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Flexibility of ephemeral wetland crustaceans: environmental constraints and anthropogenic impacts

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Abstract

Ephemeral wetlands commonly experience events that would be drastic disturbances in permanent aquatic ecosystems, such as the elimination of all water. It is well known that survival in these harsh habitats requires flexibility in response to natural perturbations, but scientists have rarely investigated if this flexibility translates to anthropogenic stresses. Therefore, we evaluated aquatic crustacean communities in ephemeral wetlands in response to environmental and anthropogenic constraints. We sampled crustacean communities from 73 ephemeral wetlands across 5 states of the North American high plains. Neither habitat size, habitat depth, nor whether a wetland was natural or artificially created had any recognizable effect on the crustacean community. Moreover, natural communities have great flexibility, which seems to impart resilience under some anthropogenic forces. Communities of artificial waterbodies (roadside ditches and stock ponds) were indistinguishable from those in naturally formed wetlands. Cattle grazing, which in some ways resembles effects of native vertebrate grazers, was generally associated with increased invertebrate densities and richness. In contrast, tilling for row-crop agriculture decreased invertebrate density and richness. Overall, current conservation strategies in ephemeral wetlands may need to be revised to include artificial habitats as viable, important habitats, and cattle grazing as an essential ecosystem component in areas now lacking large native grazers, such as bison.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Anne Bartuszevige, the Playa Lakes Joint Venture, and the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory for assistance in finding wetland sites. Our study was funded by the Region 8 office in Denver of the Environmental Protection Agency (CD968115-01), with additional support for DCR and JHT from EPA Region 7 (CD 97739901); however, conclusions of this study do not necessarily reflect EPA policy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, 800 West Main St., Whitewater, WI, 53190, USA

    Brian J. O’Neill

  2. Kansas Biological Survey and The Biodiversity Institute, University of Kansas, 2101 Constant Avenue, Lawrence, KS, 66047, USA

    D. Christopher Rogers

  3. Kansas Biological Survey and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, 2101 Constant Avenue, Lawrence, KS, 66047, USA

    James H. Thorp

Authors
  1. Brian J. O’Neill
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  2. D. Christopher Rogers
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  3. James H. Thorp
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Brian J. O’Neill.

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Table 2 Location data for all sampled wetlands
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O’Neill, B.J., Rogers, D.C. & Thorp, J.H. Flexibility of ephemeral wetland crustaceans: environmental constraints and anthropogenic impacts. Wetlands Ecol Manage 24, 279–291 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11273-015-9455-x

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