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Anthropogenic habitat alternation significantly decreases α- and β-diversity of benthopelagic metacommunity in a large floodplain lake

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Abstract

Anthropogenic habitat alternation is one of the leading causes of biodiversity loss, especially in freshwater ecosystems. Understanding the mechanisms of how habitat degradation drives changes in spatial patterns of species assemblages is fundamental to conservation science. We conducted an empirical study to investigate the species richness (α-diversity) and community composition (β-diversity) of benthopelagic biota along the gradient of human modification in West Dongting Lake, China. The study site is a large floodplain lake that has been subjected to long-term intensive human use. For a better understanding of how β-diversity responds to human disturbance, we also distinguished between two patterns of β-diversity, i.e., turnover and nestedness. We found that both α- and β-diversity of the benthopelagic assemblage decreased along the intensity gradient of human modification, indicating the strong homogenizing effect of anthropogenic habitat alternation. Our results also suggested that multiple processes, including environmental filtering, dispersal limitation, and biological interactions, were important in shaping the benthopelagic assemblage structure because spatial turnover other than nestedness dominated the total β-diversity at both the lake and habitat level. These findings support that habitat restoration by removing artificial banks and channels and increasing the landscape naturalness would be the key for this highly modified floodplain lake.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the staff at the West Dongting Lake National Nature Reserve and Xiao Yayu, Zhao Changbin, and Guo Min for their help in data collection. This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant Number 2017YFC0405303), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant Numbers 2017ZY15).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Nature Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Haidian District, Beijing, 100083, China

    Bin Li, Wenzhuo Tan, Li Wen, Cai Lu, Yuyu Wang & Guangchun Lei

  2. Science Division, Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, Sydney, Australia

    Li Wen

  3. Key Laboratory of Ecological Impacts of Hydraulic-Projects and Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystem of Ministry of Water Resources, Institute of Hydroecology, Ministry of Water Resources and Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Xianfu Zhao

  4. Hunan Province Cooperative Innovation Center for The Construction & Development of Dongting Lake Ecological Economic Zone, Hunan University of Arts and Science, Changde, 415000, China

    Baofa Peng

  5. College of Chemistry and Materials Engineering, Hunan University of Arts and Science, Changde, 415000, China

    Jifeng Yang

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  1. Bin Li
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Li, B., Tan, W., Wen, L. et al. Anthropogenic habitat alternation significantly decreases α- and β-diversity of benthopelagic metacommunity in a large floodplain lake. Hydrobiologia 847, 293–307 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-019-04091-2

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