Abstract
Aquatic systems have been degraded by environmental changes aimed at increasing the productivity of farmland and ranches. These changes affect aquatic assemblages at both local and regional scales. The hypothesis of this study is that in-stream environmental conditions are more important determinants of species richness and composition of Gerromorpha assemblage, given that they are affected directly by changes that occur within the stream, rather than by landscape conditions. To test our hypothesis, we collected at 20 sites of agricultural and forested regions in the Brazilian Cerrado. We relate predictors of the landscape and sites, of the streams with the assemblages of Heteroptera. While landscape metrics play an important role in the formation of stream conditions, local and physico-chemical variables had a significant influence on the structure of the Gerromorpha assemblages in the study area. This indicates that these organisms are more dependent on the processes that occur within the stream than those that occur outside the area of the gallery forest, considering the spatial scale of this study.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Stephen Ferrari for reviewing English text. Dias-Silva thank CNPq doctoral scholarship Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico. LSB thanks to postdoctoral scholarship PNPD (Programa Nacional de Pós-Doutorado) of the CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior). LSB, PDM, and LJ thanks to PROCAD (UFPA/UFG/UNESP: Ecologia, Genética e Conservação do Cerrado, Amazônia e Mata Atlântica).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. All authors contributed to material preparation; data collection and analysis were performed. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Karina Dias-Silva and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Dias-Silva, K., Brasil, L.S., Juen, L. et al. Influence of Local Variables and Landscape Metrics on Gerromorpha (Insecta: Heteroptera) Assemblages in Savanna Streams, Brazil. Neotrop Entomol 49, 191–202 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-019-00748-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13744-019-00748-8