Piileväyhteisöt jokivesien ekologisen tilan luokittelussa ja seurannassa – menetelmäohjeet

Piilevämenetelmää käytetään vesipolitiikan puitedirektiivin mukaisessa jokien ekologisen tilan luokittelussa ja seurannassa. Tähän julkaisuun on koottu Suomen oloihin sopiva ohjeistus menetelmän toteutuksesta näytteenotosta piileväpreparaattien valmistukseen ja tulosten tulkintaan. Lisäksi julkaisussa on esitelty pohjalevien ekologiaa

Different species trait groups of stream diatoms show divergent responses to spatial and environmental factors in a subarctic drainage basin

Understanding the drivers of community structure is an important topic in ecology. We examined whether different species trait groups of stream diatoms (ecological guilds and specialization groups) show divergent responses to spatial and environmental factors in a subarctic drainage basin. We used local- and catchment-scale environmental and spatial variables in redundancy analysis and variation partitioning to examine community structuring. Local and catchment conditions and spatial variables affected diatom community structure with different relative importance. Local-scale environmental variables explained most of the variation in the low-profile and motile guilds, whereas local and spatial variables explained the same amount of the variation in the high-profile guild. The variations in the planktic guild and the specialist species were best explained by spatial variables, and catchment variables explained most variation only in generalist species. Our study showed that diatom communities in subarctic streams are a result of both environmental filtering and spatial processes. Our findings also suggested that dividing whole community into different groups by species traits can increase understanding of metacommunity organization.Peer reviewe

Different species trait groups of stream diatoms show divergent responses to spatial and environmental factors in a subarctic drainage basin

Understanding the drivers of community structure is an important topic in ecology. We examined whether different species trait groups of stream diatoms (ecological guilds and specialization groups) show divergent responses to spatial and environmental factors in a subarctic drainage basin. We used local- and catchment-scale environmental and spatial variables in redundancy analysis and variation partitioning to examine community structuring. Local and catchment conditions and spatial variables affected diatom community structure with different relative importance. Local-scale environmental variables explained most of the variation in the low-profile and motile guilds, whereas local and spatial variables explained the same amount of the variation in the high-profile guild. The variations in the planktic guild and the specialist species were best explained by spatial variables, and catchment variables explained most variation only in generalist species. Our study showed that diatom communities in subarctic streams are a result of both environmental filtering and spatial processes. Our findings also suggested that dividing whole community into different groups by species traits can increase understanding of metacommunity organization.Peer reviewe

Niche position drives interspecific variation in occupancy and abundance in a highly-connected lake system

Highlights • We studied interspecific variation in occupancy and abundance of freshwater species. • Occupancy and abundance correlated positively for both diatoms and macroinvertebrates. • Niche position had clearest effects on variation in occupancy and abundance. • The more marginal the niche position, the rarer a species is.We examined how niche position, niche breadth, biological traits and taxonomic relatedness affect interspecific variation in occupancy and abundance of two commonly-used biological indicator groups, i.e. diatoms and macroinvertebrates. We studied 291 diatom and 103 macroinvertebrate species that occupied the littoral zones of a large (305 km2) highly-connected freshwater system. We collated information on the biological traits and taxonomic relatedness of each species. Using principal coordinates analysis, we formed biological trait and taxonomic vectors describing distances between species and used the resulting vectors as predictor variables. As environmental data, we had site-specific physico-chemical variables, which were used in outlying mean index analyses to determine the niche position and niche breadth of each species. We used linear models to study if and how these two niche parameters and biological traits as well as taxonomic relatedness affected occupancy and abundance. We observed positive occupancy-abundance relationships for both diatoms and macroinvertebrates. We further found that, for both groups, occupancy was better explained by the predictor variables compared with abundance. We also observed that niche parameters, especially niche position, were the main determinants of variation in occupancy and abundance for both diatoms and macroinvertebrates. Local abundances of diatom and macroinvertebrate species were also, to a small degree, affected by biological traits or taxonomic relatedness. We further saw that the relationship between niche position and occupancy was negative, indicating that the more marginal the niche position, the rarer a species is. Our findings provide support for the use of diatoms and macroinvertebrates as ecological indicators as their occupancies and abundances were affected by niche parameters, which is not necessarily always clear in challenging study systems with high connectivity (i.e. high movement of material and species) among sites. These findings also suggest that indices using information on species’ occupancy, abundance and niche requirements are useful in environmental assessment

Metsätalouden vaikutukset purojen ja jokien biologiseen tilaan – MEBI -hankkeen tulokset

Suomen pinta-alasta valtaosa on metsätalousmaata. Metsätaloustoimenpiteiden vaikutuksia virtavesien biologiseen tilaan on kuitenkin selvitetty vain vähän. Tämän hankkeen tavoitteena oli tuottaa lisää tietoa metsätalouden vaikutuksista purojen ja jokien ekologiseen tilaan sekä kehittää biologista vaikutusseurantaa pienissä virtavesissä. Hankkeessa tarkasteltiin vedenlaatua ja biologisia laatumuuttujia (päällyslevät, vesisammalet ja pohjaeläimistö) suhteessa metsätalouden intensiteettiin 12 purokohteen (pääasiassa Luken metsätalouden kuormituksen seurantaverkko) ja 40 jokikohteen (pääasiassa MaaMet-seurannan metsätalouskohteet) aineiston avulla. Paikkavalinnoissa pyrittiin minimoimaan maatalouden vaikutus pois. Purokohteiden biologisen tilan kartoittamiseksi tehtiin maastotöitä elo-syyskuussa 2015. Hanke toteutettiin Suomen ympäristökeskuksen toimesta ja sen rahoitti maa- ja metsätalousministeriö. Tulosten perusteella metsätalousalueilla sekä puroissa että jokivesissä etenkin typpipitoisuudet olivat selkeästi taustapitoisuuksia suuremmat. Pitoisuuksia selitti valuma-alueen metsäojitusten määrä, mutta myös luontaiset tekijät ja yhteisvaikutukset. Purokohteilla luonnollinen vaihtelu oli hyvin suurta, mikä ilmeni erityisesti biologisissa mittareissa. Hankkeessa tutkituilla Luken seurantaverkon kuudella metsä-talouskohteella päällyslevien, vesisammalten ja pohjaeläinten tila ei ollut merkittävästi heikentynyt. Jokikohteissa vedenlaatu (typpipitoisuus, veden väri) sekä päällyslevien ja vesikasvillisuuden tila heik-kenivät metsätalouden määrän (ojitusten) lisääntyessä. Purokohteilla testattiin päällyslevien määrän mittaamisessa optista, a-klorofylliä mittaavaa Bentho-Torch-fluorometriä, joka on biologisen tilan arviointiin kehitetty uusi laite. Fluorometri soveltuu käytettäväksi kivipintojen päällyslevien kokonaismäärän ajalliseen seurantaan esimerkiksi erilaisten metsäta-loustoimenpiteiden yhteydessä. Fluorometrin käyttöön liittyviä menetelmiä tulee kuitenkin vielä kehittää luotettavan seurantatiedon varmistamiseksi. Erityisesti intensiivisen metsätalouden ja tiheään ojitettujen valuma-alueiden alapuolisissa jokivesissä ekologinen tila oli heikentynyt. Niin kuin muukin ympäristön tilan seuranta, metsätalouden vaikutusten luotettava seuranta edellyttää edustavaa seurantakohteiden ja elinympäristöjen valintaa. Metsätalouden vesiensuojelutoimien vaikuttavuudesta virtavesien ekologiseen tilaan tarvittaisiin lisää tietoa vesienhoidon suunnittelun tueksi

Bacterial metacommunity organization in a highly connected aquatic system

The spatial structure and underlying assembly mechanisms of bacterial communities have been studied widely across aquatic systems, focusing primarily on isolated sites, such as different lakes, ponds and streams. Here, our main aim was to determine the underlying mechanisms for bacterial biofilm assembly within a large, highly connected lake system in Northern Finland using associative methods based on taxonomic and phylogenetic alpha-and beta-diversity and a large number of abiotic and biotic variables. Furthermore, null model approaches were used to quantify the relative importance of different community assembly processes. We found that spatial variation in bacterial communities within the lake was structured by different assembly processes, including stochasticity, species sorting and potentially even dispersal limitation. Species sorting by abiotic environmental conditions explained more of the taxonomic and particularly phylogenetic turnover in community composition compared with that by biotic variables. Finally, we observed clear differences in alpha diversity (species richness and phylogenetic diversity), which were to a stronger extent determined by abiotic compared with biotic factors, but also by dispersal effects. In summary, our study shows that the biodiversity of bacterial biofilm communities within a lake ecosystem is driven by within-habitat gradients in abiotic conditions and by stochastic and deterministic dispersal processes.Peer reviewe

Correlates of different facets and components of betadiversity in stream organisms

peerReviewe

Co-occurrence, ecological profiles and geographical distribution based on unique molecular identifiers of the common freshwater diatoms Fragilaria and Ulnaria

Diatom taxonomy has evolved in recent years, with many new species described and new approaches such as molecular genetics showing the existence of cryptic diversity within currently accepted species. This cryptic diversity is not well understood even for common freshwater genera such as Fragilaria and Ulnaria. The purpose of our study was to define taxon-specific ecological profiles and geographical distributions for unique molecular identifiers (amplicon sequence variants, ASVs) linked to curated taxonomy for these genera. Our goal is to contribute to the development of ecological assessment methods, and to the understanding why we often observe so many diatom species co-occurring in a single sample. We filtered a large (770 samples) metabarcoding dataset with linked environmental data covering several countries in Europe for genetic variants (ASVs) assigned to currently accepted species of our target genera. We studied the geographical distribution of the ASVs, and tested for ASV-pair co-occurrence. We modelled ASV-specific preferences for pH, alkalinity, total nitrogen, total phosphorus and conductivity, and analysed their preference for lakes or streams as habitat. Our study confirmed that there seems to be no general geographical barrier for the distribution of freshwater benthic diatom ASVs in Europe, but that dispersal is not rapid enough to hide historical events. The Fragilaria and Ulnaria ASVs in our study showed considerable overlap in geographical distribution, habitat and ecological preferences. We found evidence that only large differences in preferences for the analysed water chemistry variables prevented the co-occurrence of ASVs at the same sites. Instead, Fragilaria and Ulnaria ASVs co-occurred frequently in samples. We found subtle differences in ecological preferences for some ASV pairs, which might in part explain the co-occurrence by the avoidance of direct competition. However, the great overlap in distribution and ecological preferences suggests that other factors not studied here were also responsible for the observed co-occurrences and high richness of ASVs found at many sites. To our knowledge, we are the first to use ASVs in combination with a curated taxonomy to understand co-occurrence, specific ecological profiles and large-scale geographical distribution for unique identifiers not biased by the quality of reference databases, clustering methods, or non-harmonized morphological identification. Thus, our results can now be used in subsequent projects to interpret ASV occurrences, e.g. for development of ecological assessment methods

Co-occurrence, ecological profiles and geographical distribution based on unique molecular identifiers of the common freshwater diatoms Fragilaria and Ulnaria

Diatom taxonomy has evolved in recent years, with many new species described and new approaches such as molecular genetics showing the existence of cryptic diversity within currently accepted species. This cryptic diversity is not well understood even for common freshwater genera such as Fragilaria and Ulnaria. The purpose of our study was to define taxon-specific ecological profiles and geographical distributions for unique molecular identifiers (amplicon sequence variants, ASVs) linked to curated taxonomy for these genera. Our goal is to contribute to the development of ecological assessment methods, and to the understanding why we often observe so many diatom species co-occurring in a single sample. We filtered a large (770 samples) metabarcoding dataset with linked environmental data covering several countries in Europe for genetic variants (ASVs) assigned to currently accepted species of our target genera. We studied the geographical distribution of the ASVs, and tested for ASV-pair co-occurrence. We modelled ASV-specific preferences for pH, alkalinity, total nitrogen, total phosphorus and conductivity, and analysed their preference for lakes or streams as habitat. Our study confirmed that there seems to be no general geographical barrier for the distribution of freshwater benthic diatom ASVs in Europe, but that dispersal is not rapid enough to hide historical events. The Fragilaria and Ulnaria ASVs in our study showed considerable overlap in geographical distribution, habitat and ecological preferences. We found evidence that only large differences in preferences for the analysed water chemistry variables prevented the co-occurrence of ASVs at the same sites. Instead, Fragilaria and Ulnaria ASVs co-occurred frequently in samples. We found subtle differences in ecological preferences for some ASV pairs, which might in part explain the co-occurrence by the avoidance of direct competition. However, the great overlap in distribution and ecological preferences suggests that other factors not studied here were also responsible for the observed co-occurrences and high richness of ASVs found at many sites. To our knowledge, we are the first to use ASVs in combination with a curated taxonomy to understand co-occurrence, specific ecological profiles and large-scale geographical distribution for unique identifiers not biased by the quality of reference databases, clustering methods, or non-harmonized morphological identification. Thus, our results can now be used in subsequent projects to interpret ASV occurrences, e.g. for development of ecological assessment methods