Influences of environmental factors on macroinvertebrate assemblages: differences between mountain and lowland ecoregions, Wei River, China

Abstract

Key environmental factors and the mechanisms of their influence on the physicochemical habitats and macroinvertebrate communities of streams may vary among ecoregions. We studied the differences in environmental (land use and physicochemical) factors and the mechanisms of their influence on macroinvertebrate assemblages between mountain and lowland ecoregions in central China. We applied generalized linear models to identify key environmental factors that influence macroinvertebrate metrics consisting of taxa richness, Ephemeroptera, Plecoptera, and Trichoptera (EPT) taxa, percentages of EPT and intolerant individuals, and the Shannon-Wiener diversity index. Environmental factors and macroinvertebrate metrics significantly differed between the ecoregions. Mountain streams had significantly lower nutrients and %silt, but had twice higher total taxa richness than lowland streams. Watershed land uses were key drivers that influenced the physical habitat in the mountain ecoregion and were the main drivers that influenced both physical and chemical conditions in the lowland ecoregion. Correspondingly, watershed scale land uses, as well as physical and chemical variables, explained more variance in macroinvertebrate metrics than local-scale land uses in both mountain and lowland ecoregions. The overall biological variation was explained better by watershed-scale than by reach-scale land uses, whereas the spatial scale over which land use and physicochemical variables influence streams varied across ecoregions. Our results suggest that better landscape planning should be adopted for watershed management to improve water quality and physical habitat, and thus the conservation and restoration of macroinvertebrate biodiversity.

The role of hydro‐environmental factors in Mayfly (Ephemeroptera, Insecta) community structure: Identifying threshold responses

“…Prior weights for observed richness were added using the coverage for each sample. Models were compared using the Akaike's information criterion (Li et al, 2018) to identify those models minimizing the loss of information (Barton, 2018).…”

Macroinvertebrados como bioindicadores de la calidad del agua en la quebrada La Calaboza (Yopal, Casanare)

“…De otro lado, a pesar de que las variables fisicoquímicas empleadas lograron explicar gran parte de la distribución de las familias asociadas al área de estudio, los factores que inciden en la dominancia de Leptohyphidae en la estación E6 durante el periodo de verano no fueron completamente establecidos. Es necesario resaltar que la abundancia de comunidades de macroinvertebrados asociados a un hábitat particular, se encuentra relacionada con múltiples factores, por ejemplo, concentración de macro y micronutrientes, oxígeno disuelto e interacciones con otros organismos, entre otros [18]. Por lo tanto, la determinación de estas variables podría representar un abordaje relevante para el desarrollo de estudios encaminados a profundizar los aspectos ecológicos de las familias de macroinvertebrados asociados a sistemas hídricos de la región.…”

The determinant factors for macroinvertebrate assemblages in a recreational river in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia

“…Because macroinvertebrates are nonmigratory and spend their whole lives in a confined region, they frequently exhibit the consequences of habitat change. As a result, they are excellent markers of environmental health, particularly in streams and other waterways (Ahmad et al, 2015;Li et al, 2018;Wang & Tan, 2017). They can also be sampled and identified using inexpensive technology, making them ideal for environmental biomonitoring.…”

“…The use of the macroinvertebrate community as a biological indicator for water quality, especially for river ecosystems, has been explored by numerous studies (Ahmad et al, 2015;Jang, 2016;Lin et al, 2016;Wang & Tan, 2017;Li et al, 2018;Wan Abdul Ghani et al, 2018). However, the determinant factors for macroinvertebrate assemblages remain vague, although a few studies have made an attempt at identifying the factors related to the assemblages (Liu et al, 2016;Wu et al, 2020;Zhao et al, 2019).…”