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Indicator groups and congruence of assemblage similarity, species richness and environmental relationships in littoral macroinvertebrates

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Abstract

The rapid decrease of biodiversity and limited resources for surveying it have forced researchers to devise short-cuts for biodiversity surveys and conservation planning. These short-cuts include environmental surrogates, higher taxon surrogates, indicator species and indicator groups. We considered indicator groups as surrogates for wholesale biodiversity and cross-taxon congruence in biodiversity patterns in littoral macroinvertebrates of boreal lakes. Despite the fact that we considered indicator groups amongst a wide variety of taxa, such as two-winged flies, mayflies, caddisflies, beetles, bugs and molluscs, none of the proposed groups possessed all of the qualities of a good indicator taxon for biodiversity surveys and conservation planning. We found generally weak, yet typically significant, relationships between the proposed indicator groups and remaining taxa in both species richness and assemblage similarity. Low congruence was paralleled by somewhat differing relationships of the taxonomic groups to various environmental features of lakes. Furthermore, the relationships of most indicator groups to the environmental features of lakes were not particularly strong. The present findings are unfortunate, because indicator groups did not perform well in predicting the wholesale biodiversity of littoral macroinvertebrates. Thus, there appears to be no short-cut for considering all groups of macroinvertebrates in biodiversity surveys, conservation planning and characterisation of environmental relationships of lake littoral assemblages.

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Acknowledgements

The field work of this study was financed by grants from the Academy of Finland to J. Heino and T. Muotka. We thank P. Majuri and K. Sivonen for conducting the field work. Oulanka Research Station provided logistic support throughout the study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Programme for Biodiversity, Finnish Environment Institute, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 413, 90014, Oulu, Finland

    Jani Heino

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

    Jani Heino

  3. Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, 40014, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Kimmo T. Tolonen

  4. South Savo Regional Environment Centre, Jääkärinkatu 14, 50100, Mikkeli, Finland

    Juho Kotanen

  5. Ruuhikoskenkatu 17, 24240, Salo, Finland

    Lauri Paasivirta

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  1. Jani Heino
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  2. Kimmo T. Tolonen
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  4. Lauri Paasivirta
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Correspondence to Jani Heino.

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Heino, J., Tolonen, K.T., Kotanen, J. et al. Indicator groups and congruence of assemblage similarity, species richness and environmental relationships in littoral macroinvertebrates. Biodivers Conserv 18, 3085–3098 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-009-9626-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-009-9626-2

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