Florence, was a brilliant Italian zoologist and ethologist, and one of the most well-known and active experts on alien aquatic species. Since her masters degree in Biology (1979) and her PhD in Animal Biology (Ethology) (1987), both obtained at the University of Florence, Francesca studied the behaviour and ecology of aquatic animals. Initially, most of her research concerned social recognition in crustaceans: she was particularly renowned for her studies on hermit crabs and crayfish, her principal model organisms.Then, from the 1990's onwards she worked in the field of invasion biology, her main interest until her death. Francesca devoted herself with enthusiasm and energy, not only to the problem of the invasive red swamp crayfish Procambarus clarkii, by revealing several aspects of its behavioral ecology, and by developing with her collaborators different methods for its control, but she gradually became an international expert on crayfish and more generally on aquatic alien species. In all aspects of her life, she was constantly driven by a continuous curiosity, thirst for knowledge and a will to face challenges; this was expressed by exploring and frequently opening new research fields. And she transmitted her drive and passion to the many students she supervised. One of the last papers with her contribution is published in this issue of Aquatic Invasions by Vera Gonçalves, her Portuguese PhD student working on the interaction between Procambarus clarkii and the zebra mussel Dreissena polymorpha, an issue of recent increasing interest in Francesca's team.
Following disturbance events vegetation can either be resilient and return to its original state, or there can be shifts in vegetation composition and abundance patterns that may indicate alternative equilibiria. We conducted a long-term fi eld experiment that simulated impact by aerially transported volcanic ejecta (tephra) in a Sphagnum-dominated plant community in order to test the eff ects of this type of large-scale disturbance. Sixty plots of 1.4 ϫ 1.4 m were established at Sarobetsu mire in northern Hokkaido, Japan and subjected to seven treatments (including the control) with natural tephra or ground glass shards diff ering in grain size, layer thickness and season of application. Water chemistry and vegetation were surveyed before tephra application and during fi ve and eight years after the perturbation, respectively. Leaching of ions from fi ne-grained glass shards caused a sustained increase of soil water pH and electric conductivity. Under coarser materials water quality diff ered little from the control, but a short-lived peak of potassium suggested that mechanisms like nutrient release from decomposing plant material may infl uence water chemistry after volcanic disturbance. Th e perturbation initially reduced the cover of the dominant functional group (Sphagnum mosses) in all treatments; vascular plants were less aff ected. All species were able to recover by growing through the tephra, and open tephra surfaces were colonized by ubiquitous cryptogams, but not by spermatophytes. In contrast to the overall resilient behaviour of the vegetation, in some plots that received natural tephra an alternative state with high cover of the dwarf shrub Myrica gale developed. Th e patterns indicated that physical and chemical properties of the tephra determined the initial eff ects on plants, but that stochastic processes contributed to subsequent succession. Th ese are likely to have eff ects on ecosystem functioning, e.g. hydrological processes and carbon sequestration.
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