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Abstract
Communities of benthic invertebrates from a series of intermittent headwater streams spanning over a short elevation gradient (i.e., ~ 180–500 m) were investigated in April–July 2010 and May–July 2011. The main purpose of this study was to better understand whether the potential future effect of environmental change on biological communities of the Precambrian Shield’s freshwaters can be detected using elevation as a substitute for time. Since obtaining long-term environmental data is a time-consuming process, substituting space for time could instead generate similar information in a shorter time. In this study, environmental differences associated with short elevation gradient were correlated with differences in benthic invertebrate communities. Therefore, elevation gradient provides a spatial proxy for anticipated future environmental change impacts over time. It was determined that water temperature accounts for the greatest variation in communities along the elevation. Many community metrics such as abundance, functional feeding groups, diversity, and evenness were significantly different based on the difference in elevation. Result indicates that even a short elevation gradient can potentially be used as a surrogate to look at the effect of environmental change.
Highlights
Environmental factors such as water temperature, water velocity, food availability, and food type influence on the benthic invertebrate communities’ structure along longitudinal stream profiles and with changes in altitude (Camargo and DeJalon 1995; Hawkins et al 2000; Vannote et al 1980)
Stepwise backwards elimination in redundancy analyses (RDA) retained Degree day (DD), catchment area, and water temperature as variables that were correlated with benthic communities in 2010 (April–July; Fig. 2a)
Stepwise backward elimination in correspondence analysis (CCA) retained catchment area, total phosphorus (TP), total nitrogen (TN), and water temperature as variables that were correlated with benthic communities in July 2011 (Fig. 2b)
Summary
Environmental factors such as water temperature, water velocity, food availability, and food type influence on the benthic invertebrate communities’ structure along longitudinal stream profiles and with changes in altitude (Camargo and DeJalon 1995; Hawkins et al 2000; Vannote et al 1980). This is because a complex interaction exists between water temperature, flow regime, food quality, type and availability, and the substrate that determines environmental heterogeneity and contributes to species diversity (Minshall et al 1985). The community difference based on the abundance can be detected if streams are in close geographical proximity, and species can migrate along the elevation gradient (Hughes et al 2008)
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