Littoral benthic macroinvertebrates of mountain lakes in the Tatra Mountains (Slovakia, Poland)

Abstract

Littoral benthic macroinvertebrates of 45 mountain lakes in the Tatra Mountains were sampled using a semiquantitative method in September 2000. A total of 32,852 specimens were identified to 93 taxa belonging to 14 higher taxonomic groups. Multivariate statistics (CCA, RDA) and nine biotic metrics (AQEM/STAR) were used to explain relationships between macroinvertebrate assemblages and environmental variables. Up to 57% of the ecological position of littoral macroinvertebrate assemblages were explained by variance of environmental variables divided into chemical, trophic, physical, catchment and location. Five types of Tatra lakes were recognized using CCA: A -strongly acidified lakes (small catchment, low pH, high concentration of TP, DOC, highest amount of POM in littoral); B -alpine acidified lakes (low amount of POM, low values of biotic metrics); C -alpine non-acidified lakes (high value of diversity index, predominance of Diptera); D -subalpine acidified lakes (high values of biotic metrics: number of families, proportion of crenal and rhithral taxa/total taxa); E -subalpine non-acidified lakes (high values of biotic metrics: number of families, number of genera, BMWP score, number of taxa and abundance of EPT taxa). RDA was used to design five levels of macroinvertebrate taxa acidification tolerance. The Tatra Acidification Index (TAI) was established to assess the acidification status of the lakes in the Tatra Mts.

The distribution of littoral chironomids along an altitudinal gradient in High Tatra Mountain lakes: Could they be used as indicators of climate change?

“…8). Littoral chironomid data of 34 Tatra lakes at altitudes ranging from 1579 to 2145 m (Krno et al, 2006) were used for the validation procedure. Using just the proposed indicator species/taxa, an index for the altitude of each lake was calculated by multiplying the abundances of each indicator species/taxa with the appropriate index and dividing by total abundance.…”

“…Walker and Mathewes, 1989;Lotter et al, 1997;Larocque et al, 2001;Fu¨reder et al, 2006;Krno et al, 2006). The approximately linear decrease in littoral water surface temperature with increasing altitude has been shown in various mountain ranges (e.g.…”

“…(Krno et al, 2006) were used for verifying the correlation of altitude and the abundance of taxa considered characteristic in this paper, which enabled us to establish indices of characteristic taxa for particular altitude zones. SigmaStat for Windows was used for regression analysis.…”

Aquatic beetles of the alpine lakes: diversity, ecology and small-scale population genetics

“…The quantitative sampling recorded regularly during the ice-free seasons of 2000 and 2001 in Temnosmre inské plesá lakes, where the species was euconstant, showed its relatively high proportion of the total macroinvertebrate density and biomass (3.6%, resp. 28.0%), besides the usually highly dominant Chironomidae and Oligochaeta Krno et al, 2006;Oertli et al, 2008). Moreover, Krno (1991a) considered A. bipustulatus (together with some other species of aquatic insects: Ameletus inopinatus, Capnia vidua and Acrophylax sp.)…”

“…Füreder et al, 2006), thus this group of aquatic invertebrates of the alpine standing waters still remains relatively unknown. Also, reports from the Tatra area concern water beetles only marginally (Minkiewicz, 1914;Hrab , 1942), and the majority of available data come from benthological surveys (see Krno, 1991aKrno, , 1991bKrno, , 2006Vranovský et al, 1994;Krno et al, 2006). The only recent work on the Tatra Mountains by Kodada (1990) is focused on beetles of a few subalpine lakes and ponds, followed by several single records (Hájek, 1999;Kodada et al, 2003).…”