Influences of forest harvest and environmental gradients on aquatic invertebrate communities of seasonal ponds

Influences of upland timber harvest on aquatic invertebrate communities in seasonal ponds: efficacy of forested buffers

“…To reduce complexity of the invertebrate data, we aggregated related organisms, and the resulting 16 variables were used as responses for all analyses. Aggregate taxa corresponded to feeding guilds and life-history groups and were generally similar to those reported by Hanson et al (2009) from work in similar pond sites. We chose peak seasonal abundance (highest annual abundance count from among 3-5 sampling dates) for each of these 16 taxa in each pond and these values were averaged across replicate sites for each treatment group (control, full buffer, partial buffer, and clearcut), resulting in a single peak abundance estimate for each treatment in each year.…”

“…Previous studies of aquatic invertebrates in seasonal ponds of North America have reported weak, sometimes variable relationships between community patterns and environmental gradients. For example, Batzer et al (2004) described a negative relationship between abundance of Dytiscidae (predacious Coleoptera) and extent of canopy closure, but Hanson et al (2009) observed opposite trends in seasonal ponds located within 50 km of the former sites.…”

“…It follows that timber harvesting in adjacent uplands has potential to alter ecological processes and communities in embedded seasonal ponds by modifying light regimes, water chemistry, and litter inputs (Semlitsch and Bodie 1998;Batzer et al 2000;Palik et al 2001) and perhaps pond hydrology (Hanson et al 2009). These changes in turn may influence resident organisms and communities as they do in small streams (Webster et al1990;Wallace et al 1997;Kiffney et al 2003).…”

“…It seems plausible that such chemical, physical, and biological responses have potential to induce changes in aquatic invertebrate abundance or community composition. In fact, abundances of several macroinvertebrate taxa in small seasonal ponds in northern Minnesota have been shown to vary as a function of canopy openness (Palik et al 2001;Batzer et al 2004;Hanson et al 2009). Macroinvertebrates in seasonal ponds provide a key protein source for female and immature ducks (Krapu and Reinecke 1992), thus changes in abundance and composition of invertebrates have implications for waterfowl nutrition and recruitment throughout forested regions of North America and elsewhere.…”

Influence of riparian habitat on aquatic macroinvertebrate community colonization within riparian zones of agricultural headwater streams

“…Yee (2008) summarized results from the midwestern and southeastern United States and found that 50% of the studies documented dramatic differences in larval mosquito species richness and abundance between shaded and unshaded tires. Greater abundances of Chironomidae and predatory Diptera occurred in unshaded than in shaded seasonal ponds in Minnesota, and Copepoda preferred shaded rather than unshaded seasonal ponds (Hanson et al 2009). Mosquitoes and aquatic insect predators occurred more frequently in shaded than unshaded artificial containers in Japan (Sunahara et al 2002).…”