Does land use influence the local and regional structure of the rotifer assemblage?

Author(s)

dos Santos, Eduardo Fernando ^[1] ; Abra, Juliana ^[2] ; Castilho-Noll, Maria Stela M. ^[1]

Affiliation

^[1] Univ Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho DZ, Inst Biociencias Letras & Ciencias Exatas, Dept Zool & Bot, Sao Jose Do Rio Preto, SP - Brazil

^[2] Ctr Univ Rio Preto UNIRP, Sao Jose Do Rio Preto, SP - Brazil

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: Hydrobiologia; v. 848, n. 5 FEB 2021.
• Web of Science Citations: 0

Abstract

The intensification of agriculture has caused severe environmental damage affecting numerous ecosystem services, such as freshwater quality. Understanding and monitoring its impact on the aquatic biota is fundamental to improve the water quality. In this paper, we investigated the influence of environmental condition established by an agropastoral landscape on the local and regional diversity of rotifers. For this, the local and regional diversity were modelled with generalized additive mixed models and canonical correspondence analysis, respectively. Our results indicated that both the local and regional structures of the rotifer assemblage are affected by high nutrient concentrations and other environmental variables. Spatial distance also influences the regional structure, accounting for 23% of the variation in the beta-diversity. The environmental variables are responsible for 9% of the variation in the beta-diversity and the surrounding matrix for 5%. Together, these components and the interactions among them, account for 54% of the regional structure of the rotifer assemblage. Based on our study, we concluded that agriculture lands, primarily citrus crops, adversely influence the rotifer assemblage both locally and regionally. That negative impact, in turn, results in a cascade effect in the aquatic ecosystem, leading mainly to the loss of species-poor taxa. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 04/04820-3 - Fauna and flora from forest fragments in the northwest region of São Paulo State: the basis to biodiversity conservational studies
• Grantee: Orlando Necchi Junior
• Support Opportunities: BIOTA-FAPESP Program - Thematic Grants