Recovery from air pollution and subsequent acidification masks the effects of climate change on a freshwater macroinvertebrate community.

Autor: Baker NJ; Department of River Ecology and Conservation, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, Gelnhausen, Germany. Electronic address: nathan.baker@senckenberg.de., Pilotto F; Environmental Archaeology Lab, Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden., Jourdan J; Department of Aquatic Ecotoxicology, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main, Germany., Beudert B; Department of Conservation and Research, Bavarian Forest National Park, Grafenau, Germany., Haase P; Department of River Ecology and Conservation, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt, Gelnhausen, Germany; Faculty of Biology, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: The Science of the total environment [Sci Total Environ] 2021 Mar 01; Vol. 758, pp. 143685. Date of Electronic Publication: 2020 Nov 24.
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143685
Abstrakt: Freshwater ecosystems are dynamic, complex systems with a multitude of physical and ecological processes and stressors which drive fluctuations on the community-level. Disentangling the effects of different processes and stressors is challenging due to their interconnected nature. However, as protected areas (i.e. national parks) are less anthropogenically impacted, they are ideal for investigating single stressors. We focus on the Bavarian Forest National Park, a Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site in Germany, where the major stressors are climate warming, air pollution (i.e. acidification) and bark beetle infestations. We investigated the effects of these stressors on freshwater macroinvertebrates using comprehensive long-term (1983-2014) datasets comprising high-resolution macroinvertebrate and physico-chemical data from a near-natural stream. Macroinvertebrate communities have undergone substantial changes over the past 32 years, highlighted by increases in overall community abundance (+173%) and richness (+51.6%) as well as taxonomic restructuring driven by a disproportional increase of dipterans. Prior to the year 2000, regression analyses revealed a decline in sulphate deposition and subsequent recovery from historical acidification as potential drivers of the increases in abundance and richness rather than to increases in water temperature (1.5 °C overall increase). Post 2000, however, alterations to nutrient cycling caused by bark beetle infestations coupled with warming temperatures were correlated to taxonomic restructuring and disproportional increases of dipterans at the expense of sensitive taxa such as plecopterans and trichopterans. Our results highlight the challenges when investigating the effects of climate change within a multi-stressor context. Even in conservation areas, recovery from previous disturbance might mask the effects of ongoing disturbances like climate change. Overall, we observed strong community restructuring, demonstrating that stenothermal headwater communities face additional stress due to emerging competition with tolerant taxa. Conservation efforts should consider the temporal variability of communities and their recovery from disturbances to adequately identify species vulnerable to local or widespread extinction.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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