Abstract:-Fifty-six sites, representing 53 wetlands, were surveyed in the southern Carnarvon Basin in 1994 and 1995 with the aim of documenting the waterbird and aquatic invertebrate fauna of the region. Most sites were surveyed in both winter and summer, although some contained water only one occasion. Altogether 57 waterbird species were recorded, with 29 292 waterbirds of 25 species on Lake MacLeod in October 1994. River pools were shown to be relatively important for waterbirds, while many freshwater claypans were … Show more
“…Drier 'crabhole' swamps, saline pans east of Shark Bay and some large swamps on Mardathuna Station are examples of physiognomically distinctive wetlands that were poorly sampled or not sampled at all (Halse et al, 2000). Thus, wetland reserve selection was adversely affected by lack of rainfall in parts of the study area.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Singleton taxa were removed from the data-set for each biotic element, but sites with only one species were retained. The sites were classified into seven groups in terms of their aquatic invertebrate, waterbird and floristic attributes Halse et al, 2000) but all three classifications had different partition structures.…”
Section: Terrestrial Biodiversitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…No geographical interpretation of compositional gradients in each of the wetland communities was attempted because wetland composition related to local topographic, edaphic and/or temporal factors, rather than to altitudinal and climatic gradients Halse et al, 2000). Reserve recommendations are based on the wetland site classification groups.…”
Section: Terrestrial Biodiversitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In the longterm, most claypans probably provide habitat for the same pool of invertebrate species, so claypans have been treated as a homogeneous group for the purposes of conservation. Nevertheless, there was more variation within the claypan community than existed between some other groups, and a large pool of patchily distributed species (see Figure 6 in Halse et al, 2000). Because of this variation, four claypans are recommended as typical of sites suitable for reservation: CB54, CB75a, CB70b and CB75b.…”
Section: Claypansmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The patterns are summarised by Halse et al (2000) and Gibson et al (2000a) for wetland communities, and by McKenzie et al (2000a) for terrestrial communities. This paper should not be used without prior reference to all three of these publications.…”
-Site-based data on patterns in terrestrial and wetland biodiversity were used to identify some major gaps in the comprehensiveness of the reserve system in a 75000 km 2 region on the mid-west coast of Western Australia. Data comprised lists of plants, birds, reptiles, frogs, mammals, ground-dwelling spiders, scorpions and centipedes from 63 terrestrial sites, and waterbirds, wetland plants and aquatic invertebrates from 51 wetland sites. The sites were positioned in a stratified array across the geographical extent of the region, but their number and dispersal was limited by the cost of sampling such a variety of taxa. Although this geographical sparsity limited the geographical resolution of the reserve selection procedures, a distinct lack of cross-taxon congruence in the geographical patterns of taxa implied that data on a range of taxa should be used to design the region's reserve system.
“…Drier 'crabhole' swamps, saline pans east of Shark Bay and some large swamps on Mardathuna Station are examples of physiognomically distinctive wetlands that were poorly sampled or not sampled at all (Halse et al, 2000). Thus, wetland reserve selection was adversely affected by lack of rainfall in parts of the study area.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Singleton taxa were removed from the data-set for each biotic element, but sites with only one species were retained. The sites were classified into seven groups in terms of their aquatic invertebrate, waterbird and floristic attributes Halse et al, 2000) but all three classifications had different partition structures.…”
Section: Terrestrial Biodiversitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…No geographical interpretation of compositional gradients in each of the wetland communities was attempted because wetland composition related to local topographic, edaphic and/or temporal factors, rather than to altitudinal and climatic gradients Halse et al, 2000). Reserve recommendations are based on the wetland site classification groups.…”
Section: Terrestrial Biodiversitymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In the longterm, most claypans probably provide habitat for the same pool of invertebrate species, so claypans have been treated as a homogeneous group for the purposes of conservation. Nevertheless, there was more variation within the claypan community than existed between some other groups, and a large pool of patchily distributed species (see Figure 6 in Halse et al, 2000). Because of this variation, four claypans are recommended as typical of sites suitable for reservation: CB54, CB75a, CB70b and CB75b.…”
Section: Claypansmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The patterns are summarised by Halse et al (2000) and Gibson et al (2000a) for wetland communities, and by McKenzie et al (2000a) for terrestrial communities. This paper should not be used without prior reference to all three of these publications.…”
-Site-based data on patterns in terrestrial and wetland biodiversity were used to identify some major gaps in the comprehensiveness of the reserve system in a 75000 km 2 region on the mid-west coast of Western Australia. Data comprised lists of plants, birds, reptiles, frogs, mammals, ground-dwelling spiders, scorpions and centipedes from 63 terrestrial sites, and waterbirds, wetland plants and aquatic invertebrates from 51 wetland sites. The sites were positioned in a stratified array across the geographical extent of the region, but their number and dispersal was limited by the cost of sampling such a variety of taxa. Although this geographical sparsity limited the geographical resolution of the reserve selection procedures, a distinct lack of cross-taxon congruence in the geographical patterns of taxa implied that data on a range of taxa should be used to design the region's reserve system.
Many streams of southwestern Australia have become secondarily saline through land clearance and other human activities in their catchments. Elevated salinities impact on aquatic biota and ecological processes of surface streams but little is known of the effects on the diversity and community composition of hyporheic (subsurface) invertebrates occupying the saturated sediments where surface and groundwaters exchange. We hypothesized that biodiversity of hyporheic invertebrates would decline with increasing salinity, especially where saline groundwater upwelled into the surface stream. We also predicted changes in community composition associated with salinity and direction of vertical hydrological exchange. Water and hyporheic invertebrates were sampled from downwelling and upwelling zones of 13 streams in southwestern Australia ranging in median surface water salinity from 0.27 to 17.86 g L À1 . Overall, taxa richness of hyporheic invertebrates was uncorrelated with salinity but, surprisingly, correlated positively with the salinity of upwelling water. However, when the sites were divided into 'fresh' (<3 g L À1 ) and 'mesosaline' (>3 g L À1 ) groups, this relationship became non-significant. Instead, taxa richness and total abundance were correlated positively with salinity of downwelling water in fresh sites and negatively in mesosaline sites, resulting in a peak in richness at intermediate salinities. Community composition was unrelated to direction of hydrological exchange but was strongly associated with hyporheic salinity. Hyporheic assemblages of 'fresh' rivers were typified by harpacticoid copepods and candoniid ostracods, whereas the amphipod Austrochiltonia and several dipteran groups were more common below 'mesosaline' rivers. Although many hyporheic taxa collected in this study apparently have broad tolerances to salinity, secondary salinization due to human activities potentially changed community composition, possibly altering rates of ecological processes such as organic matter breakdown occurring within the sediments of streams undergoing salinization.
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