Microbial biofilms were grown on strips of epoxy-impregnated filter paper submerged at four sites in water contaminated with metals from mine wastes. At two sample stations, the water was acidic (pH 3.1); the other sites were in a lake restored to a near neutral pH level by application of a crushed limestone slurry. During a 17-week study period, planktonic bacterial counts increased from 10' to 103 CFU/ml at all sites. Biofilm counts increased rapidly over the first 5 weeks and then leveled to 104 CFU/cm2 in the neutral pH system and 103 CFU/cm2 at the acidic sites. In each case, the biofilms bound Mn, Fe, Ni, and Cu in excess of the amounts adsorbed by control strips covered with nylon filters (pore size, 0.22 ,um) to exclude microbial growth; Co bound under neutral conditions but not under acidic conditions. Conditional adsorption capacity constants, obtained graphically from the data, showed that bioffilm metal uptake at a neutral pH level was enhanced by up to 12 orders of magnitude over acidic conditions. Similarly, adsorption strength values were usually higher at elevated pH levels. In thin sections of the biofilms, encapsulated bacterial cells were commonly found enmeshed together in microcolonies. The extracellular polymers often contained iron oxide precipitates which generated weak electron diffraction patterns with characteristic reflections for ferrihydrite (Fe2O3 H20) at d equaling 0.15 and 0.25 nm. At neutral pH levels, these deposits incorporated trace amounts of Si and exhibited a granular morphology, whereas acicular crystalloids containing S developed under acidic conditions.

Subtropical and tropical forests are biodiversity hotspots, and untangling the spatial scaling of their diversity is fundamental for understanding global species richness and conserving biodiversity essential to human well-being. However, scale-dependent diversity distributions among coexisting taxa remain poorly understood for heterogeneous environments in biodiverse regions. We show that diversity relations among 43 taxa—including plants, arthropods and microorganisms—in a mountainous subtropical forest are highly nonlinear across spatial scales. Taxon-specific differences in β-diversity cause under- or overestimation of overall diversity by up to 50% when using surrogate taxa such as plants. Similar relationships may apply to half of all (sub)tropical forests—including major biodiversity hotspots—where high environmental heterogeneity causes high biodiversity and species turnover. Our study highlights that our general understanding of biodiversity patterns has to be improved—and that much larger areas will be required than in better-studied lowland forests—to reliably estimate biodiversity distributions and devise conservation strategies for the world's biodiverse regions.

Saproxylic insects play an important part in decomposing dead wood in healthy forest ecosystems, but little is known about their role in the aftermath of large-scale forest mortality caused by pest insect outbreaks. We used window traps to study short-term changes in the abundance and community structure of saproxylic beetles following extensive mortality of mountain birch in sub-arctic northern Norway caused by an outbreak of geometrid moths. Three to five years after the outbreak, the proportion of obligate saproxylic individuals in the beetle community was roughly 10% higher in forest damaged by the outbreak than in undamaged forest. This was mainly due to two early-successional saproxylic beetle species. Facultative saproxylic beetles showed no consistent differences between damaged and undamaged forest. These findings would suggest a weak numerical response of the saproxylic beetle community to the dead wood left by the outbreak. We suggest that species-specific preferences for certain wood decay stages may limit the number of saproxylic species that respond numerically to an outbreak at a particular time, and that increases in responding species may be constrained by limitations to the amount of dead wood that can be exploited within a given timeframe (i.e. satiation effects). Low diversity of beetle species or slow development of larvae in our cold sub-arctic study region may also limit numerical responses. Our study suggests that saproxylic beetles, owing to weak numerical responses, may so far have played a minor role in decomposing the vast quantities of dead wood left by the moth outbreak.

Adherent epilithic microorganisms recovered from rocks submerged 10 to 20 cm in two different rivers were examined by electron microscopy and enumerated after dispersion in M-9 salts by viable plate counts. Bacterial cells concentrated in microcolonies were often observed attached to the surface of algae, cyanobacteria, and organic detritus. This structured communal mode of growth was common among epilithic microbial communities of different rock types. However, counts of heterotrophic bacteria from limestone (106 to 107 cfu/cm2) were 10- to 100-fold greater than corresponding values from granite, gabbro, rhyolite, basalt, and quartz. Cyanobacteria and algae were an order of magnitude less abundant compared with their bacterial counterparts. These variations in population densities of epilithic microorganisms present on different rocks were inversely related to mineral substrate hardness.Key words: epilithic microorganisms, mineral hardness.