Ecological processes underlying community assembly of aquatic bacteria and macroinvertebrates under contrasting climates on the Tibetan Plateau

Annika Vilmi; Wenqian Zhao; Félix Picazo; Mingjia Li; Jani Heino; Janne Soininen; Jianjun Wang

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134974

Ecological processes underlying community assembly of aquatic bacteria and macroinvertebrates under contrasting climates on the Tibetan Plateau

Sci Total Environ. 2020 Feb 1:702:134974. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134974. Epub 2019 Nov 2.

Authors

Annika Vilmi¹, Wenqian Zhao², Félix Picazo¹, Mingjia Li³, Jani Heino⁴, Janne Soininen⁵, Jianjun Wang⁶

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China; Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210046, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China; The University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
⁴ Freshwater Centre, Finnish Environment Institute, Oulu 90570, Finland.
⁵ Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Helsinki 00560, Finland.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China; The University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China. Electronic address: jjwang@niglas.ac.cn.

PMID: 31734610
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.134974

Abstract

Understanding the role of climatic variation on biodiversity is of chief importance due to the ongoing biodiversity loss and climate change. Freshwaters, one of the most threatened ecosystems in the world, offer a valuable context to study biodiversity patterns of distinct organism groups in relation to climatic variation. In the Tibetan Plateau biodiversity hotspot - Hengduan Mountain region, we studied the effects of climate and local physico-chemical factors on stream microorganisms (i.e. bacteria) and macroorganisms (i.e. macroinvertebrates) in two parallel catchments with contrasting precipitation and temperature, that is, the Nujiang and Lancang Rivers. Diversities and community structures were better explained by climatic and local environmental variables in the drier and colder catchment and at higher elevations, than in the warmer and wetter conditions and at lower elevations. This suggests that communities may be more strongly assembled by deterministic processes in the former, comparatively harsher conditions, compared to the latter, more benign conditions. Macroinvertebrates were more strongly affected by climatic and local environmental factors compared to bacteria, but the diversities and community structures of the two groups showed spatially similar responses to overall abiotic variation, being especially evident with their community structures' responses to climate. Furthermore, bacterial and macroinvertebrate diversities were positively correlated in the drier and colder catchment, implying that these biologically and ecologically distinct organism groups are likely to be driven by similar processes in areas with such climatic conditions. We conclude that changes in climatic and local environmental conditions may affect the diversity of macroorganisms more strongly than that of microorganisms, at least in subtropical mountainous stream ecosystems studied here, but simultaneous responses of both groups to environmental changes can also be expected.

Keywords: Assembly processes; Biodiversity hotspot; Body size; Climate change; Elevation; Hengduan Mountain; Macroorganisms; Microorganisms.

MeSH terms

Animals
Bacteria*
Biodiversity
Climate Change*
Ecology
Ecosystem*
Environmental Monitoring*
Invertebrates*
Rivers
Tibet