Environmental Variables Influencing Chironomid Assemblages (Diptera: Chironomidae) in Lowland Rivers of Central Poland

Abstract

Chironomids (Diptera: Chironomidae) are a family of dipterans with a global distribution. Owing to their great functional diversity and ability to adapt to a wide range of environmental conditions, they often dominate in freshwater macroinvertebrate communities, playing a key role in the cycling of organic matter and the flow of energy in aquatic ecosystems. Our aim was to analyze the structure of chironomid assemblages and identify the environmental factors, including current velocity, river width, water depth, water temperature, dissolved oxygen, percentage of substrate covered by vascular plants, inorganic bottom substrate, and quantity of benthic (BPOM) and transported (TPOM) particulate organic matter, that underpin variation in species richness across a set of lowland rivers in central Poland, differing by stream order and abiotic parameters. Using an Information Theoretic Approach, we formulated a set of alternative models based on previously published work, with models fitted in a Bayesian framework using Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation. The species richness of chironomids increased with river order, achieving a maximum in third and fourth order rivers, but decreased at higher orders. The best-fitting models included a positive effect of inorganic substrate index and dissolved oxygen on chironomid species richness. The quality structure of chironomid assemblages reflected the assumptions of the River Continuum Concept showing that species richness was under the influence of factors operating at both a micro- (inorganic bottom substrate) and macro-scale (dissolved oxygen).

Levantamento da entomofauna aquática associada ao estado de conservação da mata ciliar de propriedades leiteiras no Vale do Taquari/RS

“…As famílias Chironomidae, Elmidae e Caenidae estiveram presentes em todos os pontos amostrais, o que confirma a capacidade desses grupos em explorar diferentes locais. Chironomidae possui distribuição global e ocorre em grande abundância em ecossistemas aquáticos, estes organismos possuem a capacidade de se adaptar a condições ambientais adversas, expressando uma ampla gama de tolerâncias para concentrações de oxigênio dissolvido, fato que faz com que estes sejam encontrados nos mais variados ambientes (FERRINGTON, 2008;TRIVINHO-STRIXINO, 2011;LESZCZYŃSKA et al, 2019). Os coleópteros da família Elmidae são encontrados nos mais diversos ambientes aquáticos, desde ambientes de águas muito limpas e bem oxigenadas, até locais considerados moderadamente impactados, o que torna sua presença possível em corpos d'água com diferentes características ambientais (DOMÍNGUEZ et al, 1998;SANTOS et al, 2011;SEGURA et al, 2012;GONZÁLEZ-CÓRDOBA et al, 2020).…”

Chironomid riverine assemblages at the regional temperate scale – compositional distance and species diversity

“…The sampler was pushed to a depth of about 150 mm, and after pulling it out each obtained core was extracted from the sampler and preserved in plastic containers with riverine water. As a result, the material of each whole monthly sample from each river consisted of 100 cores (Leszczyńska et al 2019). Values for several environmental parameters, including water velocity [m s −1 ], river width [m], river depth [m], surface of bottom covered by submersed aquatic macrophytes [%], water temperature [ o C] and oxygen content [mg dm −1 ] were measured or assessed in the fields (three times per each transect).…”

“…However, dependent on the scale of a study, geographical localisation of investigated areas, etc., different environmental parameters are distinguished as those that explain the majority of total variation between chironomid assemblages. Numerous studies conducted worldwide at the regional or local scale in the latest two decades indicate the following factors as most important: water temperature (Lencioni & Rossaro 2005;, discharge or current velocity (Fesl 2002;Karaouzas & Płóciennik 2016), inorganic bottom substrate (Grzybkowska & Witczak 1990;Chaib et al 2013;Leszczyńska et al 2019), organic matter (König & Santos 2013;Mauad et al 2017), dissolved oxygen (Özkan et al 2010;Leszczyńska et al 2017), physicochemical parameters (Chaib et al 2013) and channel morphometry (Karaouzas & Płóciennik 2016).…”

“…While the identity of a single individual is enough to assess the presence of a given taxon, the identities of all individuals of all taxa are necessary to assess other (inter-)assemblage parameters, such as compositional distance or some parts of diversity per se (e.g., beta diversity measurement taking abundance or density into account), as well as assemblage dependence on environmental factors. Due to these difficulties, macroinvertebrate studies usually distinguish only chironomid genera, consider all chironomids as a single taxon (Mykrä et al 2008;Jones 2008), or ignore chironomids altogether, with rare exceptions (Puntí et al 2007(Puntí et al , 2009Chaib et al 2013), particularly in temperate Europe (Grzybkowska 1989(Grzybkowska , 1995Ruse 1995;Koperski 2009Koperski , 2010Árva et al 2017;Leszczyńska et al 2019).…”

Chironomidae (Order: Diptera) diversity in relation to water quality of highland rivers at Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

“…The genus reported to have high environmental gradient adaptations (Sriariyanuwath et al, 2015) and has many feeding behaviours (Beermann et al, 2018;Leite-Rossi et al, 2019). Previous studies indicate this genus is tolerable to organic concentrations (Bazzanti, 2000;Garcia and Laville, 2000;Leszczyńska et al, 2019). Instead of having turbid water, Bertam River also found to have higher ammoniacal.…”