Effects of recreational use on branchiopod egg and ephippia density, Black Rock Desert-High Rock Canyon emigrant trails National Conservation Area, Nevada, USA

Sada, Donald W.; Rosamond, C.; Adams, Kenneth D.

doi:10.1163/1937240x-00002130

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Likely, the ability of any temporary wetland community to buffer against catastrophes would still depend on the scale and extent of disturbance events (Brendonck and de Meester 2003;Sada et al 2013). While branchiopod communities across dryland regions are typically well buffered against natural disturbance, including prolonged droughts, early drying events and wind (Fryer 1996;Brendonck et al 1998Brendonck et al , 2017, the opposite is expected with regard to physical disturbances caused by anthropogenic activities.…”

Section: The Buffering Capacity Of Branchiopod Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to being an archive to reconstruct species composition, the egg banks also provide information on the vulnerability of the populations present (Downing and Leibold 2010; Sada et al 2013;Henri et al 2014). Yet, very few studies have demonstrated such links since it requires quantification of egg bank size, which is labour intensive (Sada et al 2013). Most studies that have measured egg banks, included only those eggs within the top few centimetres of the soil, i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even though these hypotheses have been widely accepted in ecology, the dynamics driving their constituents are still unclear and seem to be habitat-and community specific as well as scale-dependent (Downing and Leibold 2010; Storch et al 2018;Vagle and McCain 2020). Branchiopod distribution patterns are usually influenced by climate and the physiochemical characteristics associated with each habitat (Maeda-Martı ´nez et al 1997;Boven et al 2008;Sada et al 2013;Rogers 2014a;Rogers and Timms 2014). However, to fully comprehend the ecological processes that drive the occurrence of branchiopods across habitats in a specific region, it is important to understand how community abundance and species richness are linked (Storch et al 2018), and what the drivers behind this relationship are (Rombouts et al 2009;Gillman et al 2015;Nhiwatiwa et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Egg banks in dryland wetlands provide information on the diversity and vulnerability of branchiopod communities along a longitudinal aridity gradient

Meyer-Milne

Brendonck

Pinceel

2022

Wetlands Ecol Manage

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Continued degradation of temporary wetlands and rapidly declining freshwater biodiversity call for identification of vulnerable species as targets for conservation and management efforts. Branchiopod crustaceans are endemic to temporary waters and rely on banks of drought-resistant eggs in the sediment for survival across dry seasons. These egg banks are like archives to biologists and allow them to estimate population status and resilience, without the need to sample active communities. Such an approach has, however, not yet been fully explored. Here, we investigate egg bank abundance and morpho-species richness to assess the vulnerability of branchiopod communities in dryland landscapes. For study systems, we use 98 temporary wetlands across the Northern Cape Province, South Africa, which contained eggs of Notostraca, Anostraca, Spinicaudata and Cladocera. We invoked the insurance hypothesis to investigate community resilience and studied egg bank abundance to reveal population status. Our results indicate that branchiopod communities become more vulnerable along an aridity gradient, from the semi-arid eastern regions to the arid western parts of the province. Apart from longitude, we also considered a suite of other environmental descriptors to explain variability in egg bank abundance and richness patterns and found that egg bank abundance decreased with alkalinity.

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