Lacustrine Arcellinida (Testate Lobose Amoebae) as Bioindicators of Arsenic Contamination: A new tool for Environmental Risk Assessment

Abstract

It is a pleasure to finally express my gratitude to all the people that have, directly or indirectly, contributed to the success of this project. First and foremost, I owe my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Dr. R. Tim Patterson for accepting me as his Ph.D. student, offering countless opportunities to grow as a researcher and as a person, sharing his wealth of knowledge in the fields of micropaleontology and environmental geology, and for being an outstanding mentor. I thank him greatly for his continuous support and guidance throughout the project and for his constant drive to publish and share my results. Similarly, it is difficult to see this project coming together the way it did without the admirable mentorship of my co-supervisor, Dr. Jennifer Galloway. I thank her for always pushing me to exceed my limits and achieve excellence. My thanks are also extended to the members of my Ph.D. defense committee for taking the time out of their busy schedules to evaluate the dissertation and attend the thesis defense.

Metalimnion as an ecotone in stratified freshwater lakes: A case study on benthic testate amoebae in Lake Valdayskoe

“…The ordination of species and morphotraits based on RDA shows that 50.3% (for species) and 64.6% (for morphotraits) of the variance is explained by the environmental variables which we studied. The results reveal that the major environmental variables controlling both species and morphotrait structure are granulometry and depth, which is in line with previous results (Ju et al., 2014; Nasser, 2020; Tolonen et al., 1994). The low impact of DO contradicts previously reported results (Charqueño Celis et al., 2019; Regalado et al., 2018), and we explain this by the rather high DO in the studied sites.…”

“…The results reveal that the major environmental variables controlling both species and morphotrait structure are granulometry and depth, which is in line with previous results (Ju et al, 2014;Nasser, 2020;Tolonen et al, 1994). The low impact of DO contradicts previously reported results (Charqueño Celis et al, 2019;Regalado et al, 2018), and we explain this by the rather high DO in the studied sites.…”