TY - JOUR
T1 - How does fish functional diversity respond to environmental changes in two large shallow lakes?
AU - Mao, Zhigang
AU - Gu, Xiaohong
AU - Cao, Yong
AU - Luo, Juhua
AU - Zeng, Qingfei
AU - Chen, Huihui
AU - Jeppesen, Erik
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank all those who assisted us at the study sites. This work was supported by Major Science and Technology Program of Nei Mongol ( ZDZX2018054 ), Lake Taihu Management Project of Jiangsu Province ( TH2019303 ), and National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 31870449 ). EJ was supported by The Tübitak Outstanding Researcher Program ( BIDEB 2232 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020
PY - 2021/1/20
Y1 - 2021/1/20
N2 - Increasing threats to freshwater biodiversity from environmental changes and human activities highlight the need to understand the linkages between biological communities and their environment. Species richness has dominated our view of biodiversity patterns for over a century, but it is increasingly recognized that a trait-based, causal view of biodiversity may be more meaningful than species richness or taxonomic composition. This rationale has led to the exploration of functional diversity (FD) indices to quantify variation in traits that mediate species' contributions to ecosystem processes. In the present study, we quantified FD of fish communities in two large shallow lakes in China with different disturbances level using long-term monitoring data sets. Random-Forests regression was applied to examine how changes in FD were related to natural and human-related environmental variables. Fish stocking, water quality, climate, and hydrological changes were identified as the most important predictors of FD long-term trends. However, the major drivers of FD differed between two lakes, i.e., human activities explaining a greater proportion of FD variance in Lake Taihu, whereas physicochemical environmental factors prominently explained FD variance in Lake Hulun. Moreover, FD indices appeared more sensitive than species richness to multiple disturbances, suggesting that functional traits can be used to detect ecosystem alterations. This study offers insight into how FD can improve our understanding of the associations between fish communities and environmental changes of relevance also for lake and fisheries management.
AB - Increasing threats to freshwater biodiversity from environmental changes and human activities highlight the need to understand the linkages between biological communities and their environment. Species richness has dominated our view of biodiversity patterns for over a century, but it is increasingly recognized that a trait-based, causal view of biodiversity may be more meaningful than species richness or taxonomic composition. This rationale has led to the exploration of functional diversity (FD) indices to quantify variation in traits that mediate species' contributions to ecosystem processes. In the present study, we quantified FD of fish communities in two large shallow lakes in China with different disturbances level using long-term monitoring data sets. Random-Forests regression was applied to examine how changes in FD were related to natural and human-related environmental variables. Fish stocking, water quality, climate, and hydrological changes were identified as the most important predictors of FD long-term trends. However, the major drivers of FD differed between two lakes, i.e., human activities explaining a greater proportion of FD variance in Lake Taihu, whereas physicochemical environmental factors prominently explained FD variance in Lake Hulun. Moreover, FD indices appeared more sensitive than species richness to multiple disturbances, suggesting that functional traits can be used to detect ecosystem alterations. This study offers insight into how FD can improve our understanding of the associations between fish communities and environmental changes of relevance also for lake and fisheries management.
KW - Fish stocking
KW - Functional dispersion
KW - Human activities
KW - Random Forests regression
KW - Water quality
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U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142158
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142158
M3 - Article
C2 - 33207432
AN - SCOPUS:85090554971
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 753
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
M1 - 142158
ER -