Abstract
The objective of the study was to define the primary environmental factors affecting the composition of the macrobenthic community in an abandoned open cast sulphur mine pit lake that had been filled with water from a nearby river. We investigated habitats at various depths and the macrobenthic communities; samples were collected by scuba divers. Although rush and submerged vegetation in the subsaline pit lake was abundant and provided potentially good habitat conditions for mayflies, caddisflies, coleopterans, or damselflies, the native insects were scarce. The taxa do not have many representatives in waters with elevated salinity, so those present in the Machów pit lake were mainly euryhaline species. Chironomids were the most abundant macroinvertebrates in shallower zones, whereas non-native zebra mussels were the quantitatively dominant taxon in deep-water zones. Moreover, these non-native mussels were the dominant biomass of invertebrates at all sites in all seasons. The current composition of the invertebrate assemblage was probably primarily determined by the salinated water, which limited the abundance of native species and gave non-native species an edge.
Highlights
Open cast mining is one of the most dramatic ways through which humans impact the natural environment
Site 1 was overgrown by emergent vegetation, the common reed (Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud.) and common club rush (Schoenoplectus lacustris (L.) Palla)
In all other pairwise comparisons, the highest average dissimilarity (AvDis) was determined for Dreissena
Summary
Open cast mining is one of the most dramatic ways through which humans impact the natural environment. The final qualitative and quantitative structure of the assemblage is often largely determined by the pioneer colonisers, which either facilitate the establishment of other species through changes in the habitat, or monopolise the area by preempting the space (Krebs 2001; Paine 1994). It is the abiotic parameters, such as water quality, that determine if organisms can colonise the lake or not (Luek and Rasmussen 2017; Lund and McCullough 2011)
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