphorus and to the loss of appropriate habitat, in recent years stoneworts have undergone a substantial decline. Today 17 of the 30 or so UK stonewort species are classified as nationally rare or extinct and for this reason they have increasingly become the focus of conservation efforts and Biodiversity Action Plans (BAPS). Our knowledge of historical change to stonewort populations in lakes is currently poor, due to insufficient historical records. An alternative means of gaining such information is to use dated lake sediment sequences. This has proven successful for many groups of aquatic organisms (including aquatic macrophytes) which leave fossils in accumulating lake muds. However, for stoneworts this has rarely been possible, because the best preserved remain, a fruiting body called an oospore, often proves difficult to assign to any particular species using standard light microscope procedures and without highly specialised taxonomic expertise. The result is that most palaeolimnological studies do not take oospores beyond the level of genus, thus resulting in much wasted ecological information. Recognising this, our proposed project aims to develop a system which permits the identification of oospores from different stoneworts to species-level. For each of the 30 UK species key morphological characteristics (among others, height, width, depth, roundness, number of ridges, width between ridges, height of ridges, surface ornamentation) will be measured on at least 300 individual oospore specimens using an image capture system. Then using multivariate statistical analysis, those key morphological factors that distinguish the different species will be discriminated, with the expectation that sets of features that define one species, may be different for another. We will then test the potential of our developed identification system by its application to a sediment sequence from Hickling Broad, a shallow, medieval lake in Norfolk, UK. Hickling Broad, a famous stonewort site, possesses a near unique series of documented species records which trace the arrival, loss and persistence of some 15 different stoneworts since around 1880 AD. Through identification of the oospores present at different levels in Hickling core it will be possible to directly compare our reconstructed sequence of change in the stonewort community with that which is historically documented and so make a test of our system. If successful the project will represent a considerable breakthrough for palaeolimnology, with several associated benefits for both the scientific community and for those charged with conserving and restoring populations of stoneworts.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/C515155/1
- Grant Stage:
- Completed
- Scheme:
- Small Grants Pre FEC
- Grant Status:
- Closed
- Programme:
- Small Grants
This grant award has a total value of £25,538
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| Total - T&S | Total - Staff | Total - Other Costs | Total - Indirect Costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| £984 | £16,179 | £933 | £7,442 |
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