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Contribution of microspatial factors to benthic diatom communities

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Abstract

Spatial factors can play important and potentially confounding roles governing the presence, the absence, and the abundance of the diatom species and consequently influence the diatom-based bioassessment. To examine how spatial factors affect diatom community and biomonitoring, diatom community was sampled in three catchments with similar river length and watershed area across a large spatial scale along the Yangtze River, China. Redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that patterns of diatom distribution could be attributed not only to environmental variables (e.g., NO3–N, TN, WT, and COD), but also to spatial factors (e.g., elevation, latitude, and longitude). Partial RDAs partitioned the total variance of diatom data explained (64.7%) into three parts: pure spatial variables contributed the highest proportion (19.8%), followed by pure environmental variables (5.4%), and the shared effects by environmental and spatial sets explained a large proportion of diatom variance (39.5%). Recognizing the potential influences of spatial factors, further accumulations of diatom data within different regions would allow for the development of better diatom-based monitoring methods for watershed diagnosis and management.

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Acknowledgments

The constructive comments of two anonymous reviewers greatly improved our manuscript. Dr. Tao Tang provided assistance in data analyses, and Mr. Alexander Strehmel helped in improving the English. The authors would also like to thank Mr. Daofeng Li, Dr. Tao Tang, Dr. Xiaodong Qu, Dr. Junzeng Xue, Mr. Ming Cao, Dr. Lin Ye, Dr. Shuchan Zhou, Dr. Meiling Shao, Dr. Xiaocheng Fu, Dr. Yaoyang Xu, and Dr. Bin Hu for their assistances in the field sampling. The authors also appreciate the help provided by Mrs. Ruiqiu Liu and Dr. Shuchan Zhou for the laboratory measurements. This study was supported financially by the Major S&T Special Project of Water Pollution Control and Management (2012ZX07501002-007, 2012ZX07104-002), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30330140), and a State Key Laboratory FEBL Research Grant (2011FBZ02). Dr. Naicheng Wu is funded by a DFG-Grant (WU 749/1-1).

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430072, Hubei, People’s Republic of China

    Naicheng Wu & Qinghua Cai

  2. Hydrology and Water Resources Management, Institute for Natural Resource Conservation, Kiel University, 24118, Kiel, Germany

    Naicheng Wu & Nicola Fohrer

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  1. Naicheng Wu
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  2. Qinghua Cai
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Correspondence to Qinghua Cai.

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Wu, N., Cai, Q. & Fohrer, N. Contribution of microspatial factors to benthic diatom communities. Hydrobiologia 732, 49–60 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-014-1843-3

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