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Response of invertebrates from the hyporheic zone of chalk rivers to eutrophication and land use

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An Erratum to this article was published on 14 January 2016

Abstract

Whereas the response of lotic benthic macroinvertebrates to different environmental stressors is a widespread practice nowadays in assessing the water and habitat quality, the use of hyporheic zone invertebrates is still in its infancy. In this study, classification and regression trees analysis were employed in order to assess the ecological requirements and the potential as bioindicators for the hyporheic zone invertebrates inhabiting four lowland chalk rivers (south England) with contrasting eutrophication levels (based on surface nitrate concentrations) and magnitude of land use (based on percentage of fine sediments load and median interstitial space). Samples of fauna, water and sediment were sampled twice, during low (summer) and high (winter) groundwater level, at depths of 20 and 35 cm. Certain groups of invertebrates (Glossosomatidae and Psychomyiidae caddisflies, and riffle beetles) proved to be good indicators of rural catchments, moderately eutrophic and with high fine sediment load. A diverse community dominated by microcrustaceans (copepods and ostracods) were found as good indicators of highly eutrophic urban streams, with moderate-high fine sediment load. However, the use of other taxonomic groups (e.g. chironomids, oligochaetes, nematodes, water mites and the amphipod Gammarus pulex), very widespread in the hyporheic zone of all sampled rivers, is of limited use because of their high tolerance to the analysed stressors. We recommend the use of certain taxonomic groups (comprising both meiofauna and macroinvertebrates) dwelling in the chalk hyporheic zone as indicators of eutrophication and colmation and, along with routine benthic sampling protocols, for a more comprehensive water and habitat quality assessment of chalk rivers.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Dr. Mark Dunscombe for the long hours spent in the field during the sampling campaigns. The access to Environment Agency chemical data base would have not been possible without the kind support of Dr. Bill Brierley. We are thankful to Don Fisher and Josie Hilleyard for their help in running numerous chemical analysis of HPLC, as to Dr. John Murphy (Queen Mary University of London) for access to land use data and digital OS grid maps. The enthusiastic taxonomic help of Terry Gledhill (identification of water mites), Dr. Rony Huys (advice in the taxonomy of harpacticoids) and of Dr. David Horne (confirmation for some of the ostracods identification) is gratefully acknowledged. OP was supported by a PhD bursary offered by Roehampton University, London, UK. OTM received funding from EEA Financial Mechanism 2009–2014 under the project contract no. 17SEE/2014.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. River Communities Group, Freshwater Biological Association, River Laboratory, Queen Mary University of London, East Stoke, Wareham, Dorset, BH 20 6BB, UK

    Octavian Pacioglu

  2. “Emil Racovita” Institute of Speleology, Clinicilor 5, 400006, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

    Oana Teodora Moldovan

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  1. Octavian Pacioglu
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Correspondence to Octavian Pacioglu.

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Fig. S1

Graphical representation of classification and regression trees. Each node is represented as pie-charts. The inner circle of pie charts corresponds to relative frequency of the categories that comprise the objects contained in the node. The outer circle shows the relative frequencies of the object categories contained in the parent node. The node identifier, the number of objects, their relative frequencies and the purity of the dependent variables are displayed beside each node. The rules for each node are indicated for associated graphs (PDF 1533 kb)

Table S1

Number of individuals of stygophilic/ hypogean (in bold) and epigean invertebrates in the 16 stations from the four rivers [only species with more than 50 individuals (except for Gammarus pulex) in total were considered] (DOC 109 kb)

Table S2

Optimum concentrations of different stressors for the hyporheic zone taxa on the rivers Frome and Piddle (DOC 34 kb)

Table S3

Optimum concentrations of different stressors for the hyporheic zone taxa on the rivers Rib and Lee (DOC 36 kb)

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Pacioglu, O., Moldovan, O.T. Response of invertebrates from the hyporheic zone of chalk rivers to eutrophication and land use. Environ Sci Pollut Res 23, 4729–4740 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-015-5703-0

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