Abstract
Natural disturbances are agents of natural selection that drive multiple biological adaptations along evolutionary time. Frequent, high magnitude disturbances are expected to select for morphological and behavioral traits to resist or to avoid them. In contrast, predictable and seasonal disturbances are expected to select for synchronized life cycles to avoid unfavorable periods. We assessed the effect of flood disturbances on aquatic macroinvertebrates in two rivers with contrasting flow regimes: the Gila (USA) with seasonal floods and droughts, and the Thur (Switzerland) with a high frequency of aseasonal floods. Macroinvertebrates were analyzed based on 46 biological trait categories classified into morphological, life-cycle synchronization, and behavioral strategies. Flood effects on diversity and composition were much clearer for the Gila than for the Thur. Overall, biological adaptations were related to the flood regime of each river. Morphological adaptations to resist or avoid floods prevailed under frequent and aseasonal disturbances (the Thur), whereas life-cycle synchronization and behavioral adaptations were associated with highly seasonal, predictable, and low-frequency disturbances (the Gila). Given that forecasted future flow regimes differ between regions, our results suggest that the effects of future flow regime alterations will ultimately depend on the adaptation strategies to current flow regimes.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Acuña, V. & C. N. Dahm, 2007. Impact of monsoonal rains on spatial scaling patterns in water chemistry of a semiarid river network. Journal of Geophysical Research 112: G04009.
Bae, M.-J. & Y.-S. Park, 2017. Responses of the functional diversity of benthic macroinvertebrates to floods and droughts in small streams with different flow permanence. Inland Waters 6: 461–475.
Bêche, L. A., E. P. McElravy & V. H. Resh, 2006. Long-term seasonal variation in the biological traits of benthic-macroinvertebrates in two Mediterranean-climate streams in California, U.S.A. Freshwater Biology 51: 56–75.
Bonada, N. & S. Dolédec, 2011. Do mediterranean genera not included in Tachet et al. 2002 have mediterranean trait characteristics? Limnetica 30: 129–142.
Bonada, N. & V. H. Resh, 2013. Mediterranean-climate streams and rivers: geographically separated but ecologically comparable freshwater systems. Hydrobiologia 719: 1–29.
Bonada, N., S. Dolédec & B. Statzner, 2007. Taxonomic and biological trait differences of stream macroinvertebrate communities between mediterranean and temperate regions: implications for future climatic scenarios. Global Change Biology 13: 1658–1671.
Burgess, S. C. & D. J. Marshall, 2014. Adaptive parental effects: the importance of estimating environmental predictability and offspring fitness appropriately. Oikos 123: 769–776.
Calapez, A. R., C. L. Elias, S. F. P. Almeida & M. J. Feio, 2014. Extreme drought effects and recovery patterns in benthic communities of temperate streams. Limnetica 33: 281–296.
Champely, S. & D. Chessel, 2002. Measuring biological diversity using Euclidean metrics. Environmental and Ecological Statistics 9: 167–177.
Chessel, D., A. Dufour & J. Thioulouse, 2004. The ade4 package-I- One-table methods. R News 4: 5–10.
Chevenet, F., S. Dolédec & D. Chessel, 1994. A fuzzy coding approach for the analysis of long-term ecological data. Freshwater Biology 31: 295–309.
Cleveland, W. S., 1979. Robust locally weighted regression and smoothing scatterplots. Journal of the American Statistical Association 74: 829–836.
Colwell, R. K., 1974. Predictability, constancy, and contingency of periodic phenomena. Ecology 55: 1148–1153.
Cook, B. I. & R. Seager, 2013. The response of the North American Monsoon to increased greenhouse gas forcing. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres 118: 1690–1699.
Death, R. G., 2008. Effects of floods on aquatic invertebrates communities. In Lancaster, J. & R. A. Briers (eds.), Aquatic Insects: Challenges to Populations. CAB International, Wallingford, UK: 103–121.
Feeley, H. B., S. Davies, M. Bruen, S. Blacklocke & M. Kelly-Quinn, 2012. The impact of a catastrophic storm event on benthic macroinvertebrate communities in upland headwater streams and potential implications for ecological diversity and assessment of ecological status. Journal of Limnology 71: 299–308.
Filipe, A. F., J. E. Lawrence & N. Bonada, 2013. Vulnerability of stream biota to climate change in mediterranean climate regions: a synthesis of ecological responses and conservation challenges. Hydrobiologia 719: 331–351.
Fleituch, T., 2003. Structure and functional organization of benthic invertebrates in a regulated stream. International Review of Hydrobiology 88: 332–344.
Gasith, A. & V. H. Resh, 1999. Streams in Mediterranean climate regions: abiotic influences and biotic responses to predictable seasonal events. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 30: 51–81.
Gutzler, D. S., 2013. Regional climatic considerations for borderlands sustainability. Ecosphere 4: 1–12.
Heino, J., R. Virkkala & H. Toivonen, 2009. Climate change and freshwater biodiversity: detected patterns, future trends and adaptation in northern regions. Biological Reviews 84: 39–54.
Hershkovitz, Y. & A. Gasith, 2013. Resistance, resilience, and community dynamics in mediterranean-climate streams. Hydrobiologia 719: 59–75.
Imhof, A., 1994. Habitatsansprüche und Verhalten von Perla grandis (Rambur) (Plecoptera: Perlidae) und anderen räuberischen Steinfliegenlarven. PhD thesis, ETH (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule), Zurich.
Lake, P. S., 2000. Disturbance, patchiness, and diversity in streams. Journal of the North American Benthological Society 19: 573–592.
Lake, P. S., 2011. Drought and aquatic ecosystems: effects and responses. Wiley-Blackwell, West Sussex, UK.
Lepori, F. & N. Hjerdt, 2006. Disturbance and aquatic biodiversity: reconciling contrasting views. BioScience 56: 809–818.
Lytle, D. A., 2001. Disturbance regimes and life-history evolution. The American Naturalist 157: 525–536.
Lytle, D. A., 2002. Flash floods and aquatic insect life-history evolution: evaluation of multiple models. Ecology 83: 370–385.
Lytle, D. A. & N. L. Poff, 2004. Adaptation to natural flow regimes. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19: 94–100.
Lytle, D. A., M. T. Bogan & D. S. Finn, 2008. Evolution of aquatic insect behaviours across a gradient of disturbance predictability. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 275: 453–462.
McCluney, K. E., N. L. Poff, M. A. Palmer, J. H. Thorp, G. C. Poole, B. S. Williams, M. R. Williams & J. S. Baron, 2014. Riverine macrosystems ecology: sensitivity, resistance, and resilience of whole river basins with human alterations. The Ecological Society of America 12: 48–58.
Merritt, R. W. & K. W. Cummins, 1996. An introduction to the aquatic insects of North America, 3rd ed. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, Dubuque, IA.
Molles, M. C. & C. N. Dahm, 1990. A perspective on El Niño and La Niña: global implications for stream ecology. Journal of the North American Benthological Society 9: 68–76.
Oksanen, J., G. Blanchet, R. Kindt, P. Legendre, P. R. Minchin, R. B. O’Hara, G. L. Simpson, P. Solymos, M. H. H. Stevens & H. Wagner, 2013. vegan: Community Ecology Package. R package version 2.0-8. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=vegan.
Piniewski, M., C. Prudhomme, M. C. Acreman, L. Tylec, P. Oglecki & T. Okruszko, 2017. Responses of fish and invertebrates to floods and drought in Europe. Ecohydrology 10: e1793.
Poff, N. L. & J. V. Ward, 1989. Implications of streamflow variability and predictability for lotic community structure: a regional analysis of streamflow patterns. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 46: 1805–1818.
Poff, N. L., J. D. Allan, M. B. Bain, J. R. Karr, K. L. Prestegaard, B. D. Richter, R. E. Sparks & J. C. Stromberg, 1997. The natural flow regime: a paradigm for river conservation and restoration. BioScience 47: 769–784.
Poff, N. L., J. D. Olden, N. K. M. Vieira, D. S. Finn, M. P. Simmons & B. C. Kondratieff, 2006. Functional trait niches of North American lotic insects: traits-based ecological applications in light of phylogenetic relationships. Journal of the North American Benthological Society 25: 730–755.
R Core Team, 2013. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.
Richter, B. D., J. V. Baumgartner, J. Powell & D. P. Braun, 1996. A method for assessing hydrologic alteration within ecosystems. Conservation Biology 10: 1163–1174.
Robinson, C., U. Uehlinger & M. Monaghan, 2003. Effects of a multiyear experimental flood regime on macroinvertebrates downstream of a reservoir. Aquatic Sciences 65: 210–222.
Robinson, C. T., S. Aebischer & U. Uehlinger, 2004. Immediate and habitat-specific responses of macroinvertebrates to sequential, experimental floods. Journal of the North American Benthological Society 23(4): 853–867.
Rolls, R. J. & A. H. Arthington, 2014. How do low magnitudes of hydrologic alteration impact riverine fish populations and assemblage characteristics? Ecological Indicators 39: 179–188.
Schleuter, D., M. Daufresne, F. Massol & C. Argillier, 2010. A user’s guide to functional diversity indices. Ecological Monographs 80: 469–484.
Schneider, S. C. & Z. Petrin, 2017. Effects of flow regime on benthic algae and macroinvertebrates—A comparison between regulated and unregulated rivers. Science of the Total Environment 579: 1059–1072.
Schneider, C., C. L. R. Laizé, M. C. Acreman & M. Flörke, 2012. How will climate change modify river flow regimes in Europe? Hydrology and Earth System Sciences 9: 9193–9238.
Seager, R., M. Ting, I. Held, Y. Kushnir, J. Lu, G. Vecchi, H.-P. Huang, N. Harnik, A. Leetmaa, N.-C. Lau, C. Li, J. Velez & N. Naik, 2008. Model projections of an imminent transition to a more arid climate in southwestern North America. Science 316: 1181–1184.
Skelly, D. K., L. N. Joseph, H. P. Possingham, L. K. Freidenburg, T. J. Farrugia, M. T. Kinnison & A. P. Hendry, 2007. Evolutionary responses to climate change. Conservation Biology 21: 1353–1355.
Statzner, B., N. Bonada & S. Dolédec, 2007. Conservation of taxonomic and biological trait diversity of European stream macroinvertebrate communities: a case for a collective public database. Biodiversity and Conservation 16: 3609–3632.
Tachet, H., P. Richoux, M. Bournaud & P. Usseglio-Polatera, 2010. Invertébrés d’Eau Douce (2nd corrected impression). CNRS éditions, Paris.
Tomanova, S. & P. Usseglio-Polatera, 2007. Patterns of benthic community traits in neotropical streams: relationship to mesoscale spatial variability. Fundamental and Applied Limnology 170(3): 243–255.
Uehlinger, U., 2000. Resistance and resilience of ecosystem metabolism in a flood-prone river system. Freshwater Biology 45: 319–332.
Verberk, W. C. E. P., C. G. E. van Noordwijk & A. Hildrew, 2013. Delivering on a promise: integrating species traits to transform descriptive community ecology into a predictive science. Freshwater Science 32: 531–547.
Vörösmarty, C. J., P. B. McIntyre, M. O. Gessner, D. Dudgeon, A. Prusevich, P. Green, S. Glidden, S. E. Bunn, C. A. Sullivan, C. R. Liermannm & P. M. Davies, 2010. Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity. Nature 467: 555–561.
Wang, X. F., 2010. fANCOVA: Nonparametric Analysis of Covariance. R package version 0.5-1. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=fANCOVA.
Woodward, G., N. Bonada, H. B. Feeley & P. S. Giller, 2015. Resilience of a stream community to extreme climatic events and long-term recovery from a catastrophic flood. Freshwater Biology 60: 2497–2510.
Woodward, G., N. Bonada, L. E. Brown, R. G. Death, I. Durance, C. Gray, S. Hladyz, M. E. Ledger, A. M. Milner, S. J. Ormerod, R. M. Thompson & S. Pawar, 2016. The effects of climatic fluctuations and extreme events on running water ecosystems. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 371: 20150274.
Acknowledgements
John Craig, Richard Illi, Sergi Sabater, Martha Schumann, Dave Van Horn, and Andreas Wolf (in alphabetical order) assisted in the field or in the laboratory. The research was funded by a MEC-Fulbright fellowship of the Spanish Science and Education Ministry, by a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship within the 6th European Community Framework Programme, the National Science Foundation (IGERT Freshwater Sciences Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program, DGE 9972810), the University of New Mexico, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), and The Nature Conservancy.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Handling editor: Marcelo S. Moretti
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
de la Fuente, M., Bonada, N., Bêche, L. et al. Evolutionary responses of aquatic macroinvertebrates to two contrasting flow regimes. Hydrobiologia 808, 353–370 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-017-3437-3
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-017-3437-3