Current and future latitudinal gradients in stream macroinvertebrate richness across North America

Shah, Deep; Domisch, Sami; Pauls, Steffen U.; Haase, Peter; Jähnig, Sonja C.

doi:10.1086/678492

Cited by 22 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 222 publications

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“…Furthermore, the differences in composition between low-and high-Arctic sites were associated with large-scale, climate-related factors such as tem-perature trends and the presence of trees or tundra. This result implies that climatic conditions are primarily responsible for structuring Arctic stream benthic assemblages, especially at high latitudes, which is consistent with the concept of bioclimatic envelopes (e.g., Brown et al 1996, Pearson and Dawson 2003, Shah et al 2014. The biotic gradient in our data resulted from species loss with increasing latitude, rather than a change in total abundance, which reflects the importance of species-specific tolerances to the harsh environment of the high Arctic.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…The shift in taxonomic composition from 58 to 817N was most evident as a loss of EPT taxa, resulting in a high nestedness component of b diversity. This pattern is consistent with other studies that sampled as far north as 707N (e.g., Vinson and Hawkins 2003, Scott et al 2011, Shah et al 2014, but in our study, which extended the latitudinal gradient to 817N, declines in EPT taxa were more severe. In particular, Vinson and Hawkins (2003) and Scott et al (2011) found weaker declines in Trichoptera than in Ephemeroptera or Plecoptera up to 707N.…”

Section: Latitudinal Shifts In Taxonomic Diversitysupporting

confidence: 94%

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Arctic biodiversity of stream macroinvertebrates declines in response to latitudinal change in the abiotic template

et al. 2019

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We aimed to determine which processes drive patterns of a and b diversity in Arctic river benthic macrofauna across a broad latitudinal gradient spanning the low to high Arctic of eastern Canada (58 to 81 o N). Further, we examined whether latitudinal differences in taxonomic composition resulted from species replacement with organisms better adapted to northerly conditions or from the loss of taxa unable to tolerate the harsh environments of higher latitudes. We used the bioclimatic envelope concept to provide a first approximation forecast of how climate warming may modify a and b diversity of Arctic rivers and to identify potential changes in environmental variables that will drive future assemblage structure. Benthic macroinvertebrates, environmental supporting variables, and geospatial catchment data were collected to assess drivers of ecological pattern. We compared a diversity (i.e., taxonomic richness) across latitudes and partitioned b diversity into components of nestedness and species turnover to assess their relative contributions to compositional differences. We found sharp declines in taxonomic richness along a latitudinal gradient. This a diversity pattern was not associated with a change in numerical abundance. b diversity was highest when the most distant latitudes were compared, and pairwise latitudinal comparisons indicated that nestedness (loss of species) was the dominant contributor to compositional differences. Biotic-abiotic associations reflected both large-scale climatic drivers, including air temperature and prevalence of vegetated tundra, and small-scale secondary abiotic drivers of assemblage composition (e.g., substrate composition, water chemistry). The importance of nestedness to b diversity across latitudes supports the physiological tolerance hypothesis that a change in environmental tolerance is a key driver of species richness declines with increasing latitude. Distinct taxonomic assemblages among low and high Arctic latitude sites were associated with large-scale, climate-related drivers (e.g., temperature trends, terrestrial vegetation), reflecting the primary structuring of assemblages by bioclimatic envelopes. The abiotic environment was the strongest driver of assemblage structure at high latitudes because of the extreme conditions. With continued warming, biodiversity differences along latitudinal gradients are expected to become less pronounced as temperatures and vegetation become more similar from south to north, with local-scale variables becoming dominant biotic drivers.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Section: Latitudinal Shifts In Taxonomic Diversitysupporting

confidence: 94%

Arctic biodiversity of stream macroinvertebrates declines in response to latitudinal change in the abiotic template

et al. 2019

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“…Lotic systems are unique in terms of their hierarchical dendritic structuring and the clear spatial dependence of catchment and local-scale features. Many studies have found local features to strongly influence community structure (Astorga et al 2011;Death and Joy 2004;Groll et al 2015;Tonkin 2014), however, equally as many have highlighted the importance of large-scale influences (Heino 2009;Scott et al 2011;Shah et al 2014).…”

Section: Scalesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community–environment relationships of riverine invertebrate communities in central Chinese streams

Jähnig

Shah

et al. 2015

Environ Earth Sci

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Chinese rivers are both highly biodiverse and highly under pressure, hence an urgent need exists to understand ecological drivers and disentangle different scales of stressors to support water management. Our aims were to (1) determine the most influential variables for benthic invertebrate occurrence, (2) compare results related to communities as opposed to metrics and (3) examine the role of spatial scales with relevance to management. Benthic invertebrate sampling was performed at 37 sites in selected tributaries of the middle reaches of the Yangtze, covering an environmental gradient with a focus on organic pollution (stratified sampling design). Ten metrics commonly used in biomonitoring were derived and analysed in parallel to assemblage data. Environmental variables covered 74 parameters from three different spatial scales, namely local, reach and catchment scale. We ran a CCA with each of the three subsets to find out the significant determining/explanatory variables, followed by pCCA and pRDA (for metric data) with these variables with forward selection to determine single variables important for each subset; we further used variation portioning for benthic invertebrate data. A high percentage of overall variability (70 %) of the assemblage structure was explained, with catchment-and local-scale variables being almost equally important. Small-scale variables tended to be more important than large-scale variables for the metric-based approach but not for the assemblage approach. Our results emphasise the need for spatially explicit regional studies in freshwater systems and suggest testing multi-metric assessment approaches to tackle water management and environmental health questions in China.

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“…Specimen digitization efforts continue to be a high priority for natural history collections ( Baird 2010 ). Specimens serve as exemplars of morphological variation in taxonomic studies and georeferenced collection records are required to build predictive models of species distributions ( Dietrich et al 2012 , Johnson et al 2013 , Shah et al 2014 ). When specimens are available digitally, risk of loss and damage to museum specimens can be reduced because only subsets of material may be requested by specialists and available images may facilitate remote identification of unknowns.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scanning material offers an opportunity to digitize fluid material because surface reflections become a non-issue, and scanners lack distortion that occurs in camera lenses because they scan each point by moving across the subject. Given that aquatic species are some of the most threatened under impending climate change ( DeWalt et al 2005 , Shah et al 2014 ) and their museum records exist primarily in fluid collections, digitization efforts of freshwater species are critical for identifying species and habitats most at risk.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imaging natural history museum collections from the bottom up: 3D print technology facilitates imaging of fluid-stored arthropods with flatbed scanners

Mendez

Lee

Venter

2018

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Availability of 3D-printed laboratory equipment holds promise to improve arthropod digitization efforts. A 3D-printed specimen scanning box was designed to image fluid-based arthropod collections using a consumer-grade flatbed scanner. The design was customized to accommodate double-width microscope slides and printed in both Polylactic Acid (PLA) and nylon (Polyamide). The workflow with two or three technicians imaged Trichoptera lots in batches of six scanning boxes. Individual images were cropped from batch imagess using an R script. PLA and nylon both performed similarly with no noticeable breakdown of the plastic; however, dyed nylon leeched color into the ethanol. The total time for handling, imaging, and cropping was ~8 minutes per vial, including returning material to vials and replacing ethanol. Image quality at 2400 dpi was the best and revealed several diagnostic structures valuable for partial identifications with higher utility if structures of the genitalia were captured; however, lower resolution scans may be adequate for natural history collection imaging. Image quality from this technique is similar to other natural history museum imaging techniques; yet, the scanning approach may have wider applications to morphometrics because of lack of distortion. The approach can also be applied to image vouchering for biomonitoring and other ecological studies.

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Current and future latitudinal gradients in stream macroinvertebrate richness across North America

Cited by 22 publications

References 222 publications

Arctic biodiversity of stream macroinvertebrates declines in response to latitudinal change in the abiotic template

Arctic biodiversity of stream macroinvertebrates declines in response to latitudinal change in the abiotic template

Community–environment relationships of riverine invertebrate communities in central Chinese streams

Imaging natural history museum collections from the bottom up: 3D print technology facilitates imaging of fluid-stored arthropods with flatbed scanners

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