Oklahoma Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, 74078, USA.
U.S. Geological Survey, Oklahoma Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, 74078, USA.
Sci Rep. 2022 Nov 15;12(1):19559. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-21791-3.
Diverse communities of groundwater-dwelling organisms (i.e., stygobionts) are important for human wellbeing; however, we lack an understanding of the factors driving their distributions, making it difficult to protect many at-risk species. Therefore, our study objective was to determine the landscape factors related to the occurrence of cavefishes and cave crayfishes in the Ozark Highlands ecoregion, USA. We sampled cavefishes and cave crayfishes at 61 sampling units using both visual and environmental DNA surveys. We then modeled occurrence probability in relation to lithology and human disturbance while accounting for imperfect detection. Our results indicated that occurrence probability of cave crayfishes was negatively associated with human disturbance, whereas there was a weak positive relationship between cavefish occurrence and disturbance. Both cavefishes and cave crayfishes were more likely to occur in limestone rather than dolostone lithology. Our results indicate structuring factors are related to the distribution of these taxa, but with human disturbance as a prevalent modifier of distributions for cave crayfishes. Limiting human alteration near karst features may be warranted to promote the persistence of some stygobionts. Moreover, our results indicate current sampling efforts are inadequate to detect cryptic species; therefore, expanding sampling may be needed to develop effective conservation actions.
地下生物（即洞穴生物）群落对人类福祉很重要，但我们缺乏对驱动其分布因素的了解，这使得许多濒危物种难以得到保护。因此，我们的研究目的是确定美国奥沙克高地生态区洞穴鱼类和洞穴螯虾出现的景观因素。我们使用视觉和环境 DNA 调查在 61 个采样单元中对洞穴鱼类和洞穴螯虾进行了采样。然后，我们在考虑不完全检测的情况下，根据岩性和人为干扰来模拟出现概率。我们的研究结果表明，洞穴螯虾的出现概率与人为干扰呈负相关，而洞穴鱼类的出现与干扰呈弱正相关。洞穴鱼类和洞穴螯虾更可能出现在石灰岩中，而不是白云岩岩性中。我们的研究结果表明，结构因素与这些类群的分布有关，但人为干扰是洞穴螯虾分布的主要调节因素。限制人类对喀斯特地貌的改变可能是必要的，以促进某些洞穴生物的持续存在。此外，我们的研究结果表明，目前的采样工作不足以检测隐匿物种；因此，可能需要扩大采样范围，以制定有效的保护措施。
