Resilience of fishes and invertebrates to prolonged drought in two California streams
By L. Bêche, P. Connors, V. Resh, A. Merenlender. 2009
152 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Long-term data are needed to assess spatial and temporal variability of communities and their resilience to natural and anthropogenic disturbances, particularly in climatic regions marked by high interannual variability (e.g. mediterranean-climate). A long-term study at four sites on two streams in mediterranean-climate California (annual sampling over 20 yr) allowed us to quantify the influence of a 5-yr prolonged drought on stream invertebrate and fish communities. Invertebrate community composition did not show recovery following drought. The primary environmental factors influencing community composition, identified through principle components and multiple correspondence analyses were precipitation and flow permanence. Invertebrate taxon richness and abundance exhibited few responses (some site specific) and recovered quickly. Native fish abundance was lowest during the drought period and highest during the wet years that occurred at the end of the study period. Importantly, the prolonged drought facilitated the establishment and success of the invasive green sunfish (Centrarchidae: Lepomis cyanellus) that was then resilient to subsequent large flow events. There was high spatial synchrony in the temporal changes among all four sites, and three distinct periods were identified: early drought, late drought, and post-drought years. However, we still found differences among sites along the flow permanence gradient from temporary to perennial in the response to drought of both invertebrate and fish assemblages likely as a result of changes in substrate, vegetation, and other habitat characteristics. The observed lack of resilience and negative impacts to biodiversity due to prolonged drought associated with long-term habitat changes is important because hydroclimatic extremes are predicted to increase in frequency and magnitude with global climate change.
Subfields: Ecology, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Water Science and Technology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0ba14f78d1c9428a6785962dd093b4e40451aa1e
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Citations in the corpus
- Broad-scale patterns of invertebrate richness and community composition in temporary rivers: effects of flow intermittence (2014, background): “87 88 Aquatic communities of temporary rivers persist through disturbances using both resistance 89 and resilience mechanisms (Fritz and Dodds 2004, Bêche et al. 2009).”
- Impact of simulated drought on ecosystem biomass production: an experimental test in stream mesocosms (2011, background): “Unpredictable droughts are thought to be particularly deleterious for biota adapted to life in running waters (Bonada et al., 2007; Beche et al., 2009), but the impacts of these events on key stream ecosystem processes are still poorly understood (Boulton, 2003).”
- Invertebrate assemblage responses and the dual roles of resistance and resilience to drying in intermittent rivers (2016, background): “Long-term persistence of IR communities may therefore be compromised under abnormally long periods of surface-water loss (e.g. Bêche et al. 2009), even in aridzone rivers (Bogan et al. 2013), particularly if the availability of sources of recolonising taxa (e.g., nearby P sites) is limited.”
- A STREAM EVOLUTION MODEL INTEGRATING HABITAT AND ECOSYSTEM BENEFITS (2014, background): “Base flow is an important hydrologic attribute because it governs habitability and biodiversity for aquatic species (Bêche et al., 2009).”
- Invertebrate assemblages of pools in arid‐land streams have high functional redundancy and are resistant to severe drying (2014, background): “Bêche et al. (2009)found that recovery from supraseasonal drought was taxon specific and that large, dispersal-limited taxa never recolonised following drying disturbance.”