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Egg banks in dryland wetlands provide information on the diversity and vulnerability of branchiopod communities along a longitudinal aridity gradient

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Abstract

Continued degradation of temporary wetlands and rapidly declining freshwater biodiversity call for identification of vulnerable species as targets for conservation and management efforts. Branchiopod crustaceans are endemic to temporary waters and rely on banks of drought-resistant eggs in the sediment for survival across dry seasons. These egg banks are like archives to biologists and allow them to estimate population status and resilience, without the need to sample active communities. Such an approach has, however, not yet been fully explored. Here, we investigate egg bank abundance and morpho-species richness to assess the vulnerability of branchiopod communities in dryland landscapes. For study systems, we use 98 temporary wetlands across the Northern Cape Province, South Africa, which contained eggs of Notostraca, Anostraca, Spinicaudata and Cladocera. We invoked the insurance hypothesis to investigate community resilience and studied egg bank abundance to reveal population status. Our results indicate that branchiopod communities become more vulnerable along an aridity gradient, from the semi-arid eastern regions to the arid western parts of the province. Apart from longitude, we also considered a suite of other environmental descriptors to explain variability in egg bank abundance and richness patterns and found that egg bank abundance decreased with alkalinity.

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Data availability

The data support our published claims and comply with field standards. All raw data used in this study belongs to SAEON. Please contact the corresponding author for data sharing options.

Code availability

All data analyses were performed using packages in the R Statistical Environment, as discussed in the methodology section. Please contact the corresponding author for script sharing options.

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Acknowledgements

Dr E Milne was enabled through a Postdoctoral Fellowship of a Professional Development Programme funded by the South African Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation; as well as a KU Leuven GLOBAL MINDS: Short Term Research Stay Mobility Grant. Additional project funding was provided through an NRF FBIP grant (No. 110451). T. Pinceel was funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (12F0716N). We thank the Department of Biological and Agricultural Sciences at the Sol Plaatje University for the use of their laboratory facilities to extract the eggs. We are further grateful to all the landowners for allowing this research to be conducted on their properties. We also sincerely appreciate all the valuable comments and suggestions from the reviewers. Rainfall data was provided by the South African Weather Service.

Funding

Dr E Milne was enabled through a Postdoctoral Fellowship of a Professional Development Programme funded by the South African Department of Science and Technology and the National Research Foundation; as well as a KU Leuven GLOBAL MINDS: Short Term Research Stay Mobility Grant. Additional project funding was provided through an NRF FBIP grant (No. 110451) and T. Pinceel was funded by the Research Foundation Flanders (12F0716N).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. South African Environmental Observation Network, Hadison Park, P.O. Box 110040, Kimberley, 8306, South Africa

    Elizabeth Meyer-Milne

  2. Laboratory of Animal Ecology, Global Change and Sustainable Development, KU Leuven, Ch. Deberiotstraat 32 - Box 2439, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Luc Brendonck & Tom Pinceel

  3. Water Research Group, School for Biological Sciences, Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management, Potchefstroom Campus, North West University, Private Bag X6001, Potchefstroom, 2520, South Africa

    Luc Brendonck

  4. Centre for Environmental Management, University of the Free State, P.O. Box 339, Bloemfontein, 9300, South Africa

    Elizabeth Meyer-Milne & Tom Pinceel

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  1. Elizabeth Meyer-Milne
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Contributions

Conceptualization: [Elizabeth Meyer-Milne, Tom Pinceel]; Methodology: [Elizabeth Meyer-Milne]; Formal analysis and investigation: [Elizabeth Meyer-Milne]; Writing—original draft preparation: [Elizabeth Meyer-Milne]; Writing—review and editing: [Tom Pinceel, Luc Brendonck]; Funding acquisition: [Elizabeth Meyer-Milne]; Resources: [Elizabeth Meyer-Milne, Luc Brendonck].

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Correspondence to Elizabeth Meyer-Milne.

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Meyer-Milne, E., Brendonck, L. & Pinceel, T. Egg banks in dryland wetlands provide information on the diversity and vulnerability of branchiopod communities along a longitudinal aridity gradient. Wetlands Ecol Manage 30, 813–826 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-021-09852-2

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