Assessing and conserving groundwater biodiversity: synthesis and perspectives

Gibert, Janine; Culver, David C.; Dole‐Olivier, Marie‐José; Malard, Florian; Christman, Mary C.; Deharveng, Louis

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2427.2009.02201.x

Cited by 102 publications

(85 citation statements)

References 74 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…While global comparisons must be treated with some caution because much of Africa, Asia and South America is unstudied, Europe and North America are moderately well surveyed and provide a baseline against which the Pilbara has been assessed (e.g. Culver et al 2003;Deharveng et al 2009;Gibert and Culver 2009). …”

Section: Global Signifi Cance Of Pilbara Faunamentioning

confidence: 99%

Pilbara stygofauna: deep groundwater of an arid landscape contains globally significant radiation of biodiversity

Halse¹,

Scanlon²,

Cocking³

et al. 2014

Rec West Aust Mus Sup

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

-The Pilbara region was surveyed for stygofauna between 2002 and 2005 with the aims of setting nature conservation priorities in relation to stygofauna, improving the understanding of factors affecting invertebrate stygofauna distribution and sampling yields, and providing a framework for assessing stygofauna species and community signifi cance in the environmental impact assessment process.Approximately 350 species of stygofauna were collected during the survey and extrapolation suggests that 500-550 actually occur in the Pilbara, although taxonomic resolution among some groups of stygofauna is poor and species richness is likely to have been substantially underestimated. More than 50 species were found in a single bore. Even though species richness was underestimated, it is clear that the Pilbara is a globally important region for stygofauna, supporting species densities greater than anywhere other than the Dinaric karst of Europe. This is in part because of a remarkable radiation of candonid ostracods in the Pilbara. Ostracods are the dominant stygofaunal group in terms of both species richness and animal abundance. Together, ostracods, copepods, amphipods and oligochates comprised 77% of species and 96% of animals collected.Stygofauna were found in 72% of samples collected and 81% of wells sampled. The average sample (including those without stygofauna) contained 3.2 ± 0.1 species. A feature of the Pilbara is that stygofauna occur across most of the landscape, often where the depth to groundwater is considerable, although yields were low where depth to groundwater was >30 m. Another feature is high endemicity: on the basis of current taxonomy 98% of the stygobites and 83% of the other groundwater species occur only within the region. Few factors affecting stygofauna occurrence could be identifi ed, however. Numbers of specimens and species collected were positively related to well diameter and negatively related to depth to groundwater. Numbers of species declined in inland sub-regions, although variability within sub-regions was high.While a range of freshwater chemistries occurred, 79% of water samples were weakly saline and NaCl dominated. Profi ling and purging of wells suggested that water quality measurements refl ected aquifer conditions in most situations. Water chemistry appeared to have limited infl uence on stygofauna occurrence in the Pilbara. Geology also appeared to have little effect on stygofauna occurrence but this may have been the result of non-random siting of wells; there was a bias towards wells being in transmissive locations that were not necessarily typical of the geology in which each well occurred.No potential reserves for stygofauna are recommended in this paper but nine areas of high stygofauna richness were identifi ed, including the listed Ethel Gorge stygofauna community. Theoretical analysis of species ranges suggested that half of the species found only in the vicinity of development projects will have ranges less than 680 km 2 . Consequently, projects involving ext...

show abstract

Section: Global Signifi Cance Of Pilbara Faunamentioning

confidence: 99%

Pilbara stygofauna: deep groundwater of an arid landscape contains globally significant radiation of biodiversity

Halse¹,

Scanlon²,

Cocking³

et al. 2014

Rec West Aust Mus Sup

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Overall, biodiversity patterns in sulphide springs appear to be similar to other marginal freshwater habitats [7][8][9][10][11][12]. But first and foremost, this review has highlighted the dearth of our current knowledge about freshwater sulphide spring faunas, and there are some obvious questions that need to be addressed in the future: (1) Considering the abundance of sulphide springs worldwide and the attention many springs have received from microbiologists, quantitative studies on metazoan biodiversity are almost entirely lacking.…”

Section: Synthesis and Open Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Such adaptations allow some organisms to thrive in places that are lethal for most others, giving rise to unique ecological communities. Prime examples of extreme freshwater environments include subterranean streams and lakes [7,8], desert springs [9,10], Antarctic lakes [11], and environments with rampant hypoxia [12]. Extreme environments have provided excellent study systems in ecology and evolution research, as they allow elucidating the effects of physicochemical stressors at multiple levels of biological organization [13,14], yet patterns of biodiversity in extreme environments remain relatively understudied.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Patterns of Macroinvertebrate and Fish Diversity in Freshwater Sulphide Springs

Greenway

Arias‐Rodríguez²,

Diaz³

et al. 2014

Diversity

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Extreme environments are characterised by the presence of physicochemical stressors and provide unique study systems to address problems in evolutionary ecology research. Sulphide springs provide an example of extreme freshwater environments; because hydrogen sulphide's adverse physiological effects induce mortality in metazoans even at micromolar concentrations. Sulphide springs occur worldwide, but while microbial communities in sulphide springs have received broad attention, little is known about macroinvertebrates and fish inhabiting these toxic environments. We reviewed qualitative occurrence records of sulphide spring faunas on a global scale and present a quantitative case study comparing diversity patterns in sulphidic and adjacent non-sulphidic habitats across replicated river drainages in Southern Mexico. While detailed studies in most regions of the world remain scarce, available data suggests that sulphide spring faunas are characterised by low species richness. Dipterans (among macroinvertebrates) and cyprinodontiforms (among fishes) appear to dominate the communities in these habitats. At least in fish, there is evidence for the presence of highly endemic species and populations exclusively inhabiting sulphide springs. We provide a detailed discussion of traits that might predispose certain taxonomic groups to colonize sulphide springs, how colonizers subsequently adapt to cope with sulphide toxicity, and how adaptation may be linked to speciation processes. OPEN ACCESSDiversity 2014, 6 598

show abstract

“…To our knowledge, for subterranean environments, species richness, distribution patterns and endemicity have been used successfully to propose schemes for: 1) groundwater fauna conservation during a large-scale project named PASCALIS (Protocol for the Assessment and Conservation of Aquatic Life In the Subsurface) conducted in six European regions (Gibert et al, 2009;Michel et al, 2009); 2) groundwater and karst conservation based on groundwater fauna distribution modeling in France and Romania (Castelarini et al, 2007;Meleg et al, 2014); 3) establishing cave conservation priorities based on terrestrial fauna in caves of Brazil (Jaffé et al, 2016); 4) ranking the lava tubes and volcanic pits for conservation purpose, based on multiple criteria (Nitzu et al, 2016).…”

Section: Methodology Datasetmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing preservation priorities of caves and karst areas using the frequency of endemic cave-dwelling species

Nitzu¹,

Vlaicu²,

Giurginca³

et al. 2018

IJS

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:Endemic and rare species as bioindicators of habitat vulnerability were used to develop protection and management plans for biotope prioritization (mainly islands habitats, lava tubes or groundwaters). Due to their narrow distribution, the endemic species (species confined to a restricted geographic area) are more susceptible to ecological disequilibrium and habitat loss than the widespread ones. Consequently, endemics become endangered in the context of ecological disturbance caused by anthropogenic pressure, making them suitable candidates to assess environmental preservation needs. Taking into consideration that most of the stygobitic and troglobitic species are endemic and confined to specific karst areas, based on their association and frequency we propose an endemicity index (EI) adapted to the fragmented nature of the cave habitat. We used a double ranking methodology: (1) ranking the endemic species according to their frequencies in caves, and (2) ranking the caves according to their EI computed for a geographic area. Further, by mapping the caves based on their related EI, we identified the hotspots of vulnerable karst areas. The EI has been developed using as case study of 380 caves from Romania, known up to now to be inhabited by a total of 278 endemic stygobitic and troglobitic species and subspecies. In our study area, 35 out of 380 caves with endemic species, narrowly distributed to karst areas of the Carpathian massifs and Dobrogea, had a considerable high EI. The EI proves to be highly sensitive to unique taxa (endemics recorded in only one cave) and also to other endemic taxa -recorded in more than one cave. However, all the endemites are confined to a specific geographic area (in this case of study -the Carpathians and Dobrogea karst area). EI provides a reliable criterion to rank caves using the contribution of endemic species in order to assess cave and karst vulnerability and prioritize them for environment protection management.

show abstract

Assessing and conserving groundwater biodiversity: synthesis and perspectives

Cited by 102 publications

References 74 publications

Pilbara stygofauna: deep groundwater of an arid landscape contains globally significant radiation of biodiversity

Pilbara stygofauna: deep groundwater of an arid landscape contains globally significant radiation of biodiversity

Patterns of Macroinvertebrate and Fish Diversity in Freshwater Sulphide Springs

Assessing preservation priorities of caves and karst areas using the frequency of endemic cave-dwelling species

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About