Abstract
The effect of disturbance history on the recovery of benthic invertebrate communities following disturbance was investigated in four streams in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. Two of the streams had a history of fluctuating discharge and temperature while the others did not. Recovery from disturbance was tested experimentally using baskets of cobbles, a third of which were disturbed every week for 9 weeks, a further third every 3 weeks and the final third left undisturbed. Algal biiomass, number of invertebrate taxa and total number of invertebrates all declined in baskets disturbed more frequently. Although the relative abundance of some taxa declined with time since the last disturbance, no taxa showed a significant decline in absolute abundance. However, several taxa showed marked increases in relative abundance in the less disturbed treatments particularly at the more stable sites. In contrast to the predictions of ecological theory, numbers of taxa and total invertebrates appeared to recover more quickly in the more complex communities at the stable sites. However, if these communities are considered to represent only stable communities, they do support the view that more complex communities will be more resilient. Community structure at the stable sites was also more similar between baskets in the undisturbed treatment than at the unstable sites, suggesting communities had reached a constant state more quickly. The more rapid recovery of communities measured at the stable sites may have been a consequence of experimental scale; disturbed patches were only 0.045 m2 in area and the higher densities of invertebrates at the stable sites meant a larger pool of colonists was available following each experimental disturbance. Nevertheless, ideas of stability in ecological theory and the scale of most spate events suggest this is the appropriate scale for examining community recovery. Furthermore, the larger pool of available colonists could not explain all the differences in community response, as patterns of change in community structure at the stable sites differed considerably more from those expected by purely random colonisation processes than at the unstable sites.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Berger WH, Parker FL (1970) Diversity of planktonic Foraminifera in deep sea sediments. Science 168:1345–1347
Bruns DA, Minshall GW (1983) Macroscopic models of community organization: analyses of diversity, dominance, and stability in guilds of predaceous stream insects. In: Barnes JR, Minshall GW (eds) Stream ecology: application and testing of general ecological theory. Plenum, New York, pp 231–264
Clifford HF (1982) Effects of periodically disturbing a small area of substratum in a brown-water stream of Alberta, Canada. Freshwater Invert Biol 1:39–47
Clifford HT, Stephenson W (1975) An introduction to numerical classification. Academic Press, London
Connell JH (1978) Diversity in tropical rain forests and coral reefs. Science 199:1302–1310
Cummins KW (1962) An evaluation of some techniques for the collection and analysis of benthic samples with special emphasis on lotic waters. Am Midl Nat 67:477–504
Death RG (1991) Environmental stability: its effect on stream benthic communities. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
Death RG (1995) Spatial patterns in benthic invertebrate communities: products of habitat stability or are they habitat specific? Freshwater Biol 33:455–467
Death RG (in press) Predicting the impacts of biological and physical disturbances: does theoretical ecology hold any answers? N Z J Ecol
Death RG, Winterbourn MJ (1994) The measurement of environmental stability in streams: a multivariate approach. J N Am Benthol Soc 13:125–139
Death RG, Winterbourn MJ (1995) Diversity patterns in stream benthic invertebrate communities: the influence of habitat stability. Ecology 76:1446–1460
Doeg TJ, Lake PS, Marchant R (1989) Colonization of experimentally disturbed patches by stream macroinvertebrates in the Acheron River, Victoria. Aust J Ecol 14:207–220
Elton CS (1958) The ecology of invasion by animals and plants. Methuen, London
Fisher SG (1987) Succession, scale, and hypothesis testing in streams. Can J Fish Aquat Sci 44:689
Grime JP (1973) Control of species density in herbaceous vegetation. J Environ Manage 1:151–167
Kikkawa J (1986) Complexity, diversity and stability. In: Kikkawa J, Anderson DJ (eds) Community ecology: pattern and process. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 41–62
Lake PS (1990) Disturbing hard and soft bottom communities: a comparison of marine and freshwater environments. Aust J Ecol 15:477–488
Lake PS, Doeg TJ, Marchant R (1989) Effects of multiple disturbance on macroinvertebrate communities in the Acheron River, Victoria. Aust J Ecol 14:507–514
Lancaster J, Hildrew AG (1993) Flow refugia and the microdistribution of lotic macroinvertebrates. J N Am Benthol Soc 12:385–393
MacArthur RH (1955) Fluctuations of animal populations and a measure of community stability. Ecology 36:533–536
Mackay RJ (1992) Colonization by lotic macroinvertebrates: a review of processes and patterns. Can J Fish Aquat Sci 49:617–628
Malmqvist B, Otto C (1987) The influence of substrate stability on the composition of stream benthos: an experimental study. Oikos 48:33–38
May RM (ed) (1981) Theoretical ecology: principles and applications. Blackwell, Oxford
McCune B (1987) Multivariate analysis on the PC-ORD system (Holcomb Research Institute report 75). Butler University, Indiana
McNaughton SJ (1978) Stability and diversity of ecological communities. Nature 274:251–253
McNaughton SJ (1988) Diversity and stability. Nature 333:204–205
Minshall GW (1988) Stream ecosystem theory: a global perspective. J N Am Benthol Soc 7:263–288
Moss B (1967a) A spectrophotometric method for the estimation of percentage degradation of chlorophylls to pheo-pigments in extracts of algac. Limnol Oceanogr 12:335–340
Moss B (1967b) A note on the estimation of chlorophyll a in freshwater algal communities. Limnol Oceanogr 12:340–342
Pimm SL (1979) The structure of food webs. Theor Popul Biol 16:144–158
Pimm SL (1982) Food webs. Chapman and Hall, London
Power ME, Stout RJ, Cushing CE, Harper PP, Hauer FR, Matthews WJ, Moyle PB, Statzner B, Wais de Badgen IR (1988) Biotic and abiotic controls in river and stream communities. J N Am Benthol Soc 7:456–479
Reice SR (1984) The impact of disturbance frequency on the structure of a lotic riffle community. Verh Int Verein Limnol 22:1906–1910
Reice SR (1985) Experimental disturbance and the maintenance of species diversity in a stream community. Oecologia 67:90–97
Reice SR, Wissmar RC, Naiman RJ (1990) Disturbance regimes, resilience, and recovery of animal communities and habitats in lotic ecosystems. Environ Manage 14:647–659
Resh VH, Brown AV, Covich AP, Gurtz ME, Li HW, Minshall GW, Reice SR, Sheldon AL, Wallace JB, Wissmar RC (1988) The role of disturbance in stream ecology. J N Am Benthol Soc 7:433–455
Robinson CT, Minshall GW (1986) Effects of disturbance frequency on stream benthic community structure in relation to canopy cover and season. J N Am Benthol Soc 5:237–248
Sagar PM (1986) The effects of floods on the invertebrate fauna of a large, unstable braided river. N Z J Mar Freshwater Res 20:37–46
SAS (1985) SAS user's guide: statistics, version 5 edn. SAS Institute, Cary, North Carolina
Scrimgeour GJ, Davidson RJ, Davidson JM (1988) Recovery of benthic macroinvertebrate and epilithic communities following a large flood, in an unstable, braided, New Zealand river. N Z J Mar Freshwater Res 22:337–344
Walker D (1989) Diversity and stability. In: Cherret JM (eds) Ecological concepts. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 115–145
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Death, R.G. The effect of patch disturbance on stream invertebrate community structure: the influence of disturbance history. Oecologia 108, 567–576 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00333735
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00333735