Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Taxonomic and functional diversity differentiation of chironomid communities in northern Mongolian Plateau under complex environmental impacts

  • Primary Research Paper
  • Published:
Hydrobiologia Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We analyzed the taxonomic and functional diversities of chironomid communities on the northern Mongolian Plateau to understand the responses to multiple environmental pressures. The 27 lakes studied were classified into three groups based on significant heterogeneity of habitats. A total of 65 chironomid taxa were identified with the dominant taxa being Chironomus pallidivittatus-type, Cricotopus sylvestris-type and Glyptotendipes pallens-type. Our redundancy analysis revealed that temperature, salinity and oxygen concentrations are the main factors influencing the functional feeding traits of the chironomids. Taxonomic and functional alpha diversities show a significant positive relationship across the lakes. Taxonomic alpha diversity is more responsive to the environmental variables in low-altitude freshwater lakes. In contrast, functional alpha diversity contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between chironomid communities and environmental factors in high-altitude freshwater and low-altitude brackish lakes. The decomposition components of overall beta diversity respond differently to taxonomy and function. The turnover component predominates in taxonomic beta diversity, while the nestedness component plays a more important role in functional beta diversity. Our study suggests that taxonomic and functional beta diversities and their partitioning components can be used as a reference for the aquatic biodiversity protection and ecological management in arid and semi-arid regions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Anderson, M.J., Crist, T.O., Chase, J.M., Vellend, M., Inouye, B.D., Freestone, A.L., Sanders, N.J., Cornell, H.V., Comita, L.S., Davies, K.F., Harrison, S.P., Kraft, N.J.B., Stegen, J.C., Swenson, N.G., 2011. Navigating the multiple meanings of β diversity: a roadmap for the practicing ecologist. Ecology Letters 14: 19-28.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Angeler, D., 2013. Revealing a conservation challenge through partitioned long-term beta diversity: increasing turnover and decreasing nestedness of boreal lake metacommunities. Diversity and Distributions 19: 772-781.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, A.J., Finlay, K., Beisner, B.E., 2013. Functional diversity of crustacean zooplankton communities: towards a trait‐based classification. Freshwater Biology 52: 796–813.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baselga, A., 2010. Partitioning the turnover and nestedness components of beta diversity. Global Ecology and Biogeography 19: 134-143.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Baselga, A., Orme, C.D.L., 2012. Betapart: an R package for the study of beta diversity. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 3: 808-812.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berg, M.B., 1995. Larval food and feeding behaviour. In: Armitage, P.D., Cranston, P.S., Pinder, L.C.V. (eds), The Chironomidae. Biology and Ecology of Non-biting Midges. Springer, Dordrecht: 136–168.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Brooks, S.J., Birks, H.J.B., 2001. Chironomid-inferred air temperatures from Lateglacial and Holocene sites in north-west Europe: progress and problems. Quaternary Science Reviews 20: 1723-1741.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brooks, S.J., Langdon, P.G., Heiri, O., 2007. The identification and use of palaearctic Chironomidae larvae in palaeoecology. Quaternary Research Association, London, UK.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cadotte, M.W., Carscadden, K., Mirotchnick, N., 2011. Beyond species: functional diversity and the maintenance of ecological processes and services. Journal of Applied Ecology 48: 1079-1087.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chang, J.C., Shulmeister, J., Woodward, C., Steinberger, L., Tibby, J., Barr, C., 2015. A chironomid-inferred summer temperature reconstruction from subtropical Australia during the last glacial maximum (LGM) and the last deglaciation. Quaternary Science Reviews 122: 282-292.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, J., Chen, F., Zhang, E., Brooks, S.J., Zhou, A., Zhang, J., 2009. A 1000-year chironomid-based salinity reconstruction from varved sediments of Sugan Lake, Qaidam Basin, arid Northwest China, and its palaeoclimatic significance. Chinese Science Bulletin 54: 3749-3759.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Cranston, P.S., 1995. Chironomids: from Genes to Ecosystems. CSIRO, Australia.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cummins, K.W., 1973. Trophic relations of aquatic insects. Annual Review of Entomology 18: 183-206.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Díaz, S., Cabido, M., 2001. Vive la différence: plant functional diversity matters to ecosystem processes. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 16: 646-655.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Edie, S.M., Jablonski, D., Valentine, J.W., 2018. Contrasting responses of functional diversity to major losses in taxonomic diversity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 115: 732-737.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Eggermont, H., Heiri, O., Verschuren, D., 2006. Fossil Chironomidae (Insecta: Diptera) as quantitative indicators of past salinity in African lakes. Quaternary Science Reviews 25: 1966-1994.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fang, J., Bai, Y., Wu, J., 2015. Towards a better understanding of landscape patterns and ecosystem processes of the Mongolian Plateau. Landscape Ecology 30: 1573-1578.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grimm, E.C., 1987. CONISS: a Fortran 77 program for stratigraphically constrained cluster analysis by the method of incremental sum of squares. Computers and Geosciences 13: 13-35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gutiérrez-Cánovas, T., Millán, A., Velasco, J., Vaughan, I., Ormerod, S., 2013. Contrasting effects of natural and anthropogenic stressors on beta diversity in river organisms. Global Ecology and Biogeography 22: 796-805.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heino, J., 2000. Lentic macroinvertebrate assemblage structure along gradients in spatial heterogeneity, habitat size and water chemistry. Hydrobiologia 418: 229-242.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heino, J., 2008. Patterns of functional biodiversity and function-environment relationships in lake littoral macroinvertebrates. Limnology and Oceanography 53: 1446-1455.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heinrichs, M.L., Walker, I.R., Mathewes, R.W., 2001. Chironomid-based paleosalinity records in southern British Columbia, Canada: a comparison of transfer functions. Journal of Paleolimnology 26: 147-159.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heiri, O., Brooks, S.J., Birks, H.J.B., Lotter, A.F., 2011. A 274-lake calibration data-set and inference model for chironomid-based summer air temperature reconstruction in Europe. Quaternary Science Reviews 30: 3445-3456.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heiri, O., Brooks, S.J., Renssen, H., Bedford, A., Hazekamp, M., Ilyashuk, B., Jeffers, E.S., Lang, B., Kirilova, E., Kuiper, S., 2014. Validation of climate model-inferred regional temperature change for late-glacial Europe. Nature Communications 5: 4914-4914.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Hill, M.O., Gauch, H.G., 1980. Detrended correspondence analysis: an improved ordination technique. Vegetatio 42: 47-58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hooper, D., Chapin III, F.S., Ewel, J.J., Hector, A., Inchausti, P., Lavorel, S., Lawton, J.H., Lodge, D., Loreau, M., Naeem, S., Schmid, B., Setälä, H., Symstad, A.J., Vandermeer J., Wardle, D., 2005. Effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning: a consensus of current knowledge. Ecological Monographs 75: 3-35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lan, C., Shen, Y., Wang, B., Jinglu, W.U., Zeng, H.A., Long, M.A., 2010. Investigation of aquatic plants and benthic macroinvertebrates of lakes in Inner Mongolia-Xinjiang Plateau. Journal of Lake Sciences 22: 888-893 (in Chinese with English abstract).

    Google Scholar 

  • Legendre, P., 2014. Interpreting the replacement and richness difference components of beta diversity. Global Ecology and Biogeography 23: 1324-1334.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lennon, J.J., Koleff, P., Greenwood, J.J.D., Gaston, K.J., 2001. The geographical structure of British bird distributions: diversity, spatial turnover and scale. Journal of Animal Ecology 70: 966-979.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Longhi, M.L., Beisner, B.E., 2010. Patterns in taxonomic and functional diversity of lake phytoplankton. Freshwater Biology 55: 1349-1366.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Loreau, M., Naeem, S., Inchausti, P., Bengtsson, J., Grime, J., Hector, A., Hooper, D., Huston, M., Raffaelli, D., Schmid, B., Tilman, D., Wardle, D., 2001. Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: Current knowledge and future challenges. Science 294: 804-808.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Luoto, T.P., Nevalainen, L., 2015. Climate-forced patterns in midge feeding guilds. Hydrobiologia 742: 141-152.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Luoto, T.P., Ojala, A.E.K., 2018. Controls of climate, catchment erosion and biological production on long-term community and functional changes of chironomids in High Arctic lakes (Svalbard). Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 505: 63-72.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marin, A., 2010. Riders under storms: Contributions of nomadic herders’ observations to analysing climate change in Mongolia. Global Environmental Change 20: 162-176.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meng, X., Jiang, X., Xiong, X., Wu, C., Xie, Z., 2016. Mediated spatio-temporal patterns of macroinvertebrate assemblage associated with key environmental factors in the Qinghai Lake area, China. Limnologica 56: 14-22.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Moller Pillot, H.K.M., 2009. Chironomidae Larvae of the Netherlands and adjacent Lowlands: Biology and Ecology of the Chironomini. KNNV Publishing, Zeist.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Morse, J.C., Bae, Y.J., Munkhjargal, G., Sangpradub, N., Tanida, K., Vshivkova, T.S., Wang, B., Yang, L., Yule, C.M., 2007. Freshwater biomonitoring with macroinvertebrates in East Asia. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 5: 33-42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Motta, L., Massaferro, J., 2019. Climate and site-specific factors shape chironomid taxonomic and functional diversity patterns in northern Patagonia. Hydrobiologia 839: 131-143.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nevalainen, L., Luoto, T.P., Manca, M., Weisse, T., 2015. A paleolimnological perspective on aquatic biodiversity in Austrian mountain lakes. Aquatic Sciences 77: 59-69.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Obertegger, U., Flaim, G., 2018. Taxonomic and functional diversity of rotifers, what do they tell us about community assembly? Hydrobiologia 823: 79-91.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Patterson, B.D., Atmar, W., 1986. Nested subsets and the structure of insular mammalian faunas and archipelagos. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 28: 65-82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pielou, E.C., 1975. Ecological Diversity. Wiley, New York, p 165.

  • Quinlan, R., Smol, J.P., 2001a. Setting minimum head capsule abundance and taxa deletion criteria in chironomid-based inference models. Journal of Paleolimnology 26: 327-342.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Quinlan, R., Smol, J.P., 2001b. Chironomid-based inference models for estimating end-of-summer hypolimnetic oxygen from south-central Ontario shield lakes. Freshwater Biology 46: 1529-1551.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Schmera, D., Heino, J., Podani, J., Erős, T., Dolédec, S., 2017. Functional diversity: a review of methodology and current knowledge in freshwater macroinvertebrate research. Hydrobiologia 787: 27-44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shannon, C.E., Wiener, W.J., 1949. The mathematical theory of communication. University of Illinois Press, Urbana: 117.

  • Si, X., Baselga, A., Leprieur, F., Song, X., Ding, P., Meiri, S., 2016. Selective extinction drives taxonomic and functional alpha and beta diversities in island bird assemblages. Journal of Animal Ecology 85: 409-418.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Staniczenko, P.P.A., Kopp, J.C., Allesina, S., 2013. The ghost of nestedness in ecological networks. Nature Communications 4: 1391.

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Swenson, N.G., Enquist, B.J., Pither, J., Kerkhoff, A.J., Boyle, B., Weiser, M.D., Elser, J.J., Fagan, W.F., Forero-Montaña, J., Fyllas, N., Kraft, N.J.B., Lake, J.K., Moles, A.T., Patiño, S., Phillips, O.L., Price, C.A., Reich, P.B., Quesada, C.A., Stegen, J.C., Valencia, R., Wright, I.J., Wright, S.J., Andelman, S., Jørgensen, P.M., Lacher Jr, T.E., Monteagudo, A., Núñez-Vargas, M.P., Vasquez-Martínez, R., Nolting, K.M., 2012. The biogeography and filtering of woody plant functional diversity in North and South America. Global Ecology and Biogeography 21: 798-808.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tao, S., Fang, J., Zhao, X., Zhao, S., Shen, H., Hu, H., Tang, Z., Wang, Z., Guo, Q., 2015. Rapid loss of lakes on the Mongolian Plateau. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112: 2281-2286.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • ter Braak, C.J.F., Prentice, I.C., 1988. A Theory of Gradient Analysis, in: Begon, M., Fitter, A.H., Ford, E.D., Macfadyen, A. (eds), Advances in Ecological Research. Academic Press, London: 271-317.

    Google Scholar 

  • ter Braak, C.J.F., Smilauer, P., 2002. CANOCO Reference Manual and CanoDraw for Windows User's Guide: Software for Canonical Community Ordination (version 4.5). Microcomputer Power, Itaca. www.canoco.com.

  • Tian, F., Herzschuh, U., Mischke, S., Schlütz, F., 2014. What drives the recent intensified vegetation degradation in Mongolia - Climate change or human activity? The Holocene 24: 1206-1215.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tilman, D., 2001. Functional diversity, in: Levin, S.A. (ed.), Encyclopedia of biodiversity. Elsevier, New York: 109-120.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Villéger, S., Mason, N.W.H., Mouillot, D., 2008. New multidimensional functional diversity indices for a multifaceted framework in functional ecology. Ecology 89: 2290-2301.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Villéger, S., Miranda, J.R., Hernandez, D.F., Mouillot, D., 2012. Low functional β-diversity despite high taxonomic β-diversity among tropical estuarine fish communities. Plos One 7: e40679.

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Villéger, S., Grenouillet, G., Brosse, S., 2013. Decomposing functional β-diversity reveals that low functional β-diversity is driven by low functional turnover in European fish assemblages. Global Ecology and Biogeography 22: 671-681.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walker, I.R., Mathewes, R.W., 1989. Chironomidae (Diptera) remains in surficial lake sediments from the Canadian Cordillera: analyses of fauna across an altitudinal gradient. Journal of Paleolimnology 2: 61-80.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walker, I.R., 2001. Midges: Chironomidae and related Diptera. In: Smol, J. P., Birks, H. J. B., Last, W. M. (eds), Tracking Environmental Change using Lake Sediments. Developments in Paleoenvironmental Research. Springer, Dordrecht: 43-66.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, R., Xu, M., Yang, H., Yang, X., Zhang, K., Zhang, E., Shen, J., 2019. Ordered diatom species loss along a total phosphorus gradient in eutrophic lakes of the lower Yangtze River basin, China. Science of the Total Environment 650: 1688-1695.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Wiederholm, T.E. (ed.), 1983. Chironomidae of the Holarctic region. Keys and diagnoses. Part 1 Larvae. Entomologica Scandinavia Supplement 19. Entomological Society of Lund, Lund.

  • Zeng, H., Wu, J., 2010. Lake status of water quality and the changes in Inner Mongolia-Xinjiang Plateau. Journal of Lake Sciences 22: 882-887 (in Chinese with English abstract).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, E., Jones, R., Bedford, A., Langdon, P., Tang, H., 2007. A chironomid-based salinity inference model from lakes on the Tibetan Plateau. Journal of Paleolimnology 38: 477-491.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, E.L., Chang, J., Cao, Y.M., Sun, W.W., Shulmeister, J., Tang, H.Q., Langdon, P.G., Yang, X.D., Shen, J., 2017. Holocene high-resolution quantitative summer temperature reconstruction based on subfossil chironomids from the southeast margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Quaternary Science Reviews 165: 1-12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, E., Chang, J., Shulmeister, J., Langdon, P., Sun, W., Cao, Y., Yang, X., Shen, J., 2019a. Summer temperature fluctuations in Southwestern China during the end of the LGM and the last deglaciation. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 509: 78-87.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, Y., Cheng, L., Li, K., Zhang, L., Cai, Y., Wang, X., Heino, J., 2019b. Nutrient enrichment homogenizes taxonomic and functional diversity of benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages in shallow lakes. Limnology and Oceanography 64: 1047-1058.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, X., Hu, H., Shen, H., Zhou, D., Zhou, L., Myneni, R.B., Fang, J., 2015. Satellite-indicated long-term vegetation changes and their drivers on the Mongolian Plateau. Landscape Ecology 30: 1599-1611.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr. R. Wang and two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41790423, 41572337).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, China

    Zhenyu Ni, Enlou Zhang, Jie Chang, Weiwei Sun & Dongliang Ning

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Zhenyu Ni

  3. Polar Terrestrial Environmental Systems, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association, 14473, Potsdam, Germany

    Ulrike Herzschuh

  4. Institute of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Potsdam, 14476, Potsdam, Germany

    Ulrike Herzschuh

  5. Faculty of Earth Sciences, University of Iceland, 101, Reykjavík, Iceland

    Steffen Mischke

  6. School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia

    Jie Chang

  7. School of Geography Sciences, Nantong University, Nantong, 226019, China

    Dongliang Ning

Authors
  1. Zhenyu Ni
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Enlou Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Ulrike Herzschuh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Steffen Mischke
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Jie Chang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Weiwei Sun
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Dongliang Ning
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Enlou Zhang.

Additional information

Handling editor: Jasmine Saros

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ni, Z., Zhang, E., Herzschuh, U. et al. Taxonomic and functional diversity differentiation of chironomid communities in northern Mongolian Plateau under complex environmental impacts. Hydrobiologia 847, 2155–2167 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-020-04241-x

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-020-04241-x

Keywords

Search

Navigation