Fire is an important environmental disturbance in Mediterranean-climate regions; however, its intensity and frequency are predicted to increase under climate change scenarios with unknown implications for ecosystems in these regions. Temporary wetlands, with their periodic wet and dry phases, are considered one of the most productive systems in the world and their invertebrate communities form a crucial diet component for higher trophic levels. The effect of fire on the hatching success of invertebrate propagules from temporary wetlands in the Cape Flats Sand Fynbos (Cape Town, South Africa) was investigated. Homogenised soil samples from these wetlands were either experimentally subjected to vegetation fires (treatment samples) or were left as is (control samples). The results revealed that fire had a significant negative impact on invertebrate hatching success, as revealed by analyses of the different diversity measures (e.g. taxon richness, Shannon diversity and Pielou's evenness) and community composition. Proper management of fire, especially in the Mediterraneanclimate regions, which replicates the natural fire intervals typical of the area (10-15 years) and avoids unregulated or accidental fires, is essential to ensuring future protection of these critical biodiversity hotspots created by the temporary wetlands.
Unravelling the taxonomy and distribution of two problematic small mammal genera in the Karoo biomeMain et al. Table S1: Location details for specimens sampled during this study. M. namaquensis Latitude: degrees South Longitude: degrees East Locations on map Marker RR1 −30.50666 21.34012 11 cytochrome b RR2 −30.50666 21.34012 11 cytochrome b RR3 −30.50666 21.34012 11 cytochrome b RR4 −30.50666 21.34012 11 cytochrome b RR5 −30.48179 21.35898 12 cytochrome b RR6 −30.48179 21.35898 12 cytochrome b RR7 −30.48179 21.35898 12 cytochrome b RR9 −30.48179 21.35898 12 cytochrome b RR10 −30.46297
Rapid urbanisation has led to major landscape alterations, affecting aquatic ecosystems' hydrological and biogeochemical cycles, and biodiversity. Thus, habitat alteration is considered a major driver of aquatic biodiversity loss and related aquatic ecosystem goods and services. This study aimed to investigate and compare aquatic macroinvertebrate richness, diversity and community structure between urban temporary wetlands, located within protected and unprotected areas. The latter were found within an open public space or park with no protection or conservation status, whereas the former were inaccessible to the public and had formal protected, conservation status. We hypothesised that; (1) protected urban wetlands will harbour higher aquatic macroinvertebrate biodiversity (both dry and wet) as compared to unprotected urban wetlands, and (2) that the community composition between the two urban wetlands types will be significantly different. Contrary to our hypothesis, our results revealed no major differences between protected and unprotected urban wetlands, based on the measures investigated (i.e. taxon richness, Shannon-Weiner diversity, Pielou's evenness and community composition) during the dry and wet phase. The only exception was community composition, which revealed significant differences between these urban wetland types. These results suggest that human activities (potential littering and polluting) in the unprotected urban wetlands have not yet resulted in drastic change in macroinvertebrate richness and composition, at least from the dry phase. This suggests a potential for unprotected urban wetlands suffering from minimal human impact to act as important reservoirs of biodiversity and ecosystem services.
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