Evidence against the use of surrogates for biomonitoring of Neotropical floodplains

Abstract

Summary 1. Community concordance measures the level of association between the compositional patterns shown by two groups of organisms. If strong community concordance occurs, one group could be used as a surrogate for another in conservation planning and biodiversity monitoring. In this study, we evaluated the variability in the strength of community concordance, the likely mechanisms underlying community concordance and the degree to which one community can predict another in a set of Neotropical floodplain lakes (Upper Paraná River floodplain, Brazil). 2. We used a data set including six aquatic communities: fish, macrophytes, benthic macroinvertebrates, zooplankton, phytoplankton and periphyton. We used Mantel and PROTEST approaches to evaluate the levels of community concordance in up to four sampling periods. Also, we used partial Mantel test and information about biotic interactions to investigate reasons for observed patterns of concordance. Finally, we used co‐correspondence analysis to evaluate the performance of one taxonomic group in predicting the structures of other communities. 3. The levels of community concordance varied over time for almost all cross‐taxa comparisons. Concordance between phytoplankton and periphyton probably resulted from similar responses to environmental gradients, whereas other patterns of concordance were likely generated by interactions among groups. However, the levels of predictability were low, and no particular taxonomic group significantly predicted all other groups. 4. The low and temporally variable levels of community concordance cast doubts on the use of surrogate groups for biodiversity management in Neotropical floodplains.

Two practical approaches to monitoring the zooplanktonic community at Lago Grande do Curuai, Pará, Brazil

“…Although some groups have shown significant relationships, these were less than 0.7 (Heino 2010), which makes unwise to use this approach. In this sense, our results are similar to those found in other studies (Lopes et al 2011;Padial et al 2012;Vieira et al 2014) and indicated that all zooplankton groups should be included in environmental monitoring programs, whereas only one group is not enough to understand the ecological dynamics of the community in the study area.…”

“…A wide variety of organisms are used for biomonitoring (Resh 2008), such as fish (Dellinger et al 2014), zooplankton (Lodi et al 2011), benthic macro-invertebrates (Trigal et al 2014), and plants (Szczyglowska et al 2014); however, the integration of various organic groups and identification of each at the lowest possible taxonomic level (in most cases, the specific level) can be impracticable both financially and in relation to the time available for the study (Carneiro et al 2010;Padial et al 2012).…”

Is it possible to simplify environmental monitoring? Approaches with zooplankton in a hydroelectric reservoir

“…However, the increase in sampling number brings cost growth, while evaluate biological dimension brings the need of specialists in different biological groups. To mitigate this problem is possible to use biological surrogate groups, which is the use of substitution between groups that present congruent patterns over time and space for biomonitoring purposes (Padial et al, 2012) or to work with presence/absence of species (rather than density) at lower taxonomic resolutions (Gomes et al, 2015;Machado et al, 2015).…”

Variação espaço-temporal do zooplâncton e utilização em biomonitoramento no Lago Grande do Curuai, Pará, Brasil

“…Estudos que abordem esta assembleia encontram uma forte dificuldade em relação à quantidade de taxonomistas especializados, falta de tempo e recursos financeiros (Carneiro et al, 2010;Padial et al, 2012). Diante da problemática evidenciada, o segundo capítulo da presente dissertação traz a proposta do uso de grupos substitutos, resoluções numéricas (dados de presença/ausência de espécies em substituição à densidade) e taxonômicas (gêneros e famílias no lugar de espécies); que consistem em meios de simplificação para análises de biodiversidade, diante de avaliações ambientais que sofram com a escassez de tempo e/ou recursos.…”

“…No entanto, a integração de vários grupos biológicos e identificação de cada um ao mais baixo nível taxonômico possível (na maioria dos casos, o nível específico) pode ser impraticável, tanto financeiramente quanto em relação ao tempo disponível para o estudo (Carneiro et al 2010.;Padial et al 2012). …”