The ecology of European ponds: defining the characteristics of a neglected freshwater habitat

Abstract

There is growing awareness in Europe of the importance of ponds, and increasing understanding of the contribution they make to aquatic biodiversity and catchment functions. Collectively, they support considerably more species, and specifically more scarce species, than other freshwater waterbody types. Ponds create links (or stepping stones) between existing aquatic habitats, but also provide ecosystem services such as nutrient interception, hydrological regulation, etc. In addition, ponds are powerful model systems for studies in ecology, evolutionary biology and conservation biology, and can be used as sentinel systems in the monitoring of global change. Ponds have begun to receive greater protection, particularly in the Mediterranean regions of Europe, as a result of the identification of Mediterranean temporary ponds as a priority in the EU Habitats Directive. Despite this, they remain excluded from the provisions of the Water Framework Directive, even though this is intended to ensure the good status of all waters. There is now a need to strengthen, develop and coordinate existing initiatives, and to build a common framework in order to establish a sound scientific and practical basis for pond conservation in Europe. The articles presented in this issue are intended to explore scientific problems to be solved in order to increase the understanding and the protection of ponds, to highlight those aspects of pond ecology that are relevant to freshwater science, and to bring out research areas which are likely to prove fruitful for further investigation.

Linking management to biodiversity in built ponds using metacommunity simulations

“…Ponds represent sentinel ecosystems that integrate the landscape and are closely tied to local land use decisions (Céréghino et al, 2008;De Meester et al, 2005), and thus may provide a multi-scale perspective on how management practices affect biodiversity. Here, we focus on zooplankton biodiversity because zooplankton represent an intermediate trophic guild and zooplankton community composition integrates a suite of abiotic and biotic influences, including local physiological constraints, bottom-up and top-down trophic interactions, and pond trophic status (Jeppesen et al, 2011).…”

Testing the heterospecific attraction hypothesis with time-series data on species co-occurrence

“…These ponds were constructed to store the water coming from an inter-river water transfer. The network of irrigation ponds is surrounded by an unsuitable habitat matrix for waterbirds except for the presence of some natural wetlands, and the environmental context is thus conceptually similar to an archipelago of islands (De Meester et al 2005;Céréghino et al 2008). The system is highly dynamic partly because the irrigation ponds are regularly perturbed owing to management, suffering from abrupt changes in the water level, and being treated chemically with algaecides added to the water.…”

Hotspots of biodiversity or homogeneous landscapes? Farm dams as biodiversity reserves in Australia

“…Defined as small (\5 ha), man-made or natural shallow bodies of water, with permanent or temporary waters (De Meester et al 2005), ponds and their ecology have been the focus of two recent international workshops in Europe (Cereghino et al 2008a). Recent assessments indicate that such small bodies of water make a disproportionately large contribution to aquatic biodiversity within a landscape, in terms of species richness Declerck et al 2006;Davies et al 2008).…”

“…Recent assessments indicate that such small bodies of water make a disproportionately large contribution to aquatic biodiversity within a landscape, in terms of species richness Declerck et al 2006;Davies et al 2008). Several thousand new ponds are created annually in the United Kingdom each year ) in recognition of their status as 'hot spots' of biodiversity (Cereghino et al 2008a).…”