Vol 48, No 1 (2017)

The results of landscape-ecological surveys in the Komsomolsk Nature Reserve (the Lower Amur region) have been used as a basis for empirical–statistical modeling of the spatial organization of floristic phratries and forest types that characterize the Amur sub-Pacific as part of the continental marginal part of the megaecotone. Trends in the evolutionary forest-forming processes are described. Mechanisms have been revealed for the origin of buffer forest communities, including spruce–broadleaf and nemoral fir–spruce forests of the Manchurian–Okhotian phratry. Forests of this phenomenal buffer flora are distinguished by extremely high parameters of structural and functional development and have reached the state approaching the evolutionary climax. The previously advanced concepts of the Pacific ecotone of Northern Eurasia as a focus of evolutionary processes in the continental biosphere have been confirmed.

Changes in parameters of species richness and dominance in parasite communities of perch have been analyzed in the age series of hosts from two water bodies, Lake Gusinoe and Chivyrkui Bay (Lake Baikal), at the levels of a host individual (infracommunity) and a host age group (set of infracommunities). The species richness of parasite infracommunities has been found to increase in both age series due to decreasing proportions of fish affected by no more than three to four parasite species and increasing proportion of fish parasitized by more than four to five species.

A critical analysis of studies addressing fluctuating asymmetry (FA) of plant leaves, published recently in Russia, demonstrated that most of these studies are based on insufficiently substantiated assumptions, employ outdated or inadequate methodology and do not contain sufficient information to support the use of the reported results in further reviews and meta-analyses. Contrary to widespread opinion, the current level of knowledge does not allow practical use of FA for bioindication. This use will only be possible after controlled experiments verify the cause-and-effect relationships between the levels of FA and the impacts of different stressors on plants. An adequate assessment of FA requires repeated, high precision measurements, which should be conducted blindly. In this treatise, I discuss the prospective directions for FA research in plants and provide recommendations on experimental design, data analysis and presentation of the results in publications.

The article characterizes the changes in the species composition and population of birds of the boreal mountain-valley landscape in connection with disturbances caused by extraction of gold (based on researched material in the Bureya Mountains, Far East). It displays the ratio of faunal assemblages and layered bird groupings in the technogenic habitats (lixiviation and open-pit dump sites of 1–5 years of age and 35–40 years of age) and undisturbed sites of river valleys. On the basis of coefficient of inclusion and similarity, we compared the populations of birds of different habitats either on species composition or taking into account the density of species.

This paper analyzes the patterns of the formation of the aquatic and semiaquatic bird species population under the conditions of the altitudinal zonality of the Putorana Plateau. The population density and abundance of a number of background species was ascertained to decrease from the subalpine belt towards the forest and alpine belt. The bird population density in all the considered aquatic and semiaquatic habitats was revealed to change in a rather narrow range of values: the maximal population density indicator in aquatic and semiaquatic habitats is only 1.9 times higher than the minimal indicator. In the mountainous Subarctic region with a radial macrosymmetry, the spatial dynamics of abundance has a concentrically centrifugal nature in many aquatic and semiaquatic bird species.