Department of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Sciences and Mathematics, University of Niš, Niš, Serbia.
School for Resource and Environmental Studies, Faculty of Management, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 Jul;29(34):51951-51963. doi: 10.1007/s11356-022-19302-y. Epub 2022 Mar 7.
Local environmental factors and dispersal-based processes can both influence the structure of metacommunities in freshwater ecosystems. Describing these patterns is especially important for biomonitoring approaches that are based on inferences made from benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages. Here, we examine the metacommunity structure of chironomid assemblages collected from 28 sampling stations along the Southern Morava River, Serbia. We examined the extent of dispersal-based processes along a temporal scale. We obtained 8 models for the different sampling seasons that determined the spatial variables that best explained variability in chironomid assemblages. Spatial processes were found to be a significant predictor of variation for chironomids during the late winter/spring (March and May) and autumn (October and November), concordant with the known phenology of common taxa. Species sorting and mass effects were found to be significant processes that structured the chironomid metacommunity. In addition, biological interactions, inferred from fish biomass, and habitat traits, demonstrated by macrophyte and riparian vegetation, were found to influence species sorting. A high variability of chironomid metacommunity structure across sampling seasons suggests that monitoring programs that include macroinvertebrates in bioassessment should avoid months with pronounced spatial processes, and consequently maximize a correlation between community structure and local environmental factors.
局部环境因素和基于扩散的过程都可以影响淡水生态系统中的复合种群结构。描述这些模式对于基于底栖大型无脊椎动物组合推断的生物监测方法尤为重要。在这里，我们研究了从塞尔维亚南部莫拉瓦河 28 个采样站采集的摇蚊组合的复合种群结构。我们检查了沿时间尺度的扩散过程的程度。我们获得了 8 个不同采样季节的模型，这些模型确定了最能解释摇蚊组合变异性的空间变量。发现空间过程是冬季后期/春季（3 月和 5 月）和秋季（10 月和 11 月）摇蚊变异的重要预测因子，与常见类群的已知物候学一致。物种分选和质量效应被发现是结构摇蚊复合种群的重要过程。此外，从鱼类生物量推断的生物相互作用以及由大型植物和河岸植被表现出的生境特征被发现影响物种分选。在不同采样季节摇蚊复合种群结构的高度变异性表明，包含生物评估中大型无脊椎动物的监测计划应避免具有明显空间过程的月份，从而最大程度地提高群落结构与当地环境因素之间的相关性。
