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Broad-scale patterns of invertebrate richness and community composition in temporary rivers: effects of flow intermittence

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posted on 2015-01-29, 13:54 authored by T. Datry, S.T. Larned, K.M. Fritz, M.T. Bogan, Paul WoodPaul Wood, E.I. Meyer, A.N. Santos
Temporary rivers are increasingly common freshwater ecosystems, but there have been no global syntheses of their community patterns. In this study, we examined the responses of aquatic invertebrate communities to flow intermittence in 14 rivers from multiple biogeographic regions covering a wide range of flow intermittence and spatial arrangements of perennial and temporary reaches. Hydrological data were used to describe flow intermittence (FI, the proportion of the year without surface water) gradients. Linear mixed-effects models were used to examine the relationships between FI and community structure and composition. We also tested if communities at the most temporary sites were nested subsets of communities at the least temporary and perennial sites. Taxon richness decreased as FI increased and invertebrate communities became dominated by ubiquitous taxa. The number of resilient taxa (with high dispersal capacities) decreased with increased FI, whereas the number of resistant taxa (with adaptations to desiccation) was not related to FI. River-specific and river-averaged model comparisons indicated most FI-community relationships did not differ statistically among rivers. Community nestedness along FI gradients was detected in most rivers and there was little or no influence of the spatial arrangement of perennial and temporary reaches. These results indicate that FI is a primary driver of aquatic communities in temporary rivers, regardless of the biogeographic species pool. Community responses are largely due to resilience rather than resistance mechanisms. However, contrary to our expectations, resilience was not strongly influenced by spatial fragmentation patterns, suggesting that colonist sources other than adjacent perennial reaches were important. © 2013 The Authors.

Funding

Funding was provided by; the Water Agency RM & C, Temporary River Ecology Programme, New Zealand Ministry for Science and Innovation, Environmental Flows Programme (C01X0308), United States Dept of Defense grant (RC-1724) and the Environment Agency of England and Wales.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Ecography

Volume

37

Issue

1

Pages

94 - 104

Citation

DATRY, T. ... et al, 2014. Broad-scale patterns of invertebrate richness and community composition in temporary rivers: effects of flow intermittence. Ecography, 37 (1), pp. 94 - 104.

Publisher

Wiley / © The Authors. Ecography © Nordic Society Oikos

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2014

Notes

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: DATRY, T. ... et al, 2014. Broad-scale patterns of invertebrate richness and community composition in temporary rivers: effects of flow intermittence. Ecography, 37 (1), pp. 94 - 104, which has been published in final form at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0587.2013.00287.x . This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.

ISSN

0906-7590

eISSN

1600-0587

Language

  • en

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