Chironomidae from Eastern Amazon: Understanding the differences of land-use on functional feeding groups

Abstract

Deforestation for agricultural purposes is the most dangerous human action against the conservation of the Brazilian Amazon Forest; its rates reached almost 20% of the original forested area. Many studies have been conducted on Chironomidae systematics and ecology over the Amazon biome, but most concerned the Central Amazon, while little is known about Chironomidae diversity and the effects of land development and agriculture intensification on the aquatic biota from Eastern Brazilian Amazon. The present study analyzed the effects of different land-use and land-cover on Chironomidae assemblages. Land-Use and Land-Cover (LULC) at the riparian zone were assessed from satellite imagery and three categories were defined: Forest, Secondary (Capoeira) and Agriculture. Ten catchments were selected: two for Forest, five for Agriculture and three for Secondary. For each catchment we characterized habitat and sampled insects. We hypothesized that i) the assemblage taxonomic richness will change across different land uses on riparian zones and ii) feeding functionality is a better information than taxonomic resolution to show the importance of LULC upon stream. A total of 20,884 individuals were sampled from the streams, abundance was higher in Agriculture streams. Corynoneura (18.4%), Pentaneura (14.6%) and Rheotanytarus (14.0%) were the most abundant genera in Agriculture streams; Corynoneura (17.8%), Caladomyia (13.6%), Paratanytarsus (13.1%) and Beardius (10.9%) dominated Forest streams; Goeldichironomus (25.9%), Rheotanytarus (17.6%) and Polypedilum (13.2%) dominated Capoeira streams. Regarding FFG, gatherers were the most numeric abundant in Forest (50.3%), followed by filterers (38.7%), predators (6.6%) and shredders (4.2%). In Capoeira, filterers were the main FFG (61.1%), gatherers (27.9%), predators (7.7%) and shredders (3.3%). In Agriculture streams, predators, filterers and gatherers had close numeric participation, 34.9%, 32.4% and 32.2%, respectively. Shredders performed a smaller fraction (0.4%). In Forest and Agriculture, scrapers participation was under 0.2%, while it was absent at Capoeira. Permutation tests showed significant differences among assemblages, based on numerical abundance of genera and on functional feeding group data. Even though, shredders showed a discrete participation in all three LULC, it was statistically significant higher at Forest streams when compared to Agriculture ones. Our study was able to demonstrate taxonomic differences of all LULC analyzed and it also showed the importance in considering the feeding behavior to understand the effects of land-use and land-covers changes.

Short comment on Chironomidae (Insecta: Diptera) from Brazil’s Federal District

“…Rheotanytarsus was documented as one of the most abundant taxa in several Brazilian studies (Sonoda et al 2009b, Sonoda et al 2010, Floss et al 2012; this numerical dominance is related to agricultural land use (Sonoda et al 2009a, Sonoda et al 2018. Its abundance is also documented in other neotropical countries, like Trinidad (Helson et al 2006).…”

“…Stenochironomus larvae are important indicators for the preservation status of riparian forests, as they are known as shredders (Silva et al 2009, Santos andRodrigues 2015). Despite the low quantity of shredders in Neotropical communities (Boyero et al 2011), they are good indicators of environmental impacts since their abundance decreases when riparian forests are deforestated (Sonoda et al 2009a).…”

“…The limited knowledge in chironomid biodiversity is not necessarily due to lack of research conducted within the Cerrado, but rather the extensive area that the biome occupies. Additionally, few focus exclusively on Chironomidae (Sonoda et al 2009a, Sonoda et al 2009b, Saito and Fonseca-Gessner 2014, Mazão et al 2016. When considering the Federal District region, we notice that most studies analyze the entire aquatic entomofauna and the influence of human activities on Figure 1.…”

Recent advances in the study of Chironomidae: An overview

“…Deforestation for agricultural purposes is the most dangerous human action against the conservation of many forests in the world. Sonoda et al (2018) gave new insights on deforestation effects by studying taxonomical and functional diversity of chironomids in amazonian streams. they emphasised the importance in considering the feeding behaviour to understand the effects of land-use and land-cover changes in streams using benthic fauna.…”

Insetos Aquáticos Bioindicadores De Mudanças De Uso Da Terra No Pará, Brasil: Evidências E Perspectivas

“…Há também expressiva literatura sobre a relação entre mudanças de uso/cobertura da terra e os insetos aquáticos para o estado do Pará, abordando as ordens Ephemeroptera , Plecoptera (Paiva et al 2017), Trichoptera (Paiva et al 2017), Heteroptera ), Odonata (Oliveira-Junior et al 2017), Coleoptera (Nogueira et al 2016 e Diptera (Sonoda et al 2018). De fato, as características do habitat dos igarapés são significativamente correlacionadas ao uso e cobertura da terra (Nessimian et al 2008).…”