A test of the association between Lake Habitat Quality Assessment and macroinvertebrate community structure

Abstract

ABSTRACT1. Lake Habitat Survey (LHS) provides a standard method for characterizing the physical habitat of lakes and reservoirs, but has not been tested for its relevance to the composition and abundance of macroinvertebrates. This study investigated the relationship between the metrics used in LHS and components of macroinvertebrate communities found in the littoral zone of a shallow calcareous lake in the west of Ireland.2. A scoring system, the Habitat Quality Assessment (HabQA), developed from the Lake Habitat Quality Assessment (LHQA) of the LHS, was used to assess the relationship between habitat quality based on physical structure within 10 LHS 'habplots' and metrics of the macroinvertebrate community.3. Macroinvertebrate taxon richness, both of adults found in the riparian zone and larvae found in the littoral zone, correlated positively with the HabQA score. Macrophytes within the littoral zone, and complexity of riparian vegetation within the riparian zone, were particularly important in driving the HabQA score. While overall abundance of macroinvertebrates did not vary with HabQA score, that of particular genera did.4. The HabQA score was a useful surrogate of taxon richness for adult and larval aquatic macroinvertebrates, suggesting that, in general, LHS provides a useful conservation assessment tool relevant for macroinvertebrates. However, in some circumstances, such as wave-washed stony substrates devoid of macrophytes, the HabQA score may not capture the quality of a site for macroinvertebrates, and the importance of natural but low diversity sites should not be neglected in conservation assessment of lakes. Similarly, while the LHS method notes the presence of alien species, further work on how these could be incorporated into the method would be useful.5. Reliance on a single, or overall combined, metric score across quality elements, whether based on biotic or structural assessment, has some potential limitations. It is clear that for conservation management a holistic assessment of naturalness, representativeness and species rarity needs to be made in conjunction with scoring systems.

Relative impacts of morphological alteration to shorelines and eutrophication on littoral macroinvertebrates in Mediterranean lakes

“…The LHQA-littoral score accounts for several features of the littoral zone including the diversity of sediment types, the diversity and extent of macrophyte cover, and the presence of shelters against fish predation (Rowan et al 2006). Thus, habitat complexity seems to be a prominent factor structuring invertebrate communities (Cheruvelil et al 2002, McGoff and Irvine 2009, Jurca et al 2012.…”

“…Current knowledge predicts that benthic communities in the littoral zone of lakes are mainly affected by morphological alteration and acidification, whereas eutrophication has a minor effect (see recent review by Solimini and Sandin 2012). Hydromorphological alterations, which encompass alteration of the hydrological regime and morphological alteration of the shoreline, can decrease invertebrate species diversity and abundance (Bänziger 1995), alter the taxonomic and functional structure (Brauns et al 2007b), reduce richness of plant-associated sessile invertebrates (Mastrantuono et al 2008), and affect littoral habitat quality (McGoff and Irvine 2009). The effect of eutrophication was addressed explicitly by Donohue et al (2009), who developed an ecological classification model based on changes of littoral invertebrate assemblages across a gradient of nutrient enrichment.…”

Morphological alterations of lake shores in Europe: A multimetric ecological assessment approach using benthic macroinvertebrates

“…Morphological alterations were recorded using the Lake Habitat Survey (LHS) method (Rowan et al, 2006(Rowan et al, , 2008, which was designed in an analogous approach to the widely applied River Habitat Survey (RHS, Raven et al, 1998Raven et al, , 2000, and which produces results that are relevant for littoral macroinvertebrates (McGoff and Irvine, 2009;McGoff et al, 2013). At macroinvertebrate sampling lakes and sites, whole lake and habplot/site-specific LHS were carried out in all involved countries , 'Pressure index' and 'Natural/Artificial dominant land cover type'.…”

“…The pressure-response relationships documented so far mainly refer to the effects of lake acidification (Johnson et al, 2007;Johnson and Goedkoop, 2006) and eutrophication (Bazzanti et al, 2012;Donohue et al, 2009;Tolonen et al, 2001). Studies on the effects of hydromorphological alterations on littoral macroinvertebrates have remained scarce, while knowledge recently is steeply increasing (Brauns et al, 2007a(Brauns et al, ,b, 2011McGoff and Irvine, 2009;McGoff et al, 2013;Porst et al, 2012).…”

A test of the Lake Habitat Survey method in Cleveland Reservoir and Lake Chivero (Manyame River Basin, Zimbabwe)

“…The LHS method uses surveys within the terrestrial/aquatic ecotone, which is normally the area incorporating the riparian and littoral zones of a lake. The littoral zone of lentic water bodies is functionally important because it provides shelter against predation and wave action, feeding zones and habitat, and is therefore the zone of highest productivity in a lake (McGoff and Irvine, 2009;Kaufman et al, 2014;Ruhl et al, 2014), but this may not apply universally to man-made water bodies which are often constructed in areas with steep-sloping, rocky terrain. In the lakeshore zone, terrestrial habitats are closely linked with semi-aquatic and lacustrine habitats, giving rise to hydrological gradients and a high habitat diversity.…”