Instituto Multidisciplinario sobre Ecosistemas y Desarrollo Sustentable, Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, CONICET, Campus Universitario, Paraje Arroyo Seco s/n, Tandil 7000, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud (FCS), Universidad Nacional de Entre Ríos (UNER), Lorenzo P. Sartorio 2160, 3260 Concepción del Uruguay, Provincia de Entre Ríos, Argentina.
Sci Total Environ. 2022 Feb 10;807(Pt 2):150650. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.150650. Epub 2021 Sep 29.
Urbanization and industrialization produce substantial changes in biodiversity and in the functionality of ecosystems. However, little is known about how anthropic pressures might drive these changes and about their functional consequences. We aimed to determine the responses of macroinvertebrate biological traits to urban and industrial pollution and assess the impacts of these disturbances on the functional diversity of these assemblages. We sampled benthic macroinvertebrates in 27 sites of four basins with different urban disturbance gradients (rural, peri-urban, and urban-industrial), among them the Matanza-Riachuelo River, one of the most polluted basins in the world. We classified macroinvertebrates into 11 traits and 56 categories. Then, we performed an RLQ analysis and computed functional richness, evenness, divergence and Rao diversity indexes for each site and community weighted means for each trait category. The urban and industrial sites (mainly low and middle Matanza-Riachuelo River Basin) showed high concentrations of ammonium, SRP, conductivity, COD, BOD, and organic matter, as well as the lowest values of DO. The functional richness and Rao index of these sites were significantly lower than that of the other sites. Macroinvertebrate traits associated with urban and industrial sites were aerial respiration (spiracles), forms of resistance (eggs or statoblast), cylindrical body shape, oviparity, feeding on microinvertebrates, and full water swimmers. These traits potentially enabled tolerant species persistence at polluted sites while gills, grazers, and crawlers were sensitive to these disturbances. Urban and industrial activities influence biological traits, producing the disappearance or dominance of certain traits in macroinvertebrate assemblages. As a consequence, extreme pollution caused predictable trait-based community changes resulting in reduced functional diversity, and potentially altered the ecosystem function.
城市化和工业化会导致生物多样性和生态系统功能发生重大变化。然而，人们对于人为压力如何驱动这些变化及其功能后果知之甚少。我们旨在确定大型无脊椎动物生物特征对城市和工业污染的响应，并评估这些干扰对这些生物群落功能多样性的影响。我们在四个流域的 27 个地点采集了底栖大型无脊椎动物样本，这些地点的城市干扰梯度不同（农村、城郊和城市工业），其中包括拉普拉塔河-里亚丘埃洛河流域，这是世界上污染最严重的流域之一。我们将大型无脊椎动物分为 11 个特征和 56 个类别。然后，我们进行了 RLQ 分析，并计算了每个地点的功能丰富度、均匀度、发散度和 Rao 多样性指数，以及每个特征类别的群落加权均值。城市和工业地点（主要是低中和高拉普拉塔河-里亚丘埃洛河流域）表现出高浓度的铵、SRP、电导率、COD、BOD 和有机物，以及最低的 DO 值。这些地点的功能丰富度和 Rao 指数明显低于其他地点。与城市和工业地点相关的大型无脊椎动物特征是气呼吸（鳃）、抵抗形式（卵或芽胞）、圆柱形身体形状、卵生、以微型无脊椎动物为食和全水游泳者。这些特征可能使耐受物种在污染地点得以持续存在，而鳃、食草动物和爬行者对这些干扰很敏感。城市和工业活动会影响生物特征，导致大型无脊椎动物群落中某些特征的消失或占主导地位。因此，极端污染导致了可预测的基于特征的群落变化，从而降低了功能多样性，并可能改变了生态系统功能。
