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Functional Feeding and Habit Organization of Macroinvertebrate Communities in Permanent and Temporary Ponds in Central Italy a
Marcello Bazzanti & Valentina Della Bella
a
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Department of Animal and Human Biology , University “La Sapienza” , viale dell Università 32, 00185, Rome, Italy E-mail: Published online: 11 Jan 2011.
To cite this article: Marcello Bazzanti & Valentina Della Bella (2004) Functional Feeding and Habit Organization of Macroinvertebrate Communities in Permanent and Temporary Ponds in Central Italy, Journal of Freshwater Ecology, 19:3, 493-497, DOI: 10.1080/02705060.2004.9664924 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02705060.2004.9664924
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Functional Feeding and Habit Organization of Macroinvertebrate Communities in Permanent and Temporary Ponds in Central ltaly Marcello Bazzanti and Valentina Della Bella
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Department of Animal and Human Biology University "La Sapienza" viale dell 'Universitd 32, 00185 Rome, ltaly E-mail:
[email protected]
The organization of functional feeding groups and habits of the invertebrate macrofauna was studied in twenty temporary and permanent ponds located in a natural reserve near Rome in order to complete the knowledge of the most relevant ecological aspects of this community, which was recently analyzed from a taxonomic perspective. Collector-gatherers,predators, sprawlers + climbers, and burrowers dominated in the ponds. Few differences between temporary and permanent ponds were evident in functional feeding groups and habits. Only collector-filterers (bivalves and some chironomids) seemed to be negatively influenced by drought, as they were more abundant in the permanent ponds. Scrapers appeared to be negatively influenced by tree cover and positively by conductivity and macrophyte cover. The abundances of sprawlers and climbers were negatively influenced by tree cover and positively by macrophyte cover, whereas swimmers and divers were positively influenced by pond depth.
Despite the high degree of variability of their abiotic factors, astatic ponds, particularly those of a temporary character, seem to be characterized by a strong biological diversity and provide suitable habitats for a wide range of aquatic plant, invertebrate, and vertebrate (especially amphibian and bird) species, often including endangered and nationally rare ones (Williams 1987, Biggs et al. 1994, Collinson et al. 1995, Oertli et al. 2002) or species of geographical and/or ecological interest (Bazzanti et al. 2000). However, compared to lakes and rivers, little is known about the ecological characteristics of ponds, especially as far as functional aspects of their inhabitants are concerned. In a previous paper (Bazzanti et al. 2003), we reported relationships between environmental factors and invertebrate taxonomic composition and community structure in 20 temporary and permanent ponds on the Presidential Estate of Castelporziano. We have now examined the macroinvertebrates of these same biotopes with regard to general habits (or "mode of existence") and feeding habits (Memtt and Curnmins 1984), and the results of those analyses are herein reported. METHODS AND MATERIALS The Presidential Estate of Castelporziano (about 20 krn southwest of Rome) encompasses a relatively undisturbed area of about 6,000 ha and contains more than 150 temporary and permanent ponds, of which the former may be considered as typical autumnal ponds (sensu Wiggins et al. 1980). For a more detailed description of the study site, see Bazzanti et al. (1996, 2000, 2003). Macroinvertebrates were collected between 2 and 6 June 1998 from eleven temporary and nine permanent ponds. Details of the collection procedure as well as measurement of various environmental parameters and habitat descriptions have been recorded (Bazzanti et al. 2003). We also visually estimated riparian tree and aquatic macrophyte covers, and the number of macrophyte species was also recorded for each pond. Macroinvertebrates were identified to the lowest taxonomic level possible and
Journal of Freshwater Ecology, Volume 19, Number 3 - September 2004
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assigned to different feeding categories and habits following Merritt and Cummins (1984) and Curnmins and Wilzbach (1985). Biological data were arcsin.\lptransformed in order to stabilize the variance (Sokal and Rohlf 1973). Principal component analysis (PCA) was then employed to summarize variations among sites. The Mann-Whitney U-test was used to highlight any significant differences between the two sets of data, and the Spearman rank coefficient of correlation (r,) was adopted to discover relationships among variables (Skokal and Rohfl 1973). RESULTS AND DISCUSSION As far as the functional feeding groups and habits were concerned, there were no appreciable differences in the macroinvertebrate assemblages of temporary and permanent ponds with the exception of the collector-filterers,represented by bivalves and some chironomids. The abundances of the bivalve Musculium lacustre and secondarily some chironomid species, such as Paratanytarsus sp. and Dicrotendipes nervosus, were significantly (p c0.05) higher in permanent ponds. These organisms seem to prefer the permanent waters (Bazzanti et al. 2000,2003) where a high conductivity and a greater depth may contribute advantages regarding feeding - the chemical environment favoring growth of seston (algae) and depthlsize of the ponds providing more water to be filtered compared to the temporary ponds. In our ponds, trophic guild analysis showed the dominance of collector-gatherers and predators with lower abundances of shredders, scrapers, and collector-filterers (Fig. 1). Similar findings were observed by Higgins and Memtt (1999) in some temporary ponds in Michigan (USA). These authors emphasized the differences between rivers and ponds and stressed that the higher proportion of shredders in the former biotopes was due to the great supply of leaf litter as food for macroinvertebrates, whereas other trophic pathways can be more important as direct food in ponds. %
permanent ponds
temporary ponds shredders e3 scrapers
predators Elcollector-gatherers
collector-filterers
Figure 1. Functional feeding group percentages of macroinvertebrate communities at the twenty studied ponds. Significant (p ~0.05)correlations were found between collector-filterers and depth (r, = 0.49), surface area (r, = 0.45), and conductivity (r, = 0.46). and between scrapers and tree cover (r, = - 0.45), macrophyte cover (r, = 0.51), number of macrophyte species (r, = 0.57), and conductivity (r, = 0.45). So, these two feeding groups were influenced by certain pond features and water chemistry which directly or indirectly tend to favor (or reduce) algae and/or macrophyte growth and richness.
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Sprawlers + climbers (mobile forms on the vegetation or on the sediments) dominated the pond communities (Fig. 2), followed by burrowers (sedentary forms) and swimmers + divers (mobile forms in the water column). The abundance of sprawlers + climbers correlated significantly (p
