Figure 1 - available from: Hydrobiologia
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
Source publication
China’s five largest freshwater lakes (Poyang, Dongting, Taihu, Hongze, and Chaohu) are all located in lowland regions and differ greatly in lake morphology, hydrology, and water chemistry. However, basic knowledge of diversity patterns and factors driving macroinvertebrate community structure is lacking. We analyzed the composition and diversity o...
Similar publications
Comprehensive early detection monitoring programs for aquatic invasive fishes, bivalves & select benthic macroinvertebrates are currently being conducted throughout the Laurentian Great Lakes. To improve the sampling efficiency of survey efforts, we evaluated three amphipod trap types. These included two novel designs and one previously published d...
Citations
... The impacts of anthropogenic eutrophication on macroinvertebrates and other aquatic organism were frequently reported by previous studies, which all highlighted that eutrophication can result in the reduction or complete absence of intolerant species and the increase in tolerant species, ultimately leading to significant alterations in local richness and taxonomic structure of aquatic assemblages (Donohue et al. 2009;Menezes et al. 2015;Ger et al. 2016;Zorzal-Almeida et al. 2021;Li et al. 2022). In the studied lake, previous studies also showed that eutrophicationrelated disturbances play an important role in modifying macroinvertebrate assemblages; e.g., the remaining leastdisturbed region (i.e., macrophytic region) still supported high abundance of gastropods, whereas the eutrophic region was dominated by tolerant tubificids and chironomids (Cai et al. 2017;Ji et al. 2020). Serious eutrophication usually leads to dramatic habitat modifications, e.g., harmful algal blooms, oxygen depletion, and habitat loss. ...
... the simplified substrate composition dominated by fineparticle silt and clay, create limitations for the survival of sensitive invertebrate species (Qin et al. 2013;Jiang et al. 2019). Consequently, tolerant species such as tubificids and chironomids gradually replace the sensitive species and reach exceptionally high density and biomass as eutrophication intensifies (Timm et al. 2006;Cai et al. 2017). Therefore, it is not surprising that we observed significant differences in the taxonomic composition among the three regions that experienced different levels of eutrophication. ...
Functional trait measures have the potential to represent local habitat conditions and are considered promising tools for biomonitoring and bioassessment programs. Macroinvertebrates are an ecologically significant group in freshwater ecosystems and possess a range of functional traits which are employed to assess ecological quality. Nevertheless, the relationships between macroinvertebrate functional structure and anthropogenic disturbances remain poorly understood. In this study, we conducted a comparison of how functional trait-based and taxonomy-based composition of macroinvertebrate assemblages responded to eutrophication in Lake Taihu, a typical large eutrophic freshwater lake in China. Specifically, we examined both the taxonomy-based and trait-based compositions of benthic macroinvertebrates varied along the eutrophication gradient. Eutrophication was associated with remarkable decreases in the abundance of gastropod taxa and increases in Oligochaeta and Chironomidae. Ten categories belonging to six traits were significantly different among three site groups. The eutrophic and transition sites showed higher abundance of Size2, burrowers, and integument-respiration organisms than macrophytic sites, whereas abundance of Size1, conical-shaped, sprawlers, scrapers, and lung-respiration were higher in macrophytic sites. Both taxonomic (36.8%) and functional compositions (39.8%) of macroinvertebrate assemblages were influenced by the same variables: CODMn and transparency. Our study showed that macroinvertebrate trait-based approaches can be considered a useful supplement to traditional taxonomic approach for biomonitoring programs in freshwater lakes.
... Spatial factors such as geographic isolation among lakes and/ or their communication with other water bodies (Obolewski, 2011;Vilmi et al., 2016) may lead to higher differences in macroinvertebrate composition (Hamerlik et al., 2014), while geographically closer lakes may harbour more similar assemblages (Cai et al., 2017;Heino & Tolonen, 2017;Tolonen et al., 2018). The connectivity of lakes may affect lake assemblage structure through the continuous input of immigrants (Heino et al., 2015). ...
... The connectivity of lakes may affect lake assemblage structure through the continuous input of immigrants (Heino et al., 2015). The importance of spatial factors varies with the spatial extent and dispersal ability (Cai et al., 2017;Tolonen et al., 2018), which eventually affect their potential to colonize new areas Obolewski, 2011). Considering the high dispersal ability of many benthic macroinvertebrates (De Bie et al., 2012), spatial factors may homogenize assemblage composition at short extents, while environmental factors play a major role in the organisms' establishment at broader extents Vilmi et al., 2016). ...
Coastal freshwater lakes are distinctive landscape features in South America, and benthic macroinvertebrates are key to their ecological functioning. Identifying the main factors driving the assemblage structure of benthic macroinvertebrate is thus important for the development of management strategies in these ecosystems. However, studies on the drivers of macroinvertebrate assemblages are scarce in subtropical coastal lakes of the Neotropical region. Here, we evaluated the role of environmental (morphometric and water chemistry variables) and spatial factors in the assemblage structure of benthic macroinvertebrates in 36 coastal freshwater lakes in Brazil from 2008 to 2015. Macroinvertebrate family richness increased with ammonium, pH and water transparency, and decreased with nitrate content (slope ≈1 for all significant variables). Environmental factors explained most of the variation in macroinvertebrate composition (16%) compared to spatial ones (3.4%). In specific, Dugesiidae, Hydrobiidae, Corbiculidae, Sphaeromatidae, Noteridae, Hydropsychidae, Culicidae and Ceratopogonidae predominated in lakes with lower conductivity (<100 μS/cm) and higher water transparency (>1 m). Spatial factors summarized differences in macroinvertebrate assemblages between isolated and connected lakes. Although none of the lakes studied are directly impacted by organic pollution, our results suggest that benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages in subtropical coastal lakes are mostly structured by water chemistry, likely reflecting the major trends in land use along the study region (transition from agriculture to urban areas). We recommend that the conservation of macroinvertebrate biodiversity in southern Brazilian coastal lakes focus on the monitoring of water chemistry factors associated with human‐based land use.
... The decline and spatial distribution of Corbicula fluminea (Asian clams) have received a great concern for the fisheries of Taihu (Han et al. 2019). Among the five large lowland lakes near the Yangtze River, Taihu was characterized by high β-diversity, which suggests high spatial heterogeneity in the invertebrate community and the occurrence of brackish or saline species, including polychaete worms and burrowing crustaceans (Cai et al. 2017b). The spatial distribution of benthic invertebrates is considered to reflect the trophic state of the lake region in Taihu (e.g., Cai et al. 2017aCai et al. , 2012Chen et al. 2018a;Xie et al. 2016). ...
... EC was the highest in the north, followed by the west, and TN concentrations were higher in the north and west than in the south and east. The northern and western regions, especially northern bays (Meiliang, Zhushan), have often been shown to contain high concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus from domestic and agricultural areas (e.g., Cai et al. 2017b;Li et al. 2022) and consequently have been subjected to severe occurrence of cyanobacterial blooms every year (Jia et al. 2019;Li et al. 2022;Shi et al. 2017). The tendency of higher concentrations of heavy metals (Ni, Cu, Cd) in the sediment of the north and west in this study also agrees with previous studies that showed higher levels of heavy metals and their toxicity in the northern bays in Taihu (Niu et al. 2015;Zhang et al. 2017). ...
The river–lake transitional zone provides a unique environment for the biological community and can reduce pollution inputs in lake ecosystems from their catchments. To explore environmental conditions with high purification potential in Lake Taihu and indicator species, we examined the river-to-lake changes in water and sediment quality and benthic invertebrate communities in the transitional zone of four regions. The spatial variations in the environment and invertebrate community observed in this study followed the previously reported patterns in Taihu; the northern and western regions were characterized by higher nutrient concentrations in water, higher heavy metal concentrations in sediment, and higher total invertebrate density and biomass dominated by pollution-tolerant oligochaetes and chironomids. Although nutrient concentrations were low and transparency was high in the eastern region, the taxon richness was the lowest there, which disagreed with the previous findings and might be due to a poor cover of macrophytes in this study. The river-to-lake change was large in the southern region for water quality and the invertebrate community. Water circulation induced by strong wind-wave actions in the lake sites of the southern region is assumed to have promoted photosynthetic and nutrient uptake activities and favored invertebrates that require well-aerated conditions such as polychaetes and burrowing crustaceans. Invertebrates usually adapted to brackish and saline environments are suggested to be indicators of a well-circulated environment with active biogeochemical processes and a less eutrophic state in Taihu, and wind-wave actions are key to maintaining such a community and natural purifying processes.
... Benthic macroinvertebrates, mainly composed of Oligochaeta, Hirudinea, Gastropoda, Insecta, and Malacostraca, are one of the most diverse and abundant taxa (Cai et al. 2017;Krajenbrink et al. 2019). Functionally, they play an important role in many ecosystem processes such as detritus decomposition and food supply to vertebrate consumers (De la Fuente et al. 2018;Schneid et al. 2017;Silva et al. 2018;Slimani et al. 2019). ...
To know well the ecosystem health status of Qin River, a main tributary of the Yellow River and the largest river in Jincheng region, macroinvertebrates from 49 sampling sites in the Qin River and its largest tributary, the Dan River, were investigated, and community characteristics were analyzed in the autumn of 2020; a Benthic index of Biotic Integrity (B-IBI) was established based on four metrics by a series of steps. The results showed that a total of 38 species of macroinvertebrates were collected and identified, belonging to 6 orders and 19 families, consisting of 17 Insecta species, 13 Gastropoda species, and 4 Oligochaeta species. Four species in Insecta belonged to EPT (E, Ephemeroptera; P, Plecoptera; T, Trichoptera); 10 species in Insecta belonged to Chironomidae and Tipulidae families. All species in Gastropoda belonged to Basematophora order, and, especially, Bellamya aeruginosa is highly tolerant to nutrients. All species in Oligochaetes belonged to Tubificidae family, which indicates eutrophication and low-dissolved oxygen. The dominant species in the study were Ephemera orientalis, Chironomus riparius Meigen, and Limnodrilus claparedianus. The final B-IBI scores varied from 0.75 to 3.75, with 5 sites in “excellent,” 10 sites in “good,” 10 sites in “normal” status, 12 sites in “poor” status, 12 sites in “very poor.” “Very poor” and “poor” sites were mainly located in the middle reach of the Qin River and upper-middle reach of the Dan River in Jincheng region. B-IBI strongly differentiated the reference sites and impaired sites, suggesting the suitability of the B-IBI in the Qin River basin. Significantly negative correlations between NH4⁺–N, TN, and B-IBI indicated the B-IBI characterized well the influence of nitrogen pollution.
... As macroinvertebrates data were not normally distributed so that log(x + 1) transformation was performed prior to the analysis. Oneway analysis of the variance was used to compare the difference among environmental parameters, macroinvertebrates diversity, and biomass of various types of lakes (Cai et al., 2017). T-test was used to compare the difference between macrophyte coverage absence and presence data. ...
Biodiversity, which strengthens ecosystem stability, ecosystem function, and ecosystem services, is threatened by anthropogenic perturbation and climate change worldwide. However, despite the study of the role of biodiversity in multiple facets of freshwater ecosystems, the linkages between macroinvertebrates diversity and ecosystem functioning have not yet been well-assessed in eutrophication gradients of lowland river-floodplain systems. In this study, we have examined the relationship between macroinvertebrates diversity (species diversity, functional diversity, phylogenetic diversity) and macroinvertebrates biomass across the three typically featured eutrophication gradients: "MACROPHYTE," "TRANSITION," and "PHYTOPLANKTON," of floodplain lakes in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River (China). Our results suggest that macroinvertebrates diversity in three different lacustrine conditions, biomass, and the relationship between diversity and biomass varied along eutrophication gradients. Functional richness and variance (divergence in taxon community) were the two important macroinvertebrate diversity indices, which accounted for the largest amount of variation in the biomass (63% in PHYTOPLANKTON lakes and 57% in MACROPHYTE lakes, respectively). We also found that the macrophyte coverage is more important than the relative abundance in maintaining the macroinvertebrates diversity and biomass in lowland Yangtze floodplain lake systems, while the relative abundance of macrophyte would change the BEF relationship. Our results demonstrate the functional performance of Yangtze River lakes, which would change with increased nutrient loading and decreased macrophyte coverage and would highlight the significance of the restoration of macrophytes to reduce nutrient loads.
... While in Poyang Lake (2012), 42 species were collected with bivalvia as the dominant taxa both in abundance and biomass, chironomids and oligochaetes account for 30.95% of the total species (Cai et al., 2014). In the eutrophichypereutrophic Chaohu Lake and black water aggregation areas of Taihu Lake, chironomids and oligochaetes were dominated (Cai et al., 2017;. These differences reflected that trophic status would shape the community structure of macroinvertebrates. ...
Pond ecosystem not only provides essential agricultural irrigation and washing water, but also stores rainwater in rainy seasons. However, the pollution status of pond system around Poyang Lake was seldom studied. Here, we investigated the water and sediment chemical characteristics, phytoplankton and benthic macroinvertebrates, as well as habitat conditions of 23 rural ponds around Poyang Lake. Results showed that water quality of 91.3% rural ponds was inferior V (National Surface Water Environmental Quality Standard of China) with the main pollutants of total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP). In rural ponds, fifty-nine species of phytoplankton and nineteen benthic macroinvertebrates were identified, Cyanophyta and Chlorophyta were the dominant phytoplankton groups, and oligochaetes and aquatic insects were the most dominant taxa among all benthic macroinvertebrates. And an integrated evaluation system based on chemical, biological and physical index was set up to assess the pollution status of rural ponds. According to the composite integrity index, 2 rural ponds (8.70%) were classified as Very poor, 9 rural ponds (39.13%) were classified as Poor, 9 rural ponds (39.13%) were classified as Fair, and 3 rural ponds (13.04%) were classified as Good. And the composite integrity index in 4 counties followed the sequence of Xingzi County (0.598, Fair) > Jinxian County (0.425, Fair) > Xinjian County (0.379, Poor) > Nanchang County (0.335, Poor). Therefore, measures should be taken for improving the water quality, habitat conditions and biotic community of rural ponds, especially for the severely polluted rural ponds in Xinjian and Nanchang County.
... In general, the macrobenthos have been regarded as key biological indicators of freshwater ecosystem health because these organisms are in direct contact with the sediment and are highly sensitive to changes in physiochemistry of the environment (Soldner et al., 2004;O'Brien et al., 2016;Piló et al., 2016;Eriksen et al., 2021). Most recent studies that documented the macrobenthos biodiversity have focused solely on rivers (Azrina et al., 2006;Gonzalo and Camargo, 2013;Li Z. F. et al., 2020;Buffagni, 2021) or on lakes (Van De Meutter et al., 2006;Li et al., 2016;Cai et al., 2017;Zhang et al., 2019). Only few studies have accounted for both the river and lake components of these systems (Obolewski et al., 2014;Jakubik et al., 2015). ...
... Previous studies on macrobenthos biodiversity typically focused on species richness and taxonomic diversity (Li et al., 2016;Wu et al., 2019;Lento et al., 2020), but such a focus conceals ecological differences among species and ignores specific roles they play in the ecosystem (Heino et al., 2007). As a result, they cannot effectively guide biodiversity conservation (Cadotte et al., 2011;Gagic et al., 2015). Each species of macrobenthos is a collection of individuals with multiple functional traits (including phenotypic and behavioral traits) that determine their performance and fitness (Steneck and Dethier, 1994;Violle et al., 2007). ...
... More generally, these characteristics determine the compatibility of species with the characteristics of their environment (Martello et al., 2018;Brumm et al., 2021). Recent studies have considered the role of species functional diversity based on biological traits (e.g., body morphology, physiology, trophic habits, and life-history strategies) in a community (Schmera et al., 2017;Espinoza-Toledo et al., 2021;Paz et al., 2022), which may provide a more mechanistic perspective on the community-environment relationships than is possible with approaches based purely on taxonomic diversity (Violle et al., 2007;Cadotte et al., 2011). More importantly, some studies have shown that macrobenthos taxonomic and functional diversity indices respond differently to the same environmental gradients Li et al., 2019b,c;Baker et al., 2021). ...
Macrobenthos taxonomic and functional diversity are key indicators of ecosystem health. River–lake ecotones are key macrobenthos habitats. However, we don’t fully understand macrobenthos biodiversity patterns in these ecotones. We studied water environment, sediment heavy metal contents, and macrobenthos community, which we sampled simultaneously from 29 sampling sites along the Fu River–Baiyangdian Lake gradient in Northern China with five field surveys from 2018 to 2019. Six trait classes resolved into 25 categories were allocated to macrobenthos through a binary coding system. We used the RLQ framework (R, environmental variables; L, species of taxa; Q, traits) and fourth-corner analyses to evaluate the relationship between environmental variables and macrobenthos traits. Finally, we carried out variance partitioning to assess the contributions of environmental variables to variation of macrobenthos diversities. As the results, TN and TP contents in the river and lake mouths were lower than those in the adjacent river and lake, indicating that the river–lake ecotones played a role in purifying the water and buffering pollution. High taxonomic diversity of macrobenthos in the lake mouth and the presence of unique taxa in the two ecotones revealed edge effects, but the macrobenthos abundance and biomass were extremely low compared with those in the adjacent river and lake. We found no significant correlation between the taxonomic and functional diversity indices in the river and lake mouths. Water depth, water transparency, TN, and TP were the main water environmental drivers of macrobenthos taxonomic and functional diversity, explaining up to 45.5% and 56.2% of the variation, respectively. Sediment Cd, Cr, Cu, Pb, and Zn contents explained 15.1% and 32.8%, respectively, of macrobenthos taxonomic and functional diversity. Our results suggest that functional diversity approaches based on biological traits can complement taxonomic approaches in river–lake ecotones. Furthermore, improving water depth, transparency, eutrophication, and heavy metal pollution will improve macrobenthos diversity in these ecotones and maintain ecosystem health.
... In our opinion, the high diversity of benthic organisms in the study region, as well as of zooplankton (Cherevichko, 2017;Fefilova and Kononova, 2019), is associated with a large heterogeneity of habitats and environmental conditions characteristic of river deltas in general (Tews et ai., 2004;Basset et al., 2013). The chemical composition of waters and sediments, the trophic state of water bodies (Chertoprud et al., 2021;Donohue et al., 2009;Heino, 2010), and the degree of isolation (seasonal or permanent) of some ecosystems (Cai et al., 2017) are considered particularly important factors for the formation of zoobenthos diversity. The existing studies (Verdonschot, 1989;Schenková et al., 2016Schenková et al., , 2018 have shown that the models of the diversity of the oligochaetes fauna mainly determine the gradients of hydrochemical conditions (mineralization, pH, and oxygen concentration), the characteristics of bottom substrates and the accumulation of organic material on their surface, the area and depth of water bodies, and hydrodynamic factors (Verdonschot, 2001). ...
... The frequent anthropogenic changes in aquatic ecosystems (e.g., damming, channeling, agricultural, industrial, and/or domestic effluent discharge) affect the physical, chemical and biological integrity of these environments, which results in reduced community richness (Goulart & Callisto, 2003;Ferreira, 2017). Variation in species richness between sites has been used as an appropriate indicator in the design of communities and in knowledge about diversity patterns (Băncilă et al., 2014;Cai et al., 2017). In addition, biological inventories have aided in the analysis of richness, as they allow the characterization of biodiversity at multiple scales and provide information for a quantitative and comparative assessment of the sets of species (Gotelli & Colwell, 2001;Magurran, 2013). ...
Biological inventories combined with the estimation of species richness represent a useful tool for the analysis of the pattern of species distribution in different regions. This study aimed to (i) comparatively evaluate the performance of non-parametric richness estimators for invertebrate inventories in reservoirs between ecoregions and (ii) to assess whether the efficiency (bias, precision and accuracy indices) of the estimators is altered when applied to sites from different ecoregions. The study was conducted in the ecoregions Central Pediplano of the Borborema Plateau (Paraíba River basin) and Northern Sertaneja Depression (Piranhas-Assu River basin), semiarid region of Brazil. Six reservoirs were selected and benthic macroinvertebrates were sampled at 141 sites distributed along the littoral zone, in 4 periods (June, September, December 2014 and March 2015). The organisms were identified to the family level, except for Chironomidae, identified to the genus level. We comparatively analyzed six non-parametric richness estimators: Jackknife 1, Jackknife 2, Chao1, Chao 2, ICE, and Bootstrap, and three performance indicators: bias, precision, and accuracy. ICE and Jackknife 2 had more stable results for total species richness, but with different performance between ecoregions for bias, precision, and accuracy. Variation in performance of the estimators may be associated with differences in species richness and frequency between ecoregions. ICE and Jackknife 2 proved to be the best estimators for biological inventories of aquatic invertebrates in reservoirs in studies comparing data from different ecoregions, due to accuracy and precision, while Bootstrap is the least indicated, given greater bias and less accuracy and precision.
... The lack of an asymptote in the rarefaction curves indicates the presence of sporadic species in the samples. The underestimation of taxa richness in lakes, as in rivers, is very common in many cases [12,13,[63][64][65]. In freshwater ecosystems, benthic macroinvertebrates are typically a highly diverse group [12] and tend to be dominated by rare species [66,67]. ...
The estimation of the number of samples required for reliably monitoring lakes’ benthic macroinvertebrates is difficult due to the natural variability and cost and time constraints. To determine
a statistically robust and effective sampling design, we collected benthic macroinvertebrate samples from 15 Greek natural lakes. We compared the spatial and temporal variability of the benthic
macroinvertebrate community composition to identify differences among lakes, between lake zones (sublittoral and profundal) and sampling periods. Furthermore, we examined the sampling precision
and determined the number of required samples to attain maximum taxa richness. The diminution of the sampling effort was estimated and the desired precision level, considering different benthic
macroinvertebrate abundances, was modelled. No temporal or spatial variation between lake zones was observed in communities’ compositions. The precision of our sampling design was adequate,
and rarefaction curves revealed an adequate taxa richness (>70%). The developed model could be applied to assess the required sampling effort in lakes within the Mediterranean ecoregion with
similar benthic macroinvertebrate abundances.
