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Hydrobiologia (2009) 623:87103 DOI 10.1007/s10750-008-9650-3
PRIMARY RESEARCH PAPER
Relationship of sh and macroinvertebrate assemblages to environmental factors: implications for community concordance
Dana M. Infante J. David Allan Simon Linke Richard H. Norris
Received: 26 March 2008 / Revised: 28 October 2008 / Accepted: 8 November 2008 / Published online: 2 December 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
Abstract Community concordance describes similarity in distributions and abundances of organisms from different taxonomic groups across a region of interest, with highly concordant communities assumed to respond similarly to major environmental gradients, including anthropogenic stressors. While few studies have explicitly tested for concordance among stream-dwelling organisms, it frequently is assumed that both macroinvertebrates and sh respond in concert to environmental factors, an assumption that has implications for their management. We investigated concordance among sh and
macroinvertebrates from tributaries of two catchments in southeastern Michigan having varied landscape characteristics. Classications of sh and macroinvertebrate assemblages resulted in groups distinguished by differences in taxonomic characteristics, functional traits, and stressor tolerance of their respective dominant taxa. Biological groups were associated with principal landscape gradients of the study region, which ranged from forests and wet-lands on coarse surcial geology to agricultural lands on ner, more impervious surcial geology. Measures of stream habitat indicated more stable stream ows and greater heterogeneity of conditions at site groups with catchments comprising forests and wetlands on the coarsest geology, but did not distinguish well among remaining site groups, suggesting that habitat degradation may not be the driving mechanism leading to differences in groups. Despite broadly similar interpretations of relationships of site groups with landscape characteristics for both sh and macroinvertebrates, examination of site representation within groups indicated weak community concordance. Our results suggest that explicit responses of sh and macroinvertebrates to landscape factors vary, due to potential differences in their susceptibility to controls or to differences in the scale at which landscape factors inuence these organisms.
Keywords Stream Land use Geology
Habitat Scale Classication
Handling editor: Robert Bailey
D. M. Infante (&)
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824, USAe-mail: infanted@msu.edu
J. David AllanSchool of Natural Resources and Environment,The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA
S. LinkeThe Ecology Centre, School of Integrative Biology, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, QLD...