Application of taxonomic distinctness indices of littoral macroinvertebrate communities for assessing long-term variation in ecological quality status of intertidal ecosystems, northern China

Abstract

It has been increasingly recognized that taxonomic diversity indices have a number of desirable properties as an indicator for assessing ecological quality status, in particular their less sensitivity to natural habitat type and sampling effort but more to environmental stress and anthropogenic impact, and a statistical framework for the assessment of the significance of departure from expectation. Taxonomic patterns of macroinvertebrate fauna for assessing ecological quality status were studied based on six datasets collected from intertidal zones of the Yellow Sea, near Qingdao, northern China, during the period of 1989-1998. The invertebrate communities were sampled yearly at five stations with different bottom types during summer season (June). A total of 141 macroinvertebrate taxa were identified belonging 119 genera, 81 families, 34 orders, 19 classes, and 10 phyla. Multivariate analyses demonstrated that the taxonomic patterns of invertebrate fauna represented a significant variation in long-term temporal scale during the study period. The average taxonomic distinctness indices (Δ(+)) decreased to a significantly low level, while the variation in taxonomic distinctness measures (Λ(+)) increased to a significantly high level compared with the expected values from 1989 to 1998. The pairwise indices of Δ(+) and (Λ(+)) showed a decreasing and increasing trend of departure from the expected taxonomic breadth in response to the environmental stress and anthropogenic impact, respectively. These results imply that the ecological quality status has been significantly deteriorated due to the increasing environmental stress and anthropogenic impact in intertidal zones of the Yellow Sea, northern China, and that the taxonomic distinctness indices of macroinvertebrate fauna are a robust indicator for evaluating ecological quality status.

Can excluding non-insect taxa from stream macroinvertebrate surveys enhance the sensitivity of taxonomic distinctness indices to human disturbance?

“…If the value is lower than expected, then the site is regarded as having experienced a genuine loss of diversity that is likely to be due to environmental stress or human disturbance. This property would enable the establishment of reference conditions even in regions entirely impacted to some degree and that lack appropriate reference sites (Prato et al, 2009;Xu et al, 2012).…”

Measuring ecosystem degradation through half a century of fish species introductions and extirpations in a large isolated lake

“…They stipulate that for a given species richness, an assemblage including species from different families is more diverse than an assemblage with the same number of species from one family (Warwick and Clarke, 1998). These indices are widely used in biodiversity assessment due to their independence to sampling methods (e.g., sample size and sampling effort) and natural habitat type or complexity (Clarke and Warwick, 1999;Warwick and Clarke, 1998;Xu et al, 2012). Testing the sensitivity of taxonomic distinctness indices in discriminating anthropogenic impacts was the subject of a number of studies, but they yielded inconsistent results.…”

First report of the complete mitochondrial genome and phylogenetic analysis of Aphrodita australis (Aphroditidae, Annelida)

“…Aphrodita australis belongs to the family Aphroditidae, with dorsoventrally flattened bodies (Fauchald 1977), brilliantly shining and splendidly iridescent-hair, commonly known by the name of the sea-mouse (William 1865). Aphrodita australis live at depths of 70 m and shallower (Andrew 1998), very common in the Northeast Pacific, Japan, and China coast (Izuka 1912;Lei and Sun 2008;Xu et al 2012;Christopher et al 2016;Panchenko and Pushchina 2019). Genetic studies on A. australis are limited and sparse, hence analysis based on the complete mitochondrial genome provides more useful information on classification and help to better understand the phylogenetic status of this species in Polychaeta.…”

“…Aphrodita australis live at depths of 70 m and shallower (Andrew 1998 ), very common in the Northeast Pacific, Japan, and China coast (Izuka 1912 ; Lei and Sun 2008 ; Xu et al. 2012 ; Christopher et al. 2016 ; Panchenko and Pushchina 2019 ).…”