Intensive human impacts drive the declines in heterogeneity of diatom communities in shallow lakes of East China
Anthropogenic eutrophication in aquatic ecosystems has had significant negative effects on biodiversity and human wellbeing. Improving our understanding of the ways in which biological communities respond to eutrophication underlies biodiversity conservation, and diversity metrics like species richn...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Elsevier
2022-07-01
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| Series: | Ecological Indicators |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X22004654 |
| _version_ | 1818204846764851200 |
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| author | Min Xu Rong Wang Xuhui Dong Qinghui Zhang Xiangdong Yang |
| author_facet | Min Xu Rong Wang Xuhui Dong Qinghui Zhang Xiangdong Yang |
| author_sort | Min Xu |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Anthropogenic eutrophication in aquatic ecosystems has had significant negative effects on biodiversity and human wellbeing. Improving our understanding of the ways in which biological communities respond to eutrophication underlies biodiversity conservation, and diversity metrics like species richness and evenness are often used to assess environmental impacts on biodiversity. However, such studies mainly consider overall gain and loss, ignoring species replacement in community succession. This paper combines paleolimnology and network science to propose a heterogeneity index (H) to measure community successions by linking long-term changes in community structure with environmental stress. Eight lakes of different types in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Basin (MLYB) were selected, and we focused on diatom communities to reconstruct their ecological trajectories after significant anthropogenic impact. The combined results suggested that human impacts have caused eutrophication in each lake since the 1950s, but led to different degrees of impact on the diatom communities. In hypereutrophic lakes, diatom assemblages shifted to high-nutrient tolerance and the proportions of epiphytic-benthic species decreased, while in mildly eutrophic lakes, a switch to mild-nutrient tolerant assemblages occurred in planktonic and epiphytic-benthic species with no change in epiphytic-benthic proportions. The H of diatom communities declined in hypereutrophic lakes, but changed little in mildly eutrophic lakes after the 1950s. Meanwhile, no regular changes in diversity indicators such as richness, evenness and the Jaccard-index occurred with lake eutrophication. The ordered species turnover in nutrient-enriched diatom communities may account for the discrepancies in H and the above indices, such as ordered epiphytic-benthic species being replaced by higher nutrient-tolerant and planktonic species with no necessarily attendant reduction in species richness. By quantifying the alteration of species associations without being influenced by species diversity, the H index effectively reveals the succession of diatom communities, and can therefore serve as a complementary indicator of biodiversity. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-12T03:47:44Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-43be008ea7f54f2990f94fb3957e55b2 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1470-160X |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-12T03:47:44Z |
| publishDate | 2022-07-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Ecological Indicators |
| spelling | doaj.art-43be008ea7f54f2990f94fb3957e55b22022-12-22T00:39:29ZengElsevierEcological Indicators1470-160X2022-07-01140108994Intensive human impacts drive the declines in heterogeneity of diatom communities in shallow lakes of East ChinaMin Xu0Rong Wang1Xuhui Dong2Qinghui Zhang3Xiangdong Yang4State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210008, ChinaState Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210008, China; Corresponding authors.School of Geography and Remote Sensing, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China; Corresponding authors.College of Geography and Environment, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, ChinaState Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210008, ChinaAnthropogenic eutrophication in aquatic ecosystems has had significant negative effects on biodiversity and human wellbeing. Improving our understanding of the ways in which biological communities respond to eutrophication underlies biodiversity conservation, and diversity metrics like species richness and evenness are often used to assess environmental impacts on biodiversity. However, such studies mainly consider overall gain and loss, ignoring species replacement in community succession. This paper combines paleolimnology and network science to propose a heterogeneity index (H) to measure community successions by linking long-term changes in community structure with environmental stress. Eight lakes of different types in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Basin (MLYB) were selected, and we focused on diatom communities to reconstruct their ecological trajectories after significant anthropogenic impact. The combined results suggested that human impacts have caused eutrophication in each lake since the 1950s, but led to different degrees of impact on the diatom communities. In hypereutrophic lakes, diatom assemblages shifted to high-nutrient tolerance and the proportions of epiphytic-benthic species decreased, while in mildly eutrophic lakes, a switch to mild-nutrient tolerant assemblages occurred in planktonic and epiphytic-benthic species with no change in epiphytic-benthic proportions. The H of diatom communities declined in hypereutrophic lakes, but changed little in mildly eutrophic lakes after the 1950s. Meanwhile, no regular changes in diversity indicators such as richness, evenness and the Jaccard-index occurred with lake eutrophication. The ordered species turnover in nutrient-enriched diatom communities may account for the discrepancies in H and the above indices, such as ordered epiphytic-benthic species being replaced by higher nutrient-tolerant and planktonic species with no necessarily attendant reduction in species richness. By quantifying the alteration of species associations without being influenced by species diversity, the H index effectively reveals the succession of diatom communities, and can therefore serve as a complementary indicator of biodiversity.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X22004654HeterogeneityBiodiversityNetworkSpecies richnessYangtze River Basin |
| spellingShingle | Min Xu Rong Wang Xuhui Dong Qinghui Zhang Xiangdong Yang Intensive human impacts drive the declines in heterogeneity of diatom communities in shallow lakes of East China Ecological Indicators Heterogeneity Biodiversity Network Species richness Yangtze River Basin |
| title | Intensive human impacts drive the declines in heterogeneity of diatom communities in shallow lakes of East China |
| title_full | Intensive human impacts drive the declines in heterogeneity of diatom communities in shallow lakes of East China |
| title_fullStr | Intensive human impacts drive the declines in heterogeneity of diatom communities in shallow lakes of East China |
| title_full_unstemmed | Intensive human impacts drive the declines in heterogeneity of diatom communities in shallow lakes of East China |
| title_short | Intensive human impacts drive the declines in heterogeneity of diatom communities in shallow lakes of East China |
| title_sort | intensive human impacts drive the declines in heterogeneity of diatom communities in shallow lakes of east china |
| topic | Heterogeneity Biodiversity Network Species richness Yangtze River Basin |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X22004654 |
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