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Profundal benthic invertebrate communities in boreal lakes vary with climate fluctuation

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Abstract

Despite increasing evidence that climate change affects aquatic ecosystems, influences on lake benthic communities are still poorly known. We studied the effects of short-term climatic fluctuation on profundal benthic invertebrates using at least six annual samples (over 6–17 years) from 38 Finnish lake basins. Faunal abundance, species diversity and species composition were related to annual winter and summer North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) indices as measures of climatic fluctuation. Algal productivity, hypolimnetic oxygen concentration and water temperature weakly increased during the positive NAO periods. Profundal macroinvertebrate abundance and species diversity declined with increasing NAO in summer, but not winter. The main gradient of species compositional overturn (DCA axis 1) was negatively associated with lake productivity and varied independent of NAO, whereas the secondary gradient (DCA axis 2) correlated positively with hypolimnetic temperature and winter NAO. The responses of species diversity and abundance to climatic fluctuation were not related to any measured lake-specific environmental characteristics, but the response of species composition (DCA axis 1) to NAO showed a consistent negative association with lake depth and trophic status, so that size and even direction of compositional response to NAO was related to these two lake characteristics. Our study suggests that local profundal benthic macroinvertebrate communities can respond rapidly to short-term, large-scale climate fluctuation and hence that future global warming can be expected to modify these sensitive communities considerably.

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Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge all those who contributed to the profundal macroinvertebrate dataset derived from various research projects, lake biomonitoring programs and limnological studies. Professor Steve Ormerod and an anonymous referee provided insightful comments which improved the quality of the paper. Roger Jones kindly provided linguistic assistance for the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 3000, 90014, Oulu, Finland

    Jussi Jyväsjärvi

  2. Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, 40014, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Heikki Hämäläinen

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  1. Jussi Jyväsjärvi
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Correspondence to Jussi Jyväsjärvi.

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Jyväsjärvi, J., Hämäläinen, H. Profundal benthic invertebrate communities in boreal lakes vary with climate fluctuation. Aquat Sci 77, 261–269 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-014-0384-1

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