Litter buffet:On the use of trash bins by birds in six boreal urban settlements

Unintentional food resources in urban areas(street litter,food leftovers,overflowing trash bins)are dietary components of some urban-exploiter bird species.In this study,we report on 13 bird species in six southern Finnish cities using urban trash bins and describe differences in their activity when provided with food resources(i.e.,bait)in different bin types.We used generalized linear models(GLM)and classification and regression trees(CART)to test for associations between environmental variables and bird activity at the binscapes.Bird activity at the binscapes significantly differed among all cities and among types of bins and was significantly higher after placing bait in all cases.Bins with the largest opening had more activity as opposed to those with smaller openings or lids.Corvids and gulls had the highest activity,with corvids usually being present before the bait was placed and gulls increasing their activity thereafter.These differences show that trash bin foraging is highly malleable and thus susceptible to management preventing its occurrence.Suitable waste management measures could aid in reducing the number of species close to bins and their surroundings,benefiting both bird and human health.

Neighborhood garden's age shapes phyllosphere microbiota associated with respiratory diseases in cold seasons

Neighborhood gardens serve as sensitive sites for human microbial encounters,with phyllosphere microbes directly impacting our respiratory health.Yet,our understanding remains limited on how factors like season,garden age,and land use shape the risk of respiratory diseases(RDs)tied to these garden microbes.Here we examined the microbial communities within the phyllosphere of 72 neighborhood gardens across Shanghai,spanning different seasons(warm and cold),garden ages(old and young),and locales(urban and rural).We found a reduced microbial diversity during the cold season,except for Gammaproteobacteria which exhibited an inverse trend.While land use influenced the microbial composition,urban and rural gardens had strikingly similar microbial profiles.Alarmingly,young gardens in the cold season hosted a substantial proportion of RDs-associated species,pointing towards increased respiratory inflammation risks.In essence,while newer gardens during colder periods show a decline in microbial diversity,they have an increased presence of RDs-associated microbes,potentially escalating respiratory disease prevalence.This underscores the pivotal role the garden age plays in enhancing both urban microbial diversity and respiratory health.

How to disentangle microbially functional complexity: an insight from the network analysis of C, N, P and S cycling genes

A complete ecosystem is also a complex network in which multifarious species interact with each other to achieve system-level functions, such as nutrient biogeochemistry (1)Microbial community is commonly considered as the primary driving force of ecosystem nutrient mobilization and metabolism, especially carbon (C), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), sulfur (S) and methane coupling process (2)The rise of metagenomics and high-throughput array (e.g. PhyloChip, GeoChip, etc.

High starter phosphorus fertilization facilitates soil phosphorus turnover by promoting microbial functional interaction in an arable soil

Microbial phosphorus(P)turnover is critical in C utilization efficiency in agroecosystems.It is therefore necessary to understand the P mobilization processes occurring during P fertilization in order to ensure both crop yield and environmental quality.Here,we established a controlled pot experiment containing soil amended with three different levels of starter P fertilizer and collected soil samples after 30,60,and 90 days of incubation.Quantitative microbial element cycling(QMEC)smart chip technology and 16S rRNA gene sequencing were used to investigate functional gene structures involved in carbon,nitrogen and P cycling and the bacterial community composition of the collected samples.Although P fertilization did not significantly affect the structure of the soil microbial community,some rare microbiota were changed in particular phosphorus-solubilizing bacteria were enriched at the high P fertilization level,suggesting that the rare taxa make an important contribution to P turnover.P fertilization also altered the functional gene structure,and high P concentrations enhanced the functional gene diversity and abundance.Partial redundancy analysis further revealed that changes in rare taxa and functional genes of soil microorganisms drive the alteration of soil P pools.These findings extend our understanding of the microbial mechanisms of P turnover.