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The influence of natural flow regimes on macroinvertebrate assemblages in a semiarid Mediterranean basin

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posted on 2015-04-24, 12:37 authored by O. Belmar, J. Velasco, C. Gutierrez-Canovas, A. Mellado-Diaz, A. Millan, Paul WoodPaul Wood
The investigation of flow-ecology relationships constitutes the basis for the development of environmental flow criteria. The need to understand hydrology-ecology linkages in natural systems has increased owing to the prospect of climate change and flow regime management, especially in water-scarce areas such as Mediterranean basins. Our research quantified the macroinvertebrate community response at family, genus and species level to natural flow regime dynamics in freshwater streams of a Mediterranean semiarid basin (Segura River, SE Spain) and identified the flow components that influence the composition and richness of biotic assemblages. Flow stability and minimum flows were the principal hydrological drivers of macroinvertebrate assemblages, whereas the magnitude of average and maximum flows had a limited effect. Perennial stable streams were characterized by flow sensitive lotic taxa (Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera) and intermittent streams by predominately lentic taxa (Odonata, Coleoptera, Heteroptera and Diptera). Relatively minor biological changes were recorded for intermediate flow regime classes along a gradient of flow stability. Seasonal variation and minimum flows are key hydrological components that need to be considered for river management and environmental flows in the Segura River basin and other Mediterranean basins. The anthropogenic modification of these parameters, due to both human activities and climate change, would probably lead to significant changes in the structure and composition of communities in perennial stable streams. This would be characterized by a reduction of flow sensitive Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera and Trichoptera taxa and an increase in more resilient Odonata, Coleoptera, Heteroptera and Diptera taxa. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Funding

We wish to thank the University of Murcia and the Fundación Séneca for their financial support to Óscar Belmar and Cayetano Gutiérrez-Cánovas, respectively, by means of predoctoral grants; the Euromed iterran ean Institute of Water for its support to the project ‘Hydro- logical classification of the rivers and streams in the Segura basin and associated macroinvertebrate communities’; the Confederación Hidrográfica del Segura for providing the climatic data and the SIMPA model; and the Instituto Geográfico Nacional as well as the Instituto Geológico y Minero de España for the GIS data.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Ecohydrology

Volume

6

Issue

3

Pages

363 - 379

Citation

BELMAR, O. ... et al, 2013. The influence of natural flow regimes on macroinvertebrate assemblages in a semiarid Mediterranean basin. Ecohydrology, 6 (3), pp. 363 - 379

Publisher

© John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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

2013

Notes

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: BELMAR, O. ... et al, 2013. The influence of natural flow regimes on macroinvertebrate assemblages in a semiarid Mediterranean basin. Ecohydrology, 6 (3), pp. 363 - 379, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/eco.1274. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.

ISSN

1936-0584

eISSN

1936-0592

Language

  • en