| Authors |
ESCOBAR-CAMACHO Daniel
CRABOT Julie
STUBBINGTON Rachel
ENGLAND Judy
SARREMEJANE Romain
BONADA Nuria
FERNANDEZ-CALERO Jose Maria
CANEDO-ARGUELLES Miguel
REZENDE Carla Ferreira
CHANUT Pierre
CSABAI Zoltan
ENCALADA Andrea C
LAINI Alex
MYKRAE Heikki
MOYA Nabor
PAŘIL Petr
ROSERO-LOPEZ Daniela
DATRY Thibault
|
| Year of publication |
2025 |
| Type |
Article in Periodical
|
| Magazine / Source |
Global Change Biology |
| MU Faculty or unit |
Faculty of Science
|
| Citation |
ESCOBAR-CAMACHO, Daniel, Julie CRABOT, Rachel STUBBINGTON, Judy
ENGLAND, Romain SARREMEJANE, Nuria BONADA, Jose Maria
FERNANDEZ-CALERO, Miguel CANEDO-ARGUELLES, Carla Ferreira
REZENDE, Pierre CHANUT, Zoltan CSABAI, Andrea C ENCALADA, Alex
LAINI, Heikki MYKRAE, Nabor MOYA, Petr PAŘIL, Daniela
ROSERO-LOPEZ and Thibault DATRY. River Drying Causes Local
Losses and Regional Gains in Aquatic Invertebrate Metacommunity
Diversity: A Cross-Continental Comparison. Global Change
Biology. Wiley, 2025, vol. 31, No 2, p. 1-17. ISSN 1354-1013.
Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70068. |
| web |
https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70068
|
| Doi |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70068 |
| Keywords |
assembly mechanisms; dispersal; drying duration; intermittent river; macroinvertebrate; metacommunity; temporal dynamics
|
| Description |
Drying river networks include non-perennial reaches that cease to flow or dry, and drying is becoming more prevalent with ongoing climate change. Biodiversity responses to drying have been explored mostly at local scales in a few regions, such as Europe and North America, limiting our ability to predict future global scenarios of freshwater biodiversity. Locally, drying acts as a strong environmental filter that selects for species with adaptations promoting resistance or resilience to desiccation, thus reducing aquatic alpha-diversity. At the river network scale, drying generates complex mosaics of dry and wet habitats, shaping metacommunities driven by both environmental and dispersal processes. By repeatedly resetting community succession, drying can enhance beta-diversity in space and time. To investigate the transferability of these concepts across continents, we compiled and analyzed a unique dataset of 43 aquatic invertebrate metacommunities from drying river networks in Europe and South America. In Europe, alpha-diversity was consistently lower in non-perennial than perennial reaches, whereas this pattern was not evident in South America. Concomitantly, beta-diversity was higher in non-perennial reaches than in perennial ones in Europe but not in South America. In general, beta-diversity was predominantly driven by turnover rather than nestedness. Dispersal was the main driver of metacommunity dynamics, challenging prevailing views in river science that environmental filtering is the primary process shaping aquatic metacommunities. Lastly, alpha-diversity decreased as drying duration increased, but this was not consistent across Europe. Overall, drying had continent-specific effects, suggesting limited transferability of knowledge accumulated from North America and Europe to other biogeographic regions. As climate change intensifies, river drying is increasing, and our results underscore the importance of studying its effects across different regions. The importance of dispersal also suggests that management efforts should seek to enhance connectivity between reaches to effectively monitor, restore and conserve freshwater biodiversity.
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