Rapid loss of glacial ice reveals stream community assembly processes

Glacial retreat creates new habitat which is colonized and developed by plants and animals during the process of primary succession. While there has been much debate about the relative role of deterministic and stochastic processes during terrestrial succession, evidence from freshwater ecosystems remains minimal and a general consensus is lacking. Using a unique 27 years record of community assembly following glacial recession in southeast Alaska, we demonstrate significant change in the trait composition of stream invertebrate communities as catchment glacial cover decreased from ∼70% to zero. Functional diversity increased significantly as glacier cover decreased and taxonomic richness increased. Null modelling approaches led to a key finding that niche filtering processes were dominant when glacial cover was extensive, reflecting water temperature and dispersal constraints. Thereafter the community shifted towards co-occurrence of stochastic and deterministic assembly processes. A further novel discovery was that intrinsic functional redundancy developed throughout the study, particularly because new colonizers possessed similar traits to taxa already present. Rapid glacial retreat is occurring in Arctic and alpine environments worldwide and the assembly processes observed in this study provide new fundamental insights into how glacially influenced stream ecosystems will respond. The findings support tolerance as a key primary successional mechanism in this system, and have broader value for developing our understanding of how biological communities in river ecosystems assemble or restructure in response to environmental change

River ecosystem response to prescribed vegetation burning on blanket peatland

Catchment-scale land-use change is recognised as a major threat to aquatic biodiversity and ecosystem functioning globally. In the UK uplands rotational vegetation burning is practised widely to boost production of recreational game birds, and while some recent studies have suggested burning can alter river water quality there has been minimal attention paid to effects on aquatic biota. We studied ten rivers across the north of England between March 2010 and October 2011, five of which drained burned catchments and five from unburned catchments. There were significant effects of burning, season and their interaction on river macroinvertebrate communities, with rivers draining burned catchments having significantly lower taxonomic richness and Simpson's diversity. ANOSIM revealed a significant effect of burning on macroinvertebrate community composition, with typically reduced Ephemeroptera abundance and diversity and greater abundance of Chironomidae and Nemouridae. Grazer and collector-gatherer feeding groups were also significantly less abundant in rivers draining burned catchments. These biotic changes were associated with lower pH and higher Si, Mn, Fe and Al in burned systems. Vegetation burning on peatland therefore has effects beyond the terrestrial part of the system where the management intervention is being practiced. Similar responses of river macroinvertebrate communities have been observed in peatlands disturbed by forestry activity across northern Europe. Finally we found river ecosystem changes similar to those observed in studies of wild and prescribed forest fires across North America and South Africa, illustrating some potentially generic effects of fire on aquatic ecosystems