Effect of wetland management: are lentic wetlands refuges of plant-species diversity in the Andean–Orinoco Piedmont of Colombia?

Abstract

Accelerated degradation of the wetlands and fragmentation of surrounding vegetation in the Andean–Orinoco Piedmont are the main threats to diversity and ecological integrity of these ecosystems; however, information on this topic is of limited availability. In this region, we evaluated the value of 37 lentic wetlands as reservoirs of woody and aquatic plants and analyzed diversity and changes in species composition within and among groups defined according to management given by: (1) type (swamps, heronries, rice fields, semi-natural lakes, constructed lakes and fish farms) and (2) origins (natural, mixed and artificial). A total of 506 plant species were recorded: 80% woody and 20% aquatic. Of these, 411 species (81%) were considered species typical of the area (Meta Piedmont distribution). Diversity patterns seem to be driven by high landscape heterogeneity and wetland management. The fish farms presented the highest diversity of woody plants, while swamps ranked highest for aquatic plant diversity. Regarding wetland origin, the artificial systems were the most diverse, but natural wetlands presented the highest diversity of typical species and can therefore be considered representative ecosystems at the regional scale. Our results suggest that lentic wetlands act as refuges for native vegetation of Meta Piedmont forest, hosting 55% of the woody of Piedmont species and 29% of the aquatic species of Orinoco basin. The wetlands showed a high species turnover and the results indicated that small wetlands (mean ± SD: size = 11 ± 18.7 ha), with a small area of surrounding forest (10 ± 8.6 ha) supported high local and regional plant diversity. To ensure long-term conservation of lentic wetlands, it is necessary to develop management and conservation strategies that take both natural and created wetlands into account.

The value of small, natural and man‐made wetlands for bird diversity in the east Colombian Piedmont

“…In contrast, proximity to urban centres and agricultural areas may have the opposite effect on bird diversity (Ma, Cai, Li, & Chen, ; Pearce, Green, & Baldwin, ), especially in cities such as Villavicencio, which have exerted strong pressure on ecosystems and accelerated urban development (Rausch, ). Among the types of natural wetlands, swamps were more diverse than heronries for semi‐aquatic birds and landbirds, probably because swamps have a greater cover of trees, which are strongly linked to the Meta Piedmont forest (Murillo‐Pacheco et al, ). However, most of the swamps studied are located in the urban and peri‐urban areas of Villavicencio city, so their diversity could be adversely affected by the higher pressure of urban growth and city characteristics (MacGregor‐Fors & Schondube, ; Reis, López‐Iborra, & Torres Pinheiro, ), but was still greater than in heronries.…”

“…Contrary to that found in natural and mixed origin wetlands, both types of artificial wetlands studied had similar richness of semi‐aquatic and landbirds, and only in the case of aquatic birds were the FF more diverse than CL. Although there are differences in management between CL and FF, mainly in water use, both are characterized by the maintenance of the associated vegetation (Murillo‐Pacheco et al, ), which could contribute to the diversity of these guilds. The difference in aquatic bird richness between FF and CL may be due to higher food availability in the former, as a consequence of the activities related to fish production that cause this type of artificial wetland to have richness values similar to natural wetlands.…”

“…For the classification of the wetland categories studied, the proposal by Murillo‐Pacheco et al (), based on wetland type and origin, was used. Wetland types were (category in parentheses): (1) swamps (SW: six sites) are natural wetlands with emergent woody vegetation; they are flooded lands without a defined open body of water, associated with other aquatic ecosystems such as the sources of streams or rivers.…”

Relationship between Wetland Plant Communities and Environmental Factors in the Tumen River Basin in Northeast China

“…Floristic data were analyzed by a series of multivariate techniques. TWINSPAN analysis is a numerical method for the classification of vegetation belonging to similar groups, allowing the determination of homogenous groups [36]. This process was undertaken initially to define vegetation groups (communities), followed by canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) (conducted with CANOCO Windows 4.5 [37]), to illustrate the correlations between environmental variables and defined plant communities.…”

Peer Review #2 of "High variability of dung beetle diversity patterns at four mountains of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt (v0.2)"

“…These methods are now widely used and have been described in detail many times (Arroyo-Rodríguez et al, 2013;Jost, 2007;Martínez et al, 2001;Murillo-Pacheco et al, 2016). In the unweighted form, mean relative abundance is used to determine gamma diversity.…”