Global trade, food production and ecosystem support : Making the interactions visible

Modern food production is a complex, globalized system in which what we eat and how it is produced are increasingly disconnected. This thesis examines some of the ways in which global trade has changed the mix of inputs to food and feed, and how this affects food security and our perceptions of sustainability. One useful indicator of the ecological impact of trade in food and feed products is the Appropriated Ecosystem Areas (ArEAs), which estimates the terrestrial and aquatic areas needed to produce all the inputs to particular products. The method is introduced in Paper I and used to calculate and track changes in imported subsidies to Swedish agriculture over the period 1962-1994. In 1994, Swedish consumers needed agricultural areas outside their national borders to satisfy more than a third of their food consumption needs. The method is then applied to Swedish meat production in Paper II to show that the term “Made in Sweden” is often a misnomer. In 1999, almost 80% of manufactured feed for Swedish pigs, cattle and chickens was dependent on imported inputs, mainly from Europe, Southeast Asia and South America. Paper III examines ecosystem subsidies to intensive aquaculture in two nations: shrimp production in Thailand and salmon production in Norway. In both countries, aquaculture was shown to rely increasingly on imported subsidies. The rapid expansion of aquaculture turned these countries from fishmeal net exporters to fishmeal net importers, increasingly using inputs from the Southeastern Pacific Ocean. As the examined agricultural and aquacultural production systems became globalized, levels of dependence on other nations’ ecosystems, the number of external supply sources, and the distance to these sources steadily increased. Dependence on other nations is not problematic, as long as we are able to acknowledge these links and sustainably manage resources both at home and abroad. However, ecosystem subsidies are seldom recognized or made explicit in national policy or economic accounts. Economic systems are generally not designed to receive feedbacks when the status of remote ecosystems changes, much less to respond in an ecologically sensitive manner. Papers IV and V discuss the problem of “masking” of the true environmental costs of production for trade. One of our conclusions is that, while the ArEAs approach is a useful tool for illuminating environmentally-based subsidies in the policy arena, it does not reflect all of the costs. Current agricultural and aquacultural production methods have generated substantial increases in production levels, but if policy continues to support the focus on yield and production increases alone, taking the work of ecosystems for granted, vulnerability can result. Thus, a challenge is to develop a set of complementary tools that can be used in economic accounting at national and international scales that address ecosystem support and performance. We conclude that future resilience in food production systems will require more explicit links between consumers and the work of supporting ecosystems, locally and in other regions of the world, and that food security planning will require active management of the capacity of all involved ecosystems to sustain food production.

Land Use, Freshwater Flows and Ecosystem Services in an Era of Global Change

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse interactions between freshwater flows, terrestrial ecosystems and human well-being. Freshwater management and policy has mainly focused on the liquid water part (surface and ground water run off) of the hydrological cycle including aquatic ecosystems. Although of great significance, this thesis shows that such a focus will not be sufficient for coping with freshwater related social-ecological vulnerability. The thesis illustrates that the terrestrial component of the hydrological cycle, reflected in vapour flows (or evapotranspiration), serves multiple functions in the human life-support system. A broader understanding of the interactions between terrestrial systems and freshwater flows is particularly important in light of present widespread land cover change in terrestrial ecosystems. The water vapour flows from continental ecosystems were quantified at a global scale in Paper I of the thesis. It was estimated that in order to sustain the majority of global terrestrial ecosystem services on which humanity depends, an annual water vapour flow of 63 000 km3/yr is needed, including 6800 km3/yr for crop production. In comparison, the annual human withdrawal of liquid water amounts to roughly 4000 km3/yr. A potential conflict between freshwater for future food production and for terrestrial ecosystem services was identified. Human redistribution of water vapour flows as a consequence of long-term land cover change was addressed at both continental (Australia) (Paper II) and global scales (Paper III). It was estimated that the annual vapour flow had decreased by 10% in Australia during the last 200 years. This is due to a decrease in woody vegetation for agricultural production. The reduction in vapour flows has caused severe problems with salinity of soils and rivers. The human-induced alteration of vapour flows was estimated at more than 15 times the volume of human-induced change in liquid water (Paper II).

Deposit-feeding in benthic macrofauna : Tracer studies from the Baltic Sea

A low content of organic matter, which is largely refractory in nature, is characteristic of most sediments, meaning that aquatic deposit-feeders live on a very poor food source. The food is derived mainly from sedimenting phytodetritus, and in temperate waters like the Baltic Sea, from seasonal phytoplankton blooms. Deposit-feeders are either bulk-feeders, or selective feeders, which preferentially ingest the more organic-rich particles in the sediment, including phytodetritus, microbes and meiofauna. The soft-bottom benthos of the Baltic Sea has low species biodiversity and is dominated by a few macrobenthic species, among which the most numerous are the two deposit-feeding amphipods Monoporeia affinis and Pontoporeia femorata, and the bivalve Macoma balthica. This thesis is based on laboratory experiments on the feeding of these three species, and on the priapulid Halicryptus spinulosus. Feeding by benthic animals is often difficult to observe, but can be effectively studied by the use of tracers. Here we used the radioactive isotope 14C to label food items and to trace the organic matter uptake in the animals, while the stable isotopes 13C and 15N were used to follow feeding on aged organic matter in the sediment. The abundance of M. balthica and the amphipods tends to be negatively correlated, i.e., fewer bivalves are found at sites with dense populations of amphipods, with the known explanation that newly settled M. balthica spat are killed by the amphipods. Whether the postlarvae are just accidentally killed, or also ingested after being killed was tested by labelling the postlarvae with 14C and Rhodamine B. Both tracer techniques gave similar evidence for predation on and ingestion of postlarval bivalves. We calculated that this predation was likely to supply less than one percent of the daily carbon requirement for M. affinis, but might nevertheless be an important factor limiting recruitment of M. balthica. The two amphipods M. affinis and P. femorata are partly vertically segregated in the sediment, but whether they also feed at different depths was unknown. By adding fresh 14C-labelled algae either on the sediment surface or mixed into the sediment, we were able to distinguish surface from subsurface feeding. We found M. affinis and P. femorata to be surface and subsurface deposit-feeders, respectively. Whether the amphipods also feed on old organic matter, was studied by adding fresh 14C-labelled algae on the sediment surface, and using aged, one-year-old 13C- and 15N-labelled sediment as deep sediment. Ingestion of old organic matter, traced by the stable isotopes, differed between the two species, with a higher uptake for P. femorata, suggesting that P. femorata utilises the older, deeper-buried organic matter to a greater extent. Feeding studies with juveniles of both M. affinis and P. femorata had not been done previously. In an experiment with the same procedure and treatments as for the adults, juveniles of both amphipod species were found to have similar feeding strategies. They fed on both fresh and old sediment, with no partitioning of food resources, making them likely to be competitors for the same food resource. Oxygen deficiency has become more wide-spread in the Baltic Sea proper in the last half-century, and upwards of 70 000km2 are now devoid of macrofauna, even though part of that area does not have oxygen concentrations low enough to directly kill the macrofauna. We made week-long experiments on the rate of feeding on 14C-labelled diatoms spread on the sediment surface in different oxygen concentrations for both the amphipod species, M. balthica and H. spinulosus. The amphipods were the most sensitive to oxygen deficiency and showed reduced feeding and lower survival at low oxygen concentrations. M. balthica showed reduced feeding at the lowest oxygen concentration, but no mortality increase. The survival of H. spinulosus was unaffected, but it did not feed, showing that it is not a surface deposit-feeder. We conclude that low oxygen concentrations that are not directly lethal, but reduce food intake, may lead to starvation and death in the longer term.

Adaptation and Constraint in the Plant Reproductive Phase

Conservatism is a central theme of organismic evolution. Related species share characteristics due to their common ancestry. Some concern have been raised among evolutionary biologists, whether such conservatism is an expression of natural selection or of a constrained ability to adapt. This thesis explores adaptations and constraints within the plant reproductive phase, particularly in relation to the evolution of fleshy fruit types (berries, drupes, etc.) and the seasonal timing of flowering and fruiting. The different studies were arranged along a hierarchy of scale, with general data sets sampled among seed plants at the global scale, through more specific analyses of character evolution within the genus Rhamnus s.l. L. (Rhamnaceae), to descriptive and experimental field studies in a local population of Frangula alnus (Rhamnaceae). Apart from the field study, this thesis is mainly based on comparative methods explicitly incorporating phylogenetic relationships. The comparative study of Rhamnus s.l. species included the reconstruction of phylogenetic hypotheses based on DNA sequences. Among geographically overlapping sister clades, biotic pollination was not correlated with higher species richness when compared to wind pollinated plants. Among woody plants, clades characterized by fleshy fruit types were more species rich than their dry-fruited sister clades, suggesting that the fleshy fruit is a key innovation in woody habitats. Moreover, evolution of fleshy fruits was correlated with a change to more closed (darker) habitats. An independent contrast study within Rhamnus s.l. documented allometric relations between plant and fruit size. As a phylogenetic constraint, allometric effects must be considered weak or non-existent, though, as they did not prevail among different subclades within Rhamnus s.l. Fruit size was correlated with seed size and seed number in F. alnus. This thesis suggests that frugivore selection on fleshy fruit may be important by constraining the upper limits of fruit size, when a plant lineage is colonizing (darker) habitats where larger seed size is adaptive. Phenological correlations with fruit set, dispersal, and seed size in F. alnus, suggested that the evolution of reproductive phenology is constrained by trade-offs and partial interdependences between flowering, fruiting, dispersal, and recruitment phases. Phylogenetic constraints on the evolution of phenology were indicated by a lack of correlation between flowering time and seasonal length within Rhamnus cathartica and F. alnus, respectively. On the other hand, flowering time was correlated with seasonal length among Rhamnus s.l. species. Phenological differences between biotically and wind pollinated angiosperms also suggested adaptive change in reproductive phenology.

Marine Seaweed Invasions : the Ecology of Introduced Fucus evanescens

Biological invasions are an important issue of global change and an increased understanding of invasion processes is of crucial importance for both conservation managers and international trade. In this thesis, I have studied the invasion of the brown seaweed Fucus evanescens, to investigate the fate and effect of a perennial, habitat-forming seaweed introduced to a coastal ecosystem. A long-term study of the spread of F. evanescens in Öresund (southern Sweden) showed that the species was able to expand its range quickly during the first 20 years after the introduction, but that the expansion has been slow during the subsequent 30 years. Both in Öresund and in Skagerrak, the species is largely restricted to sites where native fucoids are scarce. Laboratory experiments showed that the restricted spread of F. evanescens cannot be explained by the investigated abiotic factors (wave exposure and salinity), although salinity restricts the species from spreading into the Baltic Sea. Neither did I find evidence for that herbivores or epibiota provide biotic resistance to the invader. On the contrary, F. evanescens was less consumed by native herbivores, both compared to the native fucoids and to F. evanescens populations in its native range, and little overgrown by epiphytes. Instead, the restricted spread may be due to competition from native seaweeds, probably by pre-occupation of space, and the establishment has probably been facilitated by disturbance. The studies provided little support for a general enemy release in introduced seaweeds. The low herbivore consumption of F. evanescens in Sweden could not be explained by release from specialist herbivores. Instead, high levels of chemical anti-herbivore defence metabolites (phlorotannins) could explain the pattern of herbivore preference for different fucoids. Likewise, the low epibiotic colonisation of F. evanescens plants could be explained by high resistance to epibiotic survival. This shows that colonisation of invading seaweeds by native herbivores and epibionts depends on properties of the invading species. The large differences between fucoid species in their quality as food and habitat for epibionts and herbivores imply that invasions of such habitat-forming species may have a considerable effect on a number of other species in shallow coastal areas. However, since F. evanescens did not exclude other fucoids in its new range, its effect on the recipient biota is probably small.

Masking environmental feedback : Misfits between institutions and ecosystems in Belize and Thailand

The thesis analyses relationships between ecological and social systems in the context of coastal ecosystems. It examines human impacts from resource extraction and addresses management and governance behind resource exploitation. The main premises are that a lack of ecological knowledge leads to poor ecosystem management and that the dichotomy between social and natural systems is an artificial one. The thesis illustrates the importance of basing resource management on the ecological conditions of the resource and its ecosystem. It also demonstrates the necessity of accounting for the human dimension in ecosystem management and the challenges of organising human actions for sustainable use of ecosystem services in the face of economic incentives that push users towards short-term extraction. Many Caribbean coral reefs have undergone a shift from coral to macroalgal domination. An experiment on Glovers Reef Atoll in Belize manually cleared patch reefs in a no-take zone and a fished zone (Papers I and II). The study hypothesised that overfishing has reduced herbivorous fish populations that control macroalgae growth. Overall, management had no significant effect on fish abundance and the impacts of the algal reduction were short-lived. This illustrated that the benefits of setting aside marine reserves in impacted environments should not be taken for granted. Papers III and IV studied the development of the lobster and conch fisheries in Belize, and the shrimp farming industry in Thailand respectively. These studies found that environmental feedback can be masked to give the impression of resource abundance through sequential exploitation. In both cases inadequate property rights contributed to this unsustainable resource use. The final paper (V) compared the responses to changes in the resource by the lobster fisheries in Belize and Maine in terms of institutions, organisations and their role in management. In contrast to Maine’s, the Belize system seems to lack social mechanisms for responding effectively to environmental feedback. The results illustrate the importance of organisational and institutional diversity that incorporate ecological knowledge, respond to ecosystem feedback and provide a social context for learning from and adapting to change.

Human Abuses of Coral Reefs- Adaptive Responses and Regime Transitions

During the last few decades, coral reefs have become a disappearing feature of tropical marine environments, and those reefs that do remain are severely threatened. It is understood that humans have greately altered the environment under which these ecosystems previously have thrived and evoloved. Overharvesting of fish stocks, global warming and pollution are some of the most prominent threats, acting on coral reefs at several spatial and temporal scales. Presently, it is common that coral reefs have been degraded into alternative ecosystem regimes, such as macroalgae-dominated or sea urchin-barren. Although these ecosystems could potentially return to coral dominance in a long-term perspective, when considdering current conditions, it seems likely that they will persist in their degraded states. Thus, recovery of coral reefs cannot be taken for granted on a human timescale. Multiple stressors and disturbances, which are increasingly characteristic of coral reef environments today, are believed to act synergistically and produce ecological surprises. However, current knowledge of effects of compounded disturbances and stress is limited. Based on five papers, this thesis investigates the sublethal response of multiple stressors on coral physiology, as well as the effects of compounded stress and disturbance on coral reef structure and function. Adaptive responses to stress and disturbance in relation to prior experience are highlighted. The thesis further explores how inherent characteristics (traits) of corals and macroalgae may influence regime expression when faced with altered disturbance regimes, in particular overfishing, eutrophication, elevated temperature, and enhanced substrate availability. Finally, possibilities of affecting the resilience of macroalgae-dominaed reefs and shifting the community composition towards a coral-dominated regime are explored.

The juvenile three-spined stickleback : model organism for the study of estrogenic and androgenic endocrine disruption in laboratory and field

Industrial and domestic sewage effluents have been found to cause reproductive disorders in wild fish, often as a result of the interference of compounds in the effluents with the endocrine system. This thesis describes laboratory-based exposure experiments and a field survey that were conducted with juveniles of the three-spined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus. This small teleost is a common fish in Swedish coastal waters and was chosen as an alternative to non-native test species commonly used in endocrine disruption studies, which allows the comparison of field data with results from laboratory experiments. The aim of this thesis was to elucidate 1) if genetic sex determination and differentiation can be disturbed by natural and synthetic steroid hormones and 2) whether this provides an endpoint for the detection of endocrine disruption, 3) to evaluate the applicability of specific estrogen- and androgen-inducible marker proteins in juvenile three-spined sticklebacks, 4) to investigate whether estrogenic and/or androgenic endocrine disrupting activity can be detected in effluents from Swedish pulp mills and domestic sewage treatment plants and 5) whether such activity can be detected in coastal waters receiving these effluents. Laboratory exposure experiments found juvenile three-spined sticklebacks to be sensitive to water-borne estrogenic and androgenic steroid substances. Intersex – the co-occurrence of ovarian and testicular tissue in gonads – was induced by 17β-estradiol (E2), 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2), 17α-methyltestosterone (MT) and 5α-dihydrotestosterone (DHT). The first two weeks after hatching was the phase of highest sensitivity. MT was ambivalent by simultaneously eliciting masculinizing and feminizing effects. When applying a DNA-based method for genetic sex identification, it was found that application of MT only during the first two weeks after hatching caused total and apparently irreversible development of testis in genetic females. E2 caused gonad type reversal from male to female. E2 and EE2 induced vitellogenin - the estrogen-responsive yolk precursor protein, while DHT and MT induced spiggin – the androgen-responsive glue protein of the stickleback. None of the effluents from two pulp mills and two domestic sewage treatment plants had any estrogenic or androgenic activity. Juvenile three-spined sticklebacks were collected during four subsequent summers at the Swedish Baltic Sea coast in recipients of effluents from pulp mills and a domestic sewage treatment plant as well as remote reference sites. No sings of endocrine disruption were observed at any site, when studying gonad development or marker proteins, except for a deviation of sex ratios at a reference site. The three-spined stickleback – with focus on the juvenile stage – was found to be a sensitive species suitable for the study of estrogenic and androgenic endocrine disruption.

Sexual selection in Pomatoschistus – nests, sperm competition, and paternal care

Sexual selection arises through variation in reproductive success. This thesis investigates different aspects important in sexual selection, namely nest building, sperm competition, paternity and paternal care, and their mutual interrelationships. In the studied species, the sand goby (Pomatoschistus minutus) and the common goby (Pomatoschistus microps), sperm competition did arise when small males, so called sneakers, sneaked into other males nests and released sperm. They seemed to use female behaviour as their prime cue for a sneaking opportunity. However, also nest-holders, both with and without eggs, were found to fertilize eggs in the nests of other males. Clearly, nest-holding males tried to prevent other males from spreading their sperm in their nests, since they showed aggression towards such males. A nest building experiment indicated that the small nest-openings found in the sneaker male treatment were sexually selected through protection against sneaking or by female choice. Yet, no behavioural or genetical support for the hypothesis that the nest functions as a physical or visual defence, or that sneaker males prefer to sneak upon nests with wide nest-openings, were found in the other studies. Still, individual nest-holding males showed a higher mucus preparation effort inside the nest in the presence of a sneaker male than when alone. In close relatives, such mucus contains sperm, suggesting an importance in sperm competition. However, the mucus may also have pheromone and anti-bacterial functions and may constitute a mating effort, as found in other gobies. Both a behavioural and a mate choice experiment suggested that the males were not less eager to spawn in the presence of a sneaker male. Sneak intrusion did not affect nest defence, fanning or filial cannibalism, nor had paternity an effect on filial cannibalism. This and various life history aspects, together with the fact that the parasitic male only fertilized a fraction of the clutches, would predict females to ignore sneaker males. This was also the case, as the presence of sneaker males was found not to affect female spawning decision. Still, several females spawned in two nests, which coincided with parasitic spawnings, suggesting a cost of disturbance for the females and thus a substantial cost to the nest-holding males in terms of lost mating success. However, females paid attention to other traits in their choice of mate since spawning was associated with sand volume of the nest, but not with nest-opening width. Also, female (but not male) courtship was correlated with partial clutch filial cannibalism, indicating that females are able to anticipate future male cannibalism. In a partial correlation of nest opening, sand volume, male courtship display, displacement fanning and male size, a large number of traits were correlated both positively and negatively with regard to how we may expect them to be appreciated by females. For instance, males which fan well also build large nests or display intensely (but not both). Together with all the other results of this thesis, this shows the entangled selection pressures working on breeding animals, as well as the different male and female tactics employed to maximize their reproduction.

The evolution of mating rates in Pieris napi

In the green-veined white butterfly (Pieris napi), females obtain direct fitness benefits from mating multiply and studies have shown that fitness increases seemingly monotonically with number of matings. The reason is that at mating males transfer a large nutritious gift (a so called nuptial gift) to the females that the females use to increase both their fecundity and lifespan. In addition, if exposed to poor food conditions as larvae, females mature at a smaller size compared to males. Accordingly, it was suggested that smaller females could compensate for their size through nuptial feeding by, for instance, mating more frequently. We did not find any support for that hypothesis. On the contrary, larger females remated sooner and had a higher lifetime number of matings. Neither were smaller females able to compensate in any other way, because singly mated females and multiply mated females suffered to the same extent from their smaller size. This thesis also shows that despite the positive relationship between fitness and number of matings, there is a large variation in female mating frequency in wild populations and about every second female mates only once or twice. This variation is not dependent on how often females get courted by males, because female mating frequency was shown not to be affected by male courtship intensity. Hence, the reason for the low mating frequency could either be that males have evolved the ability to manipulate females to mate at a suboptimal rate as a measure of protection against sperm competition, or alternatively, that female mating rate is suppressed by some costs. Using two selection lines, artificially selected for either a high or a low mating rate, we showed that the variation in mating rate was mainly a female trait because which line the females were from affected their mating rate whereas which line the male was from did not. This implies that females mate at a low rate due to hidden costs or due to constraints. The same study also showed that females with a high "intrinsic" mating rate lived shorter, but only when denied remating. This led us to test the hypothesis that the cost females face is to have the ability to mate at a high rate but the cost is only paid when remating opportunities are scarce. However, we found no support for such an idea, because females with a high intrinsic mating rate held in a cold environment where the butterflies were prevented from flying and feeding did not live shorter. Neither was there an effect of a female’s mating rate on her ability to quickly break down and convert male nutrient gifts into egg material. Female mating rate did, on the other hand, affect dispersal tendency, with low mating rate females being more inclined to fly between different habitats. The underlying reason for this is still to be explored.

Dispersal in free-living, marine, benthic nematodes : passive or active processes?

Meiofauna, and especially marine nematodes are common in sediments around the world. Despite very wide ranging distributions in many nematode species, little is presently known about their dispersal mechanisms shaping these patterns. Rafting, and perhaps ballast water transport has been suggested as viable means for nematode long-range transport. On a much smaller scale other processes have been suggested for their dispersal. They generally include some form of passive suspension into the water column and later on a passive, haphazard settling back towards the bottom. Small-scale phenomena in nematode dispersal were studied by conducting a series of studies at Askö field station, Trosa Archipelago, Baltic proper. Studied aspects were one case of macrofaunal influence on nematode dispersal rate, using an amphipod, Monoporeia affinis as disturbing agent, and three different studies on mechanisms related to settling. The experiments were conducted both in laboratory and field settings. The amphipod Monoporeia affinis did not exert any influence on the dispersal rate in the nematodes. The nematode dispersal was only an effect of time, in the aspect that the more time that past, the more nematodes dispersed from their place of origin. The settling experiments revealed that nematodes do have an active component in their settling behaviour, as they were able to exert influence on the spot where they were to settle. They were able to choose settling spot in response to the food quality of the sediment. It also became evident that contrary to common belief, nematodes are able to extend their presence in the water column far beyond the times that would be predicted considering settling velocities and hydrodynamic conditions alone.