The spatial and temporal heterogeneity of macrophyte communities in thirty small, temporary ponds over a period of ten years

Abstract

Citation: Jeffries, Mike (2008) The spatial and temporal heterogeneity of macrophyte communities in thirty small, temporary ponds over a period of ten years. Ecography, 31 (6 Northumbria University has developed Northumbria Research Link (NRL) to enable users to access the University's research output. Copyright © and moral rights for items on NRL are retained by the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. Single copies of full items can be reproduced, displayed or performed, and given to third parties in any format or medium for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge, provided the authors, title and full bibliographic details are given, as well as a hyperlink and/or URL to the original metadata page. The content must not be changed in any way. Full items must not be sold commercially in any format or medium without formal permission of the copyright holder. The full policy is available online: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/policies.html This document may differ from the final, published version of the research and has been made available online in accordance with publisher policies. To read and/or cite from the published version of the research, please visit the publisher's website (a subscription may be required.) 1The spatial and temporal heterogeneity of macrophyte communities in thirty small, temporary ponds over a period of ten years.

The temporal dynamics of temporary pond macroinvertebrate communities over a 10-year period

“…So, the plants provide a characterisation of the local habitat within each pond, reflecting a range of wider environmental influences. (for full details of the plant communities see Jeffries, 2008). The plant communities were used in this study as categorical predictor variables in the models of animal metacommunities (Table 1).…”

“…Other possible matrices were tested and did not give markedly different results. The predictor variables were the length of previous year's summer dry phase, length of previous winter flooding, length of spring dry phase, distance of individual ponds measured as x and y co-ordinates across the array of ponds and plant communities, the latter a factorial variable using the eight plant metacommunities identified by Jeffries (2008) as individual factors. Previous studies of the Hauxley ponds showed that hydrology and plant communities were effective predictor variables in models of species' incidence (Jeffries 2005) and the initial RDA (Figure 2a) confirmed their likely value as predictors of metacommunities.…”

Ecological Drivers of Cladoceran Diversity in the Central European City (Łódź, Poland): Effects of Urbanisation and Size of the Waterbody

“…This in itself represents only a fraction of the overall biological diversity present within ponds. Aquatic macrophytes Jeffries, 2008;Hassall et al, 2012), algae (Asencio, 2014), and Zooplankton (Rundle et al, 2002;Drenner et al, 2009) are also very well represented within ponds and all six species of native UK amphibians (including the protected Great Crested Newt (Triturus cristatus) and the Natterjack Toad (Epidalea calamita)) utilise ponds (Boothby, 1997b;O'Brien, 2014;Peterman et al, 2014). In addition, the following section outlines the ecological importance of ponds to freshwater biodiversity.…”

“…Indeed, a number of studies have demonstrated that floral and faunal biodiversity and heterogeneity of invertebrate communities varies over time as well as space (Angélibert et al, 2004;Florencio et al, 2011;Jeffries, 2011;Hassall et al, 2012). Ecological patterns which are difficult to explain based on a single season or 1 year surveys may appear to be heavily influenced by stochastic processes but the patterns may instead be quite deterministic (e.g., historic effects) when examined over a longer temporal scale (Jeffries, 2008;Jeffries, 2011). Addressing the biodiversity of ponds habitats at a range of spatial and temporal scales is vital to increase the knowledge base of pond ecosystems and inform conservation and management practices at the correct spatial scale.…”

The distribution of pond snail communities across a landscape: separating out the influence of spatial position from local habitat quality for ponds in south-east Northumberland, UK

“…Macrophyte communities are good surrogates for a wide range of local environmental conditions e.g. physicochemical factors such as pH, nutrients and overall trophic status (Jeffries, 1991a;Costil and Clement, 1996;Nicolet et al, 2004;Della Bella et al, 2008) and variations in habitat type due to local hydrology (Jeffries, 2008) or management (Jeffries, 1991a;Gee et al, 1997). Macrophytes are an important influence on snail communities, providing both physical habitat in which to live and varied surfaces from which snails can graze the periphyton.…”