Climate and site-specific factors shape chironomid taxonomic and functional diversity patterns in northern Patagonia

Motta, Luciana Maria; Massaferro, Julieta

doi:10.1007/s10750-019-04001-6

Cited by 16 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…The observed strong effects of elevation in structuring trait composition of chironomid communities demonstrate that both temperature and large-scale landscape attributes (e.g. land use and vegetation composition/cover) strongly influence the functional diversity of northern aquatic invertebrate assemblages, confirming similar findings for temperate lakes (Poff 1997;Richards et al 1997;Statzner et al 2004;Townsend et al 2003;Motta and Massaferro 2019). However, our results also show a strong influence on trait composition of habitat characteristics, such as water depth, suggesting that some functional features of chironomid communities also showed strong relationships with ecosystem types and local environmental conditions (c.f.…”

Section: Direct and Indirect Climate Processes Shape Assemblage Structuresupporting

confidence: 74%

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Functional diversity of chironomid communities in subarctic lakes across gradients in temperature and catchment characteristics

Belle

Goedkoop

2020

Limnology

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Northern ecosystems are experiencing rapid and large-scale changes driven by accelerated warming, which have profound effects on the terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity. A comprehensive understanding of the distribution of aquatic biodiversity of subarctic ecosystems is therefore needed to better predict future trajectories of their unique biodiversity. In this study, we examined the functional diversity of chironomid communities in subarctic lakes across a 1000 m-elevation gradient, reflecting gradual changes in temperature and landscape characteristics. Using fuzzy correspondence analyses, we investigated spatial variability in trait composition of chironomid communities from 100 lakes in northern Sweden, and tested the hypotheses that (1) climate directly and indirectly shapes chironomid trait composition across the studied gradient, and (2) that generalist taxa with smaller body size and broader food preferences are more able to persist in cold environments. Our results showed that complex interplays between direct (e.g. temperature) and indirect climate processes (e.g. elevation-driven changes in vegetation/habitats) affect the functional diversity of chironomid communities. Specifically, traits such as larval size, food preference and feeding habits were well separated along the gradient, and this pattern revealed that low elevation lakes with forested catchments tended to have more sediment-feeding taxa and larger larvae than those above the tree line. As expected, food resource availability in lakes is strongly linked to vegetation composition/cover, and traits related to resource exploitation in chironomid communities are therefore well constrained by landscape characteristics. Furthermore, our findings suggested that short life cycles could facilitate the development of viable population in northern and high-elevation lakes where the short ice-free period is a limiting factor, thus contradicting patterns showing smaller organisms in warmer environments reported for other invertebrates. As a consequence of climate warming, the highest elevation lakes in subarctic landscapes will likely lose their typical cold-adapted chironomid taxa along with their functional attributes leading to potential impacts on the food web structure and the overall functioning of northern lake ecosystems.

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Section: Direct and Indirect Climate Processes Shape Assemblage Structuresupporting

confidence: 74%

“…van Kleef et al 2015;Serra et al 2017;Desrosiers et al 2019). Hence, novel functional (rather than taxonomic) approaches must be developed to explore functional diversity changes of chironomid communities across environmental gradients (Motta and Massaferro 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional diversity of chironomid communities in subarctic lakes across gradients in temperature and catchment characteristics

Belle

Goedkoop

2020

Limnology

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“…The combination of Selin Co's high elevation, high level of salinity and absence of macrophyte vegetation means that the habitat is not suitable for many chironomid species. Consequently, chironomid diversity and head capsule concentration are low compared to other sites (Engels et al, 2020;Motta and Massaferro, 2019). The prominence of Orthocladiinae is well known to be associated with mountain lakes (Hamerlík et al, 2017) and some of the common Orthocladiinae morphotypes are well adapted to the conditions in Selin Co: Cricotopus intersectus-type and Psectrocladius sordidellus-type are adapted to high salinity (Plank, 2010;Zhang et al, 2007) and Acricotopus indet.…”

Section: Selin Comentioning

confidence: 99%

Is there a common threshold to subfossil chironomid assemblages at 16 m water depth? Evidence from the Tibetan Plateau

et al. 2020

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Fluctuating lake levels are an important driver of ecosystem change, and changes in the precipitation/evaporation balance of a region can lead to undesirable changes in ecosystem functioning. Large-scale changes in hydrology will become increasingly more likely as a result of ongoing climate change in the coming century. This is especially true for the Tibetan Plateau, which plays a crucial role as the “Asian water tower” for the surrounding densely populated regions. Chironomids (Diptera: Chironomidae) have proven to be one of the most valuable bioindicators for monitoring and reconstructing the development of aquatic ecosystems. Besides temperature, water depth and salinity are two of the most important environmental factors affecting chironomids. To study the relationship between chironomids and water depth, we analyzed surface sediment samples of two large Tibetan lakes, Selin Co and Taro Co. These lakes have similar environmental conditions (e.g. elevation, temperature and oxygenation) but show strong differences in salinity (7–10 and 0.5 ppt, respectively). Our results show that the chironomid assemblages in both lakes have similar water depths at which the fauna abruptly changes in composition, despite different faunal assemblages. The most important boundaries were identified at 0.8 and 16 m water depth. While the uppermost meter, the “splash zone”, is characterized by distinctly different conditions, resulting from waves and changing water levels, the cause of the lower zone boundary remains enigmatic. Even though none of the measured water depth-related factors, such as water temperature, oxygen content, sediment properties, light intensity or macrophyte vegetation, show a distinct change at 16 m water depth, comparison to other records show that a similar change in the chironomid fauna occurs at 16 m water depth in large, deep lakes around the world. We propose that this boundary might be connected to water pressure influencing the living conditions of the larvae or the absolute distance to the surface that has to be covered for the chironomid larvae to hatch. We conclude that water depth either directly or indirectly exerts a strong control on the chironomid assemblages even under different salinities, resulting in distribution patterns that can be used to reconstruct past fluctuations in water depths.

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“…Several indices were constructed for functional diversity calculation (reviewed in Pla et al, 2012), providing a broader view for ecosystem complexity than species richness (e.g., Stuart-Smith et al, 2013). The Chironomidae taxonomic and functional diversity across various environmental gradients have been already studied in several regions of the world (e.g., Milošević et al, 2018;Jiang et al, 2019;Motta and Massaferro, 2019;Ni et al, 2020), while Nevalainen et al (2015) focused on the results provided by the subfossil chironomid assemblages. Kivilä et al (2019Kivilä et al ( , 2020 used chironomid functional feeding groups (FFGs) to track not only recent habitat changes, but also climate warming in northern Finland.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chironomidae Morphological Types and Functional Feeding Groups as a Habitat Complexity Vestige

et al. 2021

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Chironomid (Diptera: Chironomidae) larvae play an important role in a wide range of aquatic ecosystems. The study focuses on Chironomidae trophic guilds and morphological types as indicator traits in reconstructions of habitat changes in shallow water bodies. Mentum and ventromental plates are important mouthparts whose shape depends on food type and feeding behavior. Chironomidae larvae strongly vary in the mode of life and feeding habits, representing almost every feeding group. Here we classified the mentum types into 16 groups and tested if they indicated similar past habitat changes as the Chironomidae functional feeding groups (FFGs), and tribes/subfamilies. Paleoecological data of biotic and abiotic proxies were derived from short sequences from a Late Glacial oxbow and a nearby medieval moat located in Central Poland. The study revealed that the habitat substratum structure, vegetation and physicochemical conditions are associated both with the feeding types and morphological traits. This provides a valuable tool for future reconstructions of habitat changes.

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Climate and site-specific factors shape chironomid taxonomic and functional diversity patterns in northern Patagonia

Cited by 16 publications

References 69 publications

Functional diversity of chironomid communities in subarctic lakes across gradients in temperature and catchment characteristics

Functional diversity of chironomid communities in subarctic lakes across gradients in temperature and catchment characteristics

Is there a common threshold to subfossil chironomid assemblages at 16 m water depth? Evidence from the Tibetan Plateau

Chironomidae Morphological Types and Functional Feeding Groups as a Habitat Complexity Vestige

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