Local-scale turnover of pond insects: intra-pond habitat quality and inter-pond geometry are both important

Abstract

The distributions of larvae of seven species of pond insect were recorded from 30 small, adjacent temporary ponds over the course of three years. Incidences were modelled using logistic regression to compare the effectiveness of measures of intra-patch habitat or inter-patch geometry as predictors of distribution. Incidence, extinction and colonisation were modelled separately against systematic environmental variation (e.g. length of dry phase), temporal change (e.g. year) and individual pond characteristics as predictors of presence or absence. Models of incidence created for all species were dominated by negative correlations to the length of preceding summer's dry-phase, positive correlations with length of flood links between ponds and species-specific changes with year. Models of colonisation and extinction events suggested that colonisation and extinction may be driven by different factors. The results suggest that both intra-pond habitat and inter-pond geometry affect the distribution of pond insects. The conservation of pond invertebrates will require strategic policy attentive to both aspects of pond invertebrates' ecology, rather than relying on ad hoc, site by site interventions.

Prey base shifts in red rock lobster Jasus edwardsii in response to habitat conversion in Fiordland marine reserves: implications for effective spatial management

“…Consequently, much of the theoretical inquiry into metapopulation dynamics has been focused on the interacting effects of patch size and connectivity on regional population persistence (MacArthur & Wilson 1967, Hanski & Gyllenberg 1993. Nevertheless, empirical studies across a wide variety of systems have also emphasized the importance of habitat quality for driving metapopulation dynamics and persistence (Root 1998, Franklin et al 2000, Joy & Death 2001, Lindholm et al 2001, Fleishman et al 2002, Jeffries 2005. Variability in quality among habitat patches can enhance reproductive source-sink structure across the regional population, making it more reliant on a smaller subset population for reproduction , Sanford & Menge 2007).…”

Ponds and the importance of their history: an audit of pond numbers, turnover and the relationship between the origins of ponds and their contemporary plant communities in south-east Northumberland, UK

“…e.g. Jeffries (2005) showed highly species-specific responses to the habitat quality of adjacent ponds associated with local extinctions and colonisations.…”

Ecological Drivers of Cladoceran Diversity in the Central European City (Łódź, Poland): Effects of Urbanisation and Size of the Waterbody

“…Fragmentation is one of the key contemporary drivers of biodiversity loss (Ray et al, 2002), thus maintaining landscape connectivity is pivotal for biodiversity conservation (Crooks and Sanjayan, 2006). Connectivity has been shown to influence taxonomic distribution/composition by facilitating the colonization and dispersal of organisms (McArthur and Wilson, 1967;Moilanen and Nieminen, 2002;Jeffries, 2005). Structural connectivity is very often used in biodiversity and conservation research as it is relatively easy to measure using Geographical Information systems (GIS) (Taylor et al, 2006) whereas assessing and quantifying functional connectivity can be extremely difficult (Ribeiro et al, 2011).…”

“…Macroinvertebrate communities from ponds in the wider landscape have also been shown to display significant temporal heterogeneity and turnover of species, which can result in temporal variation in the conservation value of pond habitats (Jeffries, 2005, Jeffries, 2011Hassall et al, 2012). Future research is required to examine the nature of temporal heterogeneity of urban pond communities and the implications for urban biodiversity conservation.…”