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Assessing chironomid head capsule concentrations in sediment using exotic markers

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Abstract

All the chironomid head capsules in a sediment sample are normally extracted to determine the concentration of chironomids. This method may be tedious since a sample may contain hundreds of head capsules. We have tested a method to estimate the concentration of chironomids in sub-samples and assessed the potential taxonomic bias generated when only a part of each sediment sample is sorted. To allow calculation of concentrations, a known quantity of exotic markers (microspheres with diameter 149–350 μm) was added to the sample. The number of head capsules in the total sample was estimated according to the ratio between the retrieved numbers of microspheres to head capsules in the sub-sample. According to our results, the chironomid concentrations estimated from sub-samples were statistically similar to the concentrations obtained by processing the full sample. Also, a sub-sample containing at least 75 head capsules was likely to have similar taxa abundances and taxa richness as the full sediment sample. These results indicate that exotic markers may be added to chironomid samples for representative concentration estimation. The method may potentially be used for other biological groups than chironomids.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Jostein Bakke for aid in the lake coring and Karoline Klausen for doing part of the tedious chironomid sorting. We acknowledge Bangs Laboratories for information about the microspheres and Nicolas Rolland for producing Fig. 1. We are especially grateful to Ian Walker, Jon Sweetman, and John P. Smol for constructive comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by Norwegian Research Council grants to Gaute Velle (projects 133462/720 and 169766).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bergen Museum, University of Bergen, Muséplass 3, 5007, Bergen, Norway

    Gaute Velle

  2. Department of Biology, University of Bergen, Allegaten 41, Bergen, 5007, Norway

    Gaute Velle

  3. Centre d’études nordiques, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada, G1K 7P4

    Gaute Velle

  4. Institut National de Recherche Scientifique (INRS), Centre Eau, Terre et Environment (ETE), Québec, 490 De La Couronne, Canada, G1K 9A9

    Isabelle Larocque

  5. NCCR Climate, Erlachstrasse 9A, Bern, 3012, Switzerland

    Isabelle Larocque

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  1. Gaute Velle
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  2. Isabelle Larocque
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Correspondence to Gaute Velle.

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Velle, G., Larocque, I. Assessing chironomid head capsule concentrations in sediment using exotic markers. J Paleolimnol 40, 165–177 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-007-9149-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-007-9149-3

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