Land use and local environment affect macroinvertebrate metacommunity organization in Neotropical stream networks. (27th November 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Firmiano, Kele R.; Cañedo‐Argüelles, Miguel; Gutiérrez‐Cánovas, Cayetano; Macedo, Diego R.; Linares, Marden S.; Bonada, Núria; Callisto, Marcos
• Is Part Of: Journal of biogeography. Volume 48:Number 3(2021)
• Page Start: 479
• Page End: 491
• Publication Date: 2020-11-27
• Subjects: benthic invertebrates -- Cerrado biome -- connectivity -- dispersal -- distance–decay relationships -- land use distance; Biogeography -- Periodicals; 578.09
• DOI: 10.1111/jbi.14020
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0305-0270

Abstract

Abstract: Aim: Changes in land use and cover (hereafter land use) affect freshwater ecosystems at different spatial scales. We tested the effects of land use on the dispersal capacity of stream macroinvertebrates through local and regional processes. Location: In all, 183 Brazilian headwater stream sites, located in the Neotropical Savanna with variable land use and covering a total area of 46, 394 km 2 . Taxon: Stream macroinvertebrates Methods: We used multiple regression models for distance matrices to identify the relative importance of environmental and landscape characteristics to explain community dissimilarity of stream macroinvertebrates with different mobility traits. As predictors, we calculated four distance metrics: environmental distance describing the dissimilarity in local conditions, the network distance accounting for distances across the drainage system and two distances measuring landscape resistance to dispersal (topographic and land use). We classified macroinvertebrates in dispersal groups according to their dispersal abilities (flying and drifting) and life story traits (voltinism, adult life span and body size). We tested the effects of these distances on all taxa and on the different dispersal groups, to explore whether biological traits would result in different metacommunity patterns. Results: Our hierarchical clustering analysis identified five macroinvertebrate dispersal groups. The dispersal group 1 was mainly composed by aquatic obligate taxa, dispersal group 2 by taxa with low drift propensity, dispersal group 3 represented taxa with high directional flight capacity, dispersal group 4 included taxa with medium drift propensity and dispersal group 5 represented taxa with high drift propensity. We found that environmental distance and land use distance were the most important predictors explaining community dissimilarity for most of the dispersal groups. Main conclusion: The metacommunity patterns found in this study suggest that environmental filtering was the most important community assembly mechanism at a local scale, whereas land use could constrain dispersal at the regional scale. Understanding these processes is crucial to meet conservation and restoration goals, especially in biodiversity hotspots. Our results reinforce the importance of considering entire catchments for preserving stream health and aquatic biodiversity and indicate the need for a much more integrative research between terrestrial and aquatic ecology.