Stability of chironomid community structure during historic climatic and environmental change in subarctic Alaska
Stability of chironomid community structure during historic climatic and environmental change in subarctic Alaska
By understanding lake ecosystem resilience in the face of increasing environmental and anthropogenic stress, we can hope to anticipate future ecosystem instability. We assess recent historic ecosystem resilience using composition and network analyses of empirical zoobenthos chironomid (Diptera: Chironomidae; nonbiting midges) reconstructions from three Subarctic Alaskan lakes, spanning the last c. 200 yr. We measured community richness, turnover and structure using taxon richness, beta diversity, and network skewness, respectively. Simulated taxonomic networks were created to establish the sensitivity of these metrics to changes in taxon connectivity, and to inform the interpretation of empirical chironomid records. The models indicated that beta diversity was more sensitive to taxon loss, while skewness was more sensitive to taxon gain. Both beta diversity and skewness were required to understand structural change under taxon replacement. The simulated arrival of strongly connected taxa caused a greater decrease in skewness than the arrival of weakly connected taxa. The empirical data sets indicated a rise in taxon richness (measured as rarefaction) and beta diversity in the recent samples. Changes in chironomid composition were associated with climate warming (replacement of cold taxa with temperate taxa) and increased lake biological productivity (the arrival of macrophyte-associated taxa). Skewness was predominantly negative across the lakes, indicating high taxon connectivity and structural stress. However, little directional change in the skewness trends suggests some resilience within the chironomid community structures in relation to the current levels of climate and environmental stress. Continued climatic warming, and associated rises in nutrient levels, may cause further structural stress and ecological degradation.
S444-S460
Mayfield, Roseanna
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Dearing, John
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Doncaster, Charles
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Langdon, Peter
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February 2022
Mayfield, Roseanna
791d3e42-f345-42b1-b5c0-b6940f2beff6
Dearing, John
dff37300-b8a6-4406-ad84-89aa01de03d7
Doncaster, Charles
0eff2f42-fa0a-4e35-b6ac-475ad3482047
Langdon, Peter
95b97671-f9fe-4884-aca6-9aa3cd1a6d7f
Mayfield, Roseanna, Dearing, John, Doncaster, Charles and Langdon, Peter
(2022)
Stability of chironomid community structure during historic climatic and environmental change in subarctic Alaska.
Limnology and Oceanography, 67 (S1), .
(doi:10.1002/lno.12007).
Abstract
By understanding lake ecosystem resilience in the face of increasing environmental and anthropogenic stress, we can hope to anticipate future ecosystem instability. We assess recent historic ecosystem resilience using composition and network analyses of empirical zoobenthos chironomid (Diptera: Chironomidae; nonbiting midges) reconstructions from three Subarctic Alaskan lakes, spanning the last c. 200 yr. We measured community richness, turnover and structure using taxon richness, beta diversity, and network skewness, respectively. Simulated taxonomic networks were created to establish the sensitivity of these metrics to changes in taxon connectivity, and to inform the interpretation of empirical chironomid records. The models indicated that beta diversity was more sensitive to taxon loss, while skewness was more sensitive to taxon gain. Both beta diversity and skewness were required to understand structural change under taxon replacement. The simulated arrival of strongly connected taxa caused a greater decrease in skewness than the arrival of weakly connected taxa. The empirical data sets indicated a rise in taxon richness (measured as rarefaction) and beta diversity in the recent samples. Changes in chironomid composition were associated with climate warming (replacement of cold taxa with temperate taxa) and increased lake biological productivity (the arrival of macrophyte-associated taxa). Skewness was predominantly negative across the lakes, indicating high taxon connectivity and structural stress. However, little directional change in the skewness trends suggests some resilience within the chironomid community structures in relation to the current levels of climate and environmental stress. Continued climatic warming, and associated rises in nutrient levels, may cause further structural stress and ecological degradation.
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Mayfield et al - Historial chironomid community change_TextFigures_Revised
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More information
Accepted/In Press date: 14 December 2021
e-pub ahead of print date: 5 January 2022
Published date: February 2022
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
This study was supported by a Ph.D. studentship awarded to R.J. Mayfield at the University of Southampton, provided by the UK National Environmental Research Council (grant no. NE/L002531/1). The authors would like to thank R. Wang for discussions on skewness; M.E. Edwards and C.L. Clarke for their help with fieldwork; Nancy Bigelow for providing fieldwork equipment and laboratory access at the University of Alaska Fairbanks; John and Gay Ward for allowing the fieldwork team to access East Cobb Lake via their land; C.T. Langdon and G. Schellinger for their assistance with chironomid identifications; S.J. Brooks, H.J.B. Birks, A.S. Medeiros, and all contributors of the Norwegian and North American chironomid calibration data sets for the usage of these data sets; S. Billings for processing the water chemical analyses at the Water and Environmental Research Center (WERC), University of Alaska Fairbanks; I.W. Croudace, A. Cundy, P. Gaca, F. Rowlands, and M. Cobbold at GAU‐Radioanalytical, Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton for their assistance with Pb dating; BOSCORF, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and J.J. Fielding for their assistance with XRF analysis and interpretation; J.J. Nieves for discussions on network theory and constructing networks R; S. Engels and T.H.G. Ezard for discussions on an earlier version; and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and helping us improve this paper. 210
Funding Information:
This study was supported by a Ph.D. studentship awarded to R.J. Mayfield at the University of Southampton, provided by the UK National Environmental Research Council (grant no. NE/L002531/1). The authors would like to thank R. Wang for discussions on skewness; M.E. Edwards and C.L. Clarke for their help with fieldwork; Nancy Bigelow for providing fieldwork equipment and laboratory access at the University of Alaska Fairbanks; John and Gay Ward for allowing the fieldwork team to access East Cobb Lake via their land; C.T. Langdon and G. Schellinger for their assistance with chironomid identifications; S.J. Brooks, H.J.B. Birks, A.S. Medeiros, and all contributors of the Norwegian and North American chironomid calibration data sets for the usage of these data sets; S. Billings for processing the water chemical analyses at the Water and Environmental Research Center (WERC), University of Alaska Fairbanks; I.W. Croudace, A. Cundy, P. Gaca, F. Rowlands, and M. Cobbold at GAU-Radioanalytical, Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton for their assistance with 210Pb dating; BOSCORF, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and J.J. Fielding for their assistance with XRF analysis and interpretation; J.J. Nieves for discussions on network theory and constructing networks R; S. Engels and T.H.G. Ezard for discussions on an earlier version; and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and helping us improve this paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors. Limnology and Oceanography published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.
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Local EPrints ID: 454113
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/454113
ISSN: 0024-3590
PURE UUID: cbba72e8-1c5a-442b-b52a-81f5f1a8e84f
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Date deposited: 31 Jan 2022 17:47
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 02:59
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Roseanna Mayfield
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