Do alternative stable states exist in large shallow Taihu Lake,China?

Regime shifts from submersed macrophyte dominance to phytoplankton dominance have been widely reported in small-to medium-sized shallow lakes.However,alternative stable states in large shallow lakes(surface area>500 km^(2))remain unconfirmed.To understand the alternative stable states and the main influencing factors of submersed macrophytes in large lakes,the ecosystem states from monitoring data from 1959 to 2019 in large shallow Taihu Lake(2338 km^(2)in average depth of 2.12 m)in China were examined.Changes in submersed macrophyte coverage(C_(Mac))and phytoplankton chlorophyll a(Chl a)in the time series and their relationships with environmental factors were analyzed.During the field investigation from August 2018 to May 2019,nutrients and Chl a showed obvious heterogeneity across the lake,being generally higher in the western and northern areas and lower in the southeast area,while C_(Mac)was only observed in the eastern areas,e.g.,East Taihu Lake,Xukou Bay,and Gonghu Bay.During the long-term monitoring from 1959 to 2019 in the Central Region,Meiliang Bay,and East Taihu Lake,Chl a increased significantly in the time series.C_(Mac)varied slightly among different subareas,always at low levels(<10%)in the Central Region and Meiliang Bay but at relatively high levels in East Taihu Lake(10%–90%).Frequency distributions of response variables had no multimodality except for C_(Mac)in East Taihu Lake,with two peaks between 15%and 20%and between 55%and 60%.A dual relationship was found between Chl a and total phosphorus(TP)in the areas with and without macrophytes,while C_(Mac)showed no relationship with TP,and submersed macrophytes did not flourish in the Central Region and Meiliang Bay even when TP was at very low levels(≈10 mg/m3).Taihu Lake had similar algal turbidity(TurbAlg)as small-to mediumsized lakes but generally presented with higher values of nonalgal turbidity(TurbNonAlg),as did their contribution to total turbidity as a percentage.This study suggested that large shallow Taihu Lake may have no alternative stable states,but more evidence is needed for East Taihu Lake,which was dominated by macrophytes,as it remains unknown whether hysteresis occurs between the processes of eutrophication and oligotrophication.Unfavorable conditions caused by wind might be the main reason due to the absence of submersed macrophytes in Taihu Lake.These results demonstrate that stricter nutrient control is needed to maintain a healthy state or to recover from a decayed state for large lakes.

Recovery time of macroinvertebrate community from Cd pollution in Longjiang River,Guangxi,China

Estimating recovery times from pollution incident is an important issue of targeted biomonitoring programs.In the present study,the impact and recovery of macroinvertebrate communities from a cadmium wastewater discharge in the Longjiang River,Guangxi,China,in early January 2012 were studied based on 83 samples collected in fi ve surveys within 20 months after the incident.The pollution aff ected seriously the local aquatic biota,and consequently,the invertebrate abundance and species richness were reduced considerably.Twelve months later,the taxonomic number of macroinvertebrates began to increase.However,sensitive taxa remained rare.Twenty months later,the taxon richness and abundance of macroinvertebrates increased signifi cantly compared to those in the previous four time points.To explore the possible time-scale over which pre-disturbance conditions might occur,we chose four diff erent typical metrics of taxa richness(total taxa number,cumulative taxa number,taxa number per samples,and the Shannon-Wiener diversity index)and extrapolated modeled recovery trajectories.Target values for the four metrics were set at average values for sites from the nearby Lijiang River,which were used as a reference.Assuming a continued linear trajectory,the recovery times were estimated to be 52,39,39,and 31 months,respectively,which was roughly 3-5 years.This is consistent with results from recovery times from other studies of acute pollution cases,but contrasted strongly to the much longer recovery times associated with chronic pollution from groundwater contamination and mine-tailing runoff.

Relationships between testate amoeba communities and water quality in Lake Donghu, a large alkaline lake in Wuhan, China

The middle Yangtze Reach is one of the most developed regions of China. As a result, most lakes in this area have suffered from eutrophication and serious environmental pollution during recent decades. The aquatic biodiversity in the lakes of the area is thus currently under significant threat from continuous human activities. Testate amoebae （TA） are benthic （rarely planktonic） microorganisms characterized by an agglutinated or autogenous shell. Owing to their high abundance, preservation potential in lacustrine sediments, and distinct response to environmental stress, they are increasingly used as indicators for monitoring water quality and reconstructing palaeoenvironmental changes. However this approach has not yet been developed in China. This study presents an initial assessment of benthic TA assemblages in eight lakes of Lake Donghu in the region of Wuhan, China. Testate amoeba community structure was most strongly correlated to water pH. In more alkaline conditions, communities were dominated by Centropyxis aculeata, Difflugia oblonga, Pontigulasia compressa, Pon. elisa and Lesquereusia modesta. These results are consistent with previous studies and show that TA could be useful for reconstructing past water pH fluctuations in China. To achieve this, the next step will be to expand the database and build transfer function models.

Environmental filtering and spatial processes equally contributed to macroinvertebrate metacommunity dynamics in the highly urbanized river networks in Shenzhen, South China

Background:Disentangling the relative roles of environmental filtering and spatial processes in structuring ecological communities is a central topic in metacommunity ecology.Metacommunity ecology in the temperate river ecosystems has been well developed,while less attention has been paid to subtropical urban river networks.Here,we examined the ecological factors and seasonal difference in structuring macroinvertebrates metacommunity assembly in the subtropical urban river networks in Shenzhen,South China.Results:Our results revealed that there was no significant distinction of macroinvertebrate community composition among seasons,with only the relative abundance of Mollusca and Odonata significantly differed in both wet and dry seasons.One possible explanation was that most macroinvertebrates are generally pollution-tolerant taxa characterized with nonseasonal life cycle.In addition,distance-based redundancy analysis and variation partitioning approach revealed that metacommunity was determined equally by the environmental and dispersal-related factors.Further,our results showed that,although a slight temporal variation of relative contribution,the identity and explanation power of ecological factors were different among seasons.Specifically,stronger environmental filtering structuring community dynamics was observed in the dry than wet seasons,which might be owing to higher environmental heterogeneity under a low water-flow condition.Moreover,we detected that the influence of spatial processes was stronger in the wet than dry seasons,indicating an obvious dispersal processes due to high connectivity among sites.Conclusion:Overall,our results revealed that environmental and spatial factors equally explained variations of macroinvertebrate metacommunity,implying the necessity of considering dispersal-related processes structuring ecological communities in river bioassessment programs.Moreover,degraded habitat conditions and water quality were the predominant factors that affected macroinvertebrate communities,indicating the significance and feasibility of improving local abiotic conditions to sustain local biodiversity.Further,our findings revealed the importance of seasonal dynamics of these urban river networks in structuring macroinvertebrate metacommunity.Thereby,our study improves the understanding of ecological processes governing macroinvertebrate metacommunity and underlines the idea that community ecology studies should go beyond the single snapshot survey in river networks.