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Non-Biting Midges (Diptera, Chironomidae) in the Benthic Communities of Saline Rivers in the Lake Elton Basin: Diversity, Salinity Tolerance, and Distribution

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Abstract

The study presents the results of long-term (2006-2014) research on the non-biting midges (Diptera, Chironomidae) in macrozoobenthic communities of five saline rivers (the Khara, the Lantsug, the Bolshaya Samoroda, the Chernavka, and the Solyanka) flow into hypersaline Lake Elton (Volgograd Province). The rivers have a high mineralization gradient from 4 to 41.4 g/L and diff er in size as well as in the spatial dynamics of hydrological-hydrochemical and hydrophysical parameters. In the mouth reaches, water mineralization in these rivers may exceed 100 g/L. In total, 25 chironomid taxa have been identified, 10 of which were typical of the Solyanka River and Chernavka River where salinity was above 20 g/L. In diff erent years, Chironomus aprilinus Meigen 1838, Ch. salinarius Kieff er, 1915, and Cricotopus salinophilus Zinchenko, Makarchenko et Makarchenko, 2009 were dominant in the Solyanka and Chernavka rivers and so was Tanytarsus kharaensis Zorina et Zinchenko, 2009 in the Khara and Bolshaya Samoroda. The chironomids of the benthic communities of saline rivers are represented by eurybiontic halo-tolerant species. Their distribution and abundance are linked to a complex of hydrological-hydrochemical factors, e.g., the level of overgrowth, water temperature, pH, soil particle size, etc. The chironomid diversity is strongly correlated with mineralization, although there is no clear relationship between chironomid abundance or biomass and mineralization between 6 and 41.4 g/L. The seasonal dynamics of abundance and biomass of chironomid larvae is characterized by spatial heterogeneity due to features of the life cycles of the most numerous multivoltine chironomids.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to E.A. Makarchenko, M.A. Ma karchenko, and O.V. Orel (Federal Research Center for Biodiversity of Terrestrial Biota of Eastern Asia (Far-Eastern branch, RAS) for their help with identification of certain chironomid species, R. Szadziewski (University of Gdansk) for identification of certain representatives of ?eratopogonidae, and A.A. Prokin (I. D. Papanin Institute for Biology of Inland Waters, Borok) for identification of Coleoptera and Heteroptera. The staff of Eltonsky Nature Park are thanked for their participation and aid in the sampling of the field material.

Funding

The work was carried out as part of the state contract “Assessment of the current biodiversity and prediction of its changes in the Volga Basin ecosystems under natural and anthropogenic transformation” (AAAA-A17-117112040040-3) and supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grant no. 17-04-00135).

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  1. Institute of Ecology of the Volga River Basin, Russian Academy of Sciences, Togliatti, 445003, Russia

    T. D. Zinchenko, L. V. Golovatyuk & E. V. Abrosimova

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  1. T. D. Zinchenko
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  2. L. V. Golovatyuk
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Correspondence to T. D. Zinchenko.

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Russian Text © The Author(s), 2019, published in Zoologicheskii Zhurnal, 2019, Vol. 98, No. 7, pp. 804–818.

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Zinchenko, T.D., Golovatyuk, L.V. & Abrosimova, E.V. Non-Biting Midges (Diptera, Chironomidae) in the Benthic Communities of Saline Rivers in the Lake Elton Basin: Diversity, Salinity Tolerance, and Distribution. Entmol. Rev. 99, 820–835 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0013873819060095

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