Interannual hydrological variations and ecological phytoplankton patterns in Amazonian floodplain lakes

Abstract

Amazonian aquatic environments are complex, and their interaction promotes heterogeneous environments that in turn make it difficult to describe the development of patterns. Amazonian floodplain lakes have different environmental and biological responses in similar water periods due to the interannual variation. We evaluated if the interannual variations in the physical–chemical structure and the phytoplankton community promote environmentally and biologically contrasted conditions between similar hydrological periods. Phytoplankton community structure has differences between periods, but these differences do not necessarily promote dissimilarities. Most of the phytoplankton species belong to the same functional groups. The compositions of species and functional groups between sample units inside lakes are variable and may or may not have significant differences in dissimilarity, but both periods are equally heterogeneous. Beta diversity has shown that the replacement of species and functional groups causes a high level of variation between sites, which maintain a high heterogeneity between periods. These variations have different responses for different scales turning the interpretation of patterns for these environments a problematic task. Hence, scale and interannual variability are factors that need to be carefully considered when setting standards to describe the ecological dynamics of floodplain lakes in the Amazonian system.