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Data from: Natural disturbances can produce misleading bioassessment results: identifying metrics to detect anthropogenic impacts in intermittent rivers

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Dec 17, 2019 version files 45.30 KB

Abstract

Ecosystems experience natural disturbances and anthropogenic impacts that affect biological communities and ecological processes. When natural disturbance modifies anthropogenic impacts, current widely used bioassessment metrics can prevent accurate assessment of biological quality.

Our aim was to assess the ability of biomonitoring metrics to detect anthropogenic impacts at both perennial and intermittent sites, and in the latter including both flowing and disconnected pool aquatic phases. Specifically, aquatic macroinvertebrates from 20 rivers were sampled along gradients of natural flow intermittence (natural disturbance) and anthropogenic impacts to investigate their combined effects on widely used river biomonitoring metrics (i.e. taxonomic richness and standard biological indices) and novel functional metrics, including functional redundancy (i.e. the number of taxa contributing similarly to an ecosystem function, here a trophic function) and response diversity (i.e. how functionally similar taxa respond to natural disturbance and anthropogenic impacts).

Our results showed that natural flow intermittence can confound river bioassessment, and that a set of new functional metrics could be used as effective alternatives to standard metrics in naturally disturbed intermittent rivers.