Environmental influences on invertebrate diversity and community composition in the hyporheic zone ecotone in Texas, USA
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PRIMARY RESEARCH PAPER
Environmental influences on invertebrate diversity and community composition in the hyporheic zone ecotone in Texas, USA: contrasts between co-occurring epigean taxa and stygobionts Benjamin T. Hutchins . Aaron P. Swink . Peter H. Diaz . Benjamin F. Schwartz
Received: 9 January 2020 / Revised: 29 July 2020 / Accepted: 3 August 2020 Ó Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract The hyporheic zone (HZ) of streams harbors co-occurring epigean taxa and stygobionts (including HZ specialist taxa and deeper groundwater taxa) that face the same set of local environmental factors, but are derived from spatially and functionally discrete colonist pools. We investigate whether occurrences of epigean taxa and stygobionts are differentially influenced by the same set of environmental variables in HZ samples from Texas, USA. We increase the number of records for described stygobionts in the state by nearly 12%, but 26 stygobionts (35%) were undescribed species. Stygobionts had
Handling editor: Checo Colo´n-Gaud
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-020-04379-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. B. T. Hutchins (&) A. P. Swink B. F. Schwartz Edwards Aquifer Research and Data Center, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX 78666, USA e-mail: [email protected]
smaller average ranges (3549 km2) than epigean taxa (24,046 km2), but occurred in similar abundances. Dissolved oxygen and temperature influenced community composition in both groups, but stygobiont community composition, richness, and abundance were influenced by association with karst aquifers and surface water-groundwater exchange, whereas epigean taxa composition was only weakly influenced by the association with karst aquifers. Contrasts between epigean taxa and stygobiont occurrence patterns are primarily explained by differences in range size, dispersal ability, and the pool of potential colonizer species. This first documentation of Texas HZ communities includes 14 stygobionts previously recorded only from karst aquifers: their discovery in the HZ has important management implications.
B. F. Schwartz Department of Biology, Freeman Aquatic Station, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX 78666, USA
A. P. Swink Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, Division of Aquatic Resources, Kauai District, Lihu‘e, HI 96766, USA P. H. Diaz Texas Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, San Marcos, TX 78666, USA
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Hydrobiologia
Keywords Ecotone Colonizer pool Dispersal limitation Hyporheos Environmental filter Karst aquifer
Introduction Species functional traits (e.g., dispersal ability) and geography (i.e., environmental gradients and barriers to dispersal) operate together to influence the pool of species available for colonization (Kraft et al., 2015; Mittelbach & Schemske, 2015). However, the successful establishment of populations by
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