Person: Gergs, René
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1979
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Biologe
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Gergs
First Name
René
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Publication Is Dikerogammarus villosus (Crustacea, Gammaridae) a 'killer shrimp' in the River Rhine system?(2016) Koester, Meike; Bayer, Bastian; Gergs, René; Sahm, RenéCommunities and food web structures of aquatic ecosystems can be strongly affected by the establishment of alien macroinvertebrate species. In many European waters, the invasion of the Ponto-Caspian amphipod Dikerogammarus villosus has led to displacement of other macroinvertebrates. Predation by D. villosus is often assumed to be the key driver of the displacement based on results of laboratory studies, but this has not been verified in the field. Here, we report our investigation of the relevance of D. villosus predation in the River Rhine system using both stable isotope analyses of d13C and d15N, and molecular analyses of D. villosus gut contents with group-specific primers aiming at macroinvertebrate prey taxa. Stable isotope analyses of D. villosus from ten sites showed mean d15N values comparable to those of primary consumers. Overall, only approximately 1% of all tested primer/gut content combinations revealed DNA of the respective taxa. Both indicate minor importance of predation by D. villosus as a driver of the observed macroinvertebrate displacement. Conceivably, competitive strength due to opportunistic feeding, indicated by different niche widths between and a strong intraspecific variation of d13C values of D. villosus within sites of our study, is much more important for its invasion success. Quelle: http://link.springer.comPublication Is The invasive amphipod Dikerogammarus villosus the main factor structuring the benthic community across different types of water bodies in the River Rhine system?(2018) Koester, Meike; Gergs, René; Schneider, Maximilian; Hellmann, Claudia; Sahm, RenéDikerogammarus villosus, one of the most successful invaders in European river systems, is commonly regarded as a threat to native biodiversity and a main factor structuring the benthic community of invaded systems. The impact of D. villosus has been intensively studied in small-scale experiments and field observations, but its impact on natural communities on a larger scale remains unclear. Here, we investigated the benthic community structure at ten sites covering a broad range of habitats along the River Rhine (Central Europe) and its tributaries, to determine whether D. villosus is one of the main factors structuring the benthic community. Community composition was analysed using non-metric multidimensional scaling, distance-based redundancy analysis, and correlation analyses. D. villosus was one of nine relevant taxa present that altogether reflected a large part of the variation in the benthic samples, but further analyses indicated that the species might be less important for the community structure than other relevant taxa. Moreover, all nine relevant taxa together can explain only a similar amount of variation in our samples than the five relevant non-faunal environmental factors (water temperature, pH, conductivity, percentage of medium-sized gravel and macrophytes). Overall, our results suggested that rather a combination of non-faunal environmental factors than D. villosus mainly structure the benthic community composition on this larger spatial scale. © 2018 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.Publication Contribution of organic toxicants to multiple stress in river ecosystems(2016) Schäfer, Ralf B.; Gergs, René; Kuehn, Bernhard; Malaj, Egina; Sahm, RenéRiver ecosystems are threatened by multiple stressors, including habitat degradation, pollution and invasive species. However, freshwater ecologists have largely disregarded the contribution of toxicants to stress in rivers, whereas ecotoxicologists have primarily examined toxicant effects in artificial systems. As a result, there is a paucity of information on the co-occurrence of organic toxicants with other stressors and on the relative importance of toxicants for overall ecological risk in rivers. We used monitoring data for German rivers to analyse the individual and joint occurrence of four stressors: habitat degradation, invasive species, nutrient pollution and organic toxicants. All stressors were examined for ecological risks in terms of whether they exceeded low- and high-risk thresholds derived from published studies and regulatory thresholds. Nutrients and habitat degradation exceeded low and high risk thresholds at c. 85% of the sites and invasive species and organic toxicants at c. 50% of the sites. At least one stressor exceeded thresholds at all sites for which data on all four stressors were available. Toxicity showed weak positive correlations with nutrients and habitat degradation (0.2 < Spearman's ? < 0.34, 0.009 < P < 0.08). The risks of ecological effects arising from habitat degradation and invasive species were higher in lowland rivers, particularly for invasive species. Our assessment shows that organic toxicants contribute notably to risks of ecological effects in rivers, to a similar extent as invasive species, although habitat degradation and nutrients are the dominant stressors. Exposure to multiple stressors is the typical situation prevailing in rivers. Consequently, mitigation measures focusing on individual stressors may not be effective at reducing ecological risks. This suggests that integrating concepts and data from freshwater ecology and ecotoxicology is essential to meet the challenge of managing multiple stressors in river ecosystems. Quelle: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/Publication Life under exceptional conditions̶isotopic niches of benthic invertebrates in the estuarine maximum turbidity zone(2017) Taupp, Thomas; Gergs, René; Hellmann, Claudia; Sahm, René