Characterizing Responses of Biological Trait and Functional Diversity of Benthic Macroinvertebrates to Environmental Variables to Develop Aquatic Ecosystem Health Assessment Index.

Numerous community indices have been developed to quantify the various aspects of communities. However, indices including functional aspects have been less focused on. Here, we examined how community composition varies in response to the environment and discovered the relationship between taxonomic diversity and functional diversity while considering the environment. Macroinvertebrate communities were collected from 20 reservoirs in South Korea. To characterize functional diversity, functional traits in four categories were considered: generation per year, adult lifespan, adult size, and functional feeding groups. Based on their community composition, we classified the reservoirs using hierarchical cluster analysis. Physicochemical and land use variables varied considerably between clusters. Non-metric multidimensional scaling indicated differences between reservoirs and clusters in terms of structure, functional diversity, and environmental variables. A self-organizing map was used to categorize functional traits, and network association analysis was used to unravel relationships between functional traits. Our results support the characteristics of species’ survival strategies such as r- and K-selection. Functional richness exhibited a relationship with taxonomic diversity. Our findings suggest that different types of diversity could play complementary roles in identifying biodiversity. Our findings should prove useful in developing new criteria for assessing freshwater ecosystem health, as well as in evaluating and predicting future alteration of benthic macroinvertebrate communities facing anthropogenic disturbances.

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Threshold Response Identification to Multi-Stressors Using Fish- and Macroinvertebrate-Based Diagnostic Tools in the Large River with Weir-Regulated Flow

Ryu,

Heo,

Park

et al. 2024

Sustainability

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Biodiversity response-based diagnostic tools are nonlinear approaches that simultaneously consider complex environmental stressors. Such approaches have been used to quantify biological responses to environmental changes. This study identified the major environmental stressors of community turnover and corresponding thresholds by applying diagnostic tools that use multiple biological assemblages in a large river with artificially controlled flow. Four Gradient Forest models were constructed using the relationships between stream biological assemblage and 66 parameters over 12 years. The multi-stressors that caused community turnover and their thresholds differed depending on the biological assemblage, even under the same environmental conditions. Specifically, they showed that operation of weirs has increased the importance of certain species (e.g., non-native species). In addition, specific-taxon response to multi-stressors analysis identified the ecological or management thresholds of endangered species, Korean endemic species, non-native species, and legal pollution indicator species, which must be managed from a biodiversity perspective. These thresholds are significant as the first reference points presented in similar ecological environments and can be used as guidelines for species over the long term. We propose that ‘true’ threshold identification requires efforts to recognize and improve the limitations of GF techniques confirmed in this study. This may ultimately enable a sustainable aquatic ecosystems maintenance and biodiversity preservation.

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Characterizing Responses of Biological Trait and Functional Diversity of Benthic Macroinvertebrates to Environmental Variables to Develop Aquatic Ecosystem Health Assessment Index.

Cited by 3 publications

References 55 publications

Threshold Response Identification to Multi-Stressors Using Fish- and Macroinvertebrate-Based Diagnostic Tools in the Large River with Weir-Regulated Flows

Threshold Response Identification to Multi-Stressors Using Fish- and Macroinvertebrate-Based Diagnostic Tools in the Large River with Weir-Regulated Flows

Taxonomic and Functional Diversity of Benthic Macroinvertebrate Assemblages in Reservoirs of South Korea

Threshold Response Identification to Multi-Stressors Using Fish- and Macroinvertebrate-Based Diagnostic Tools in the Large River with Weir-Regulated Flow

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