Aquatic macroinvertebrate biodiversity: patterns and surrogates in mountainous Spanish national parks

Abstract

1. In Spain, national parks represent the mainstay of conservation polices and attempt to protect the most representative natural ecosystems. However, studies on the ecology and conservation of aquatic biodiversity within protected areas are still scarce. This study aimed at compiling an inventory of the macroinvertebrate families inhabiting the aquatic ecosystems of each mountainous Spanish national park (Sierra Nevada, Cabañeros, Ordesa, Picos de Europa, Aigüestortes and Monfragüe). The results were used to answer two questions: (i) Which environmental variables are related to macroinvertebrate composition and richness in these protected ecosystems? (ii) Which taxon or group of taxa could act as biodiversity surrogates?2. Sampling was carried out in 81 aquatic ecosystems across the six national parks during the summers of 2008-2010.3. The national parks with the highest richness were Picos de Europa and Cabañeros. Overall, the six parks incorporated 66.2% of the taxa included in the Iberian checklist. Multivariate techniques showed that maximum altitude and the presence of lotic habitats were the most important variables related to different community compositions. The best richness model included the presence of a lotic habitat, together with the percentage of the catchment area with non-irrigated agriculture and siliceous geology.4. Selecting several diverse lotic and lentic water bodies at different altitudes provides the best way of representing Iberian macroinvertebrate diversity. Coleoptera family richness may be used as a macroinvertebrate biodiversity surrogate in Iberian mountainous protected areas because it displayed the highest correlation with the other taxonomic groups and remaining richness values. Such an indicator could be complemented with the use of Odonata family richness for standing waters.5. The adequacy of Coleopera and Odonata as biodiversity surrogates should be tested at a wider geographic scale, and other surrogacy concepts (e.g. community composition) considered for assessing the role of this network in the protection of rare and endemic species.

Influence of selected environmental factors on macroinvertebrates in mountain streams

“…Environmental harshness including altitude, stream gradient or geological features is considered to be an important factor influencing the structure of macroinvertebrate communities in mountain streams [8,[30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. Altitude is related to changes in the percentage of riparian cover and aquatic vegetation, which in turn, determine allochthonous inputs of energy into streams [37,38].…”

“…Thus, it is necessary to limit the human impact on headwater streams, including those in national parks or reserves. National parks, especially those located within mountain areas, are undoubtedly the most important since these protected natural spaces can be considered to be natural islands for the conservation of biodiversity [8].…”

Checklist of benthic macroinvertebrates of the Lago Pratignano (northern Apennines, Italy): an extremely rich ecosystem

“…Comparing the results with other European systems, the Lago Pratignano was found to be extremely rich in the number of taxa (Boix et al 2001;Sahuquillo et al 2007;Oertli et al 2008;Céréghino et al 2012;Guareschi et al 2012;Novikmec et al 2015); at the same time, comparisons of the results with high-altitude habitats in the Alps (Boggero et al 2005;Boggero and Lencioni 2006;Steingruber et al 2013) and in the central part of the Apennines, where Solimini et al (2008) found 61 taxa in a total of 31 ponds, highlight the richness of Lago Pratignano. These results confirm that the northern Apennines could represent an important area for further in-depth investigations of the macroinvertebrate communities of ponds.…”

“…Some information on the macrozoobethic community of small water bodies is present for Europe (Boix et al 2001;Sahuquillo et al 2007;Oertli et al 2008;Céréghino et al 2012;Guareschi et al 2012;Novikmec et al 2015). In Italy, there are data for alpine mountains ponds (Boggero et al 2005;Boggero and Lencioni 2006;Füreder et al 2006;Maiolini et al 2006;Steingruber et al 2013) and for lowland ponds Della Bella et al 2005;Della Bella and Mancini 2009).…”

Ecological investigations on Hydrophilidae and Helophoridae (Coleoptera) specimens gathered from several water bodies of Western Turkey

“…Species-level identification for all aquatic invertebrates is generally problematic because of the aerial stage of most adults. Only some Coleoptera and Hemiptera adults are strictly aquatics (Guareschi et al, 2012). Coleoptera is a diverse order with over 5000 aquatic species, its physiological and behavioral adaptation has an advantage over other macro-zoo-benthos of fresh water habitats (Ramnik Kour and Sharma, 2011;Smith and Golladay, 2011), and is also the richest insect order in inland saline waters (Pallarés et al, 2012).…”