Studies on the Ecology of Rivers: I. On the Distribution of Macrophytic Vegetation in the Rivers of Britain

Butcher, R. W.

doi:10.2307/2255874

Cited by 210 publications

(115 citation statements)

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“…The result of hydrophyte autocorrelation analyses was as expected from previous studies [24,54,70,[109][110][111]. It confirms that hydrophyte regeneration power is relatively high in river system over a short period of time [50,[112][113][114].…”

Section: Short Term Temporal Changessupporting

confidence: 87%

Aquatic Plant Dynamics in Lowland River Networks: Connectivity, Management and Climate Change

Demars

Wiegleb

Harper

et al. 2014

Water

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Abstract:The spatial structure and evolution of river networks offer tremendous opportunities to study the processes underlying metacommunity patterns in the wild. Here we explore several fundamental aspects of aquatic plant biogeography. How stable is plant composition over time? How similar is it along rivers? How fast is the species turnover? How does that and spatial structure affect our species richness estimates across scales? How do climate change, river management practices and connectivity affect species composition and community structure? We answer these questions by testing twelve hypotheses and combining two spatial surveys across entire networks, a long term temporal survey (21 consecutive years), a trait database, and a selection of environmental variables. From our river reach scale survey in lowland rivers, hydrophytes and marginal plants (helophytes) showed contrasting patterns in species abundance, richness and autocorrelation both in time and space. Since patterns in marginal plants reflect at least partly a sampling artefact (edge effect), the rest of the study focused on hydrophytes. Seasonal variability over two years and positive temporal autocorrelation at short time lags confirmed the relatively high regeneration abilities of aquatic plants in lowland rivers. Yet, OPEN ACCESSWater 2014, 6 869 from 1978 to 1998, plant composition changed quite dramatically and diversity decreased substantially. The annual species turnover was relatively high (20%-40%) and cumulated species richness was on average 23% and 34% higher over three and five years respectively, than annual survey. The long term changes were correlated to changes in climate (decreasing winter ice scouring, increasing summer low flows) and management (riparian shading). Over 21 years, there was a general erosion of species attributes over time attributed to a decrease in winter ice scouring, increase in shading and summer low flows, as well as a remaining effect of time which may be due to an erosion of the regional species pool. Temporal and spatial autocorrelation analyses indicated that long term hydrophyte biomonitoring, for the Water Framework Directive in lowland rivers, may be carried out at 4-6 years intervals for every 10 km of rivers. From multi-scale and abundance-range size analyses evidence of spatial isolation and longitudinal connectivity was detected, with no evidence of stronger longitudinal connectivity (fish and water current propagules dispersal) than spatial isolation (bird, wind and human dispersal) contrary to previous studies. The evidence for longitudinal connectivity was rather weak, perhaps resulting from the effect of small weirs. Further studies will need to integrate other aquatic habitats along rivers (regional species pool) and larger scales to increase the number of species and integrate phylogeny to build a more eco-evolutionary approach. More mechanistic approaches will be necessary to make predictions against our changing climate and management practices.

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Section: Short Term Temporal Changessupporting

confidence: 87%

Aquatic Plant Dynamics in Lowland River Networks: Connectivity, Management and Climate Change

Demars

Wiegleb

Harper

et al. 2014

Water

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“…As in our study, French and Chambers (1996) found that E. canadensis, Myriophyllum exalbescens (morphologically comparable to Myriophyllum triphyllum), and Potamogeton gramineus (morphologically comparable to Potamogeton cheesemanii) were most abundant in the velocity range 0-0.4 m s Ϫ1 , and Ranunculus aquatilis (morphologically comparable to Ranunculus trichophyllus) was most abundant from 0.4 to 0.6 m s Ϫ1 . Similarly, Butcher (1933) and Haslam (1978) found that Ranunculus spp. prefer fast-flowing water, and Bilby (1977) and Haslam (1978) observed that E. canadensis prefer slowflowing waters.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Hydrologic and hydraulic control of macrophyte establishment and performance in streams

Riis

Biggs

2003

Limnology & Oceanography

225

159

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Macrophytes play a key role in many unshaded lotic ecosystems, but little is known of the factors controlling their presence, abundance, and composition. Macrophyte abundance, diversity, and composition were studied in 15 New Zealand streams to test the hypotheses that the presence and development of macrophytes in lotic systems is primarily controlled by the hydrologic regime (frequency of high-velocity flood events) and that the interflood spatial distribution and performance of taxa in more stable systems is strongly influenced by local hydraulic conditions (depth/velocity/sediments). Both hypotheses were supported by our results. We found that the abundance and diversity of macrophytes decreased as flood disturbance frequency increased (r 2 ϭ 0.52, P ϭ 0.002 for abundance; r 2 ϭ 0.53, P ϭ 0.022 for diversity) and that vegetation was absent in streams with more than ϳ13 highflow disturbances per year. An experiment in an ecohydraulics flume identified that the main mechanism causing these effects was not stem breakage at high water velocity but probably uprooting associated with bed sediment erosion. We found that plants with high propagule production constituted a greater proportion of the vegetation in more flood disturbed streams than in stable streams, suggesting that this species trait is important for the maintenance of macrophyte communities in flood prone streams. Distinct velocity, depth, and substrate particle size habitat preferences were displayed by four common species in the study streams. None of the macrophytes showed overlapping preferences for all three habitat variables, suggesting coexisting of the species in streams by physical niche separation. These results significantly expand our understanding of the role of flow regimes in determining lotic ecosystem structure and functioning.

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“…Water currents are among the strongest environmental variables determining the occurrence and/or abundance of aquatic plants (Janauer et al 2010). The occurrence and preference of M. spicatum to the faster flowing waters and hard substrates has been already observed (Butcher 1933;Bernez et al 2004;Hrivnák et al 2006).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Spatial pattern of native species Myriophyllum spicatum and invasive alien species Elodea nuttallii after introduction of the latter one into the Drava River (Slovenia)

Grudnik

Germ

2013

Biologia

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Invasive alien species Elodea nuttallii was introduced into the Drava River (Slovenia) in 2007. The spatial distribution of native macrophyte species Myriophyllum spicatum and the invasive alien species E. nuttallii was studied in two impoundments, HPP Vuhred and HPP Mariborski otok in the years 2009, 2010 and 2011. The very heterogeneous environment of the Drava River had resulted in dynamic and non-uniform distributions of E. nuttalli and M. spicatum in both impoundments. The distribution of E. nuttalli was shown to be suppressed in river stretches exposed to great turbulence. It had, however, successfully invaded areas with gentle slope of littoral, low exposition to main water flow and muddy sediment and prevailed against the native species M. spicatum. The latter was more abundant than E. nuttallii in stretches exposed to higher flow velocity. Thus, the competitive success of M. spicatum and E. nuttallii depended on environmental conditions. Our results lead to the prediction that E. nuttallii will increase further in the river Drava, causing serious economic problems.

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Studies on the Ecology of Rivers: I. On the Distribution of Macrophytic Vegetation in the Rivers of Britain

Cited by 210 publications

References 0 publications

Aquatic Plant Dynamics in Lowland River Networks: Connectivity, Management and Climate Change

Aquatic Plant Dynamics in Lowland River Networks: Connectivity, Management and Climate Change

Hydrologic and hydraulic control of macrophyte establishment and performance in streams

Spatial pattern of native species Myriophyllum spicatum and invasive alien species Elodea nuttallii after introduction of the latter one into the Drava River (Slovenia)

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