Effect of restoration on zooplankton community in a permanent interdunal pond

Restoration projects in wetlands are becoming increasingly frequent to recover or to create new aquatic ecosystems, after the significant impact and high degradation they have undergone. In the present study, we focused on the changes in the zooplankton community in a permanent peridunal pond where a restoration was carried out in order to increase its surface as a main objective. For this purpose, the community was compared before and after the restoration (15 years before, the year after and between 3 and 6 years later). Significant changes in environmental variables were observed after pond restoration: chlorophyll a concentration decreased and dissolved oxygen increased. Substantial mod…

A new tool for the assessment of severe anthropogenic eutrophication in small shallow water bodies

Abstract Unlike in deep stratified lakes, the assessment of eutrophication in shallow aquatic systems (i.e., wetlands, marshes, ponds) should be based on the interaction between water and sediment. The availability of P to primary producers is naturally higher in shallow systems, because the sediment plays an active part via adsorption, precipitation and release processes. Thus, many wetlands in protected areas are naturally eutrophic and have a high trophic status due to intrinsic features and thus, display a high concentration of total-P in the water without necessarily implying pollution or poor quality. We have provided a diagnostic tool based on the chemical equilibrium of dissolved re…

Influence of restoration age on egg bank richness and composition: an ex situ experiment

AbstractZooplankton community assembly after flooding in temporary ponds depends mostly on abundance and diversity of the dormant propagule bank. However, our understanding of the hatching patterns of zooplankton is imperfect. We performed an ex situ experiment to study the species composition and temporal sequence of zooplankton emergence from sediments in three ponds that were restored at different times: 1998, 2003 and 2007. The patterns of species hatching observed in our microcosms were compared with the emergent zooplankton community of their equivalent, synchronically inundated ponds. An escalation in species richness and a delay in hatching time were detected with increasing restora…

Metacommunities from bacteria to birds: stronger environmental selection in mediterranean than in tropical ponds

AbstractThe metacommunity concept provides a theoretical framework that aims at explaining organism distributions by a combination of environmental filtering, dispersal and drift. With the development of statistical tools to quantify and partially isolate the role of each of these processes, empirical metacommunity studies have multiplied worldwide. However, few works attempt a multi-taxon approach and even fewer compare two distant biogeographical regions using the same methodology. Under this framework, we tested the expectation that temperate (mediterranean-climate) pond metacommunities would be more influenced by environmental and spatial processes than tropical ones, because of stronge…

Tracking environmental changes in restored Mediterranean dune slacks.

Restoration is an ecological tool that aims to recover the prior conditions and functioning of a degraded habitat. Three restoration projects targeted a dune slack system in the Eastern Iberian Peninsula and created a mosaic of ponds restored over three different periods: 1998, 2003 and 2007, the latter coinciding with the start of our study. Restoration works consisted of digging out the pond basin to its original morphometry. We monitored 12 restored ponds (six recent, three intermediate and three older ones) monthly, over four consecutive hydrological years (from 2007 until 2011) characterizing the most important limnological factors in order to disentangle the effects of man-made restor…

Environment and Space Rule, but Time also Matters for the Organization of Tropical Pond Metacommunities

Metacommunities are dynamic systems, but the influence of time independently of environmental change in their configuration has been rarely considered. Temporary ponds are excellent ecosystem models, as they have well-defined boundaries in time and space; their communities are relatively isolated through a landscape matrix, and the progress of time leads to major changes through ecological succession and in habitat suitability related to hydroperiod dynamics. Therefore, strong temporal effects are expected to influence their metacommunity structure. We surveyed 30 temporary ponds along the dry tropical region of western Costa Rica and Nicaragua at three different moments of their hydroperio…

Linderiella baetica Alonso & Garcia-de-Lomas 2009 (Crustacea, Branchiopoda, Anostraca): On the verge of extinction?

The province of Cadiz (South of Spain) hosts the only known locality in the world of Linderiella baetica Alonso & Garcia-de-Lomas 2009 (Anostraca). In this paper, the geographical distribution of the species based on published sampling data focused on large branchiopods and temporary pools in Andalusia and the entire Iberian Peninsula is assessed. The current situation is summarized based on the threats to their survival, which are mainly related to habitat alteration. In the Iberian Peninsula, at least 1,648 bodies of water (about 720 in Andalusia) have been explored. Prevalence data suggest that L. baetica is a rare species (localities with presence / sample locations = 6.07 . 10-4). The …

The environmental and zooplankton community changes in restored ponds over 4 years

Re-establishment of zooplankton communities in temporary ponds after autumn flooding: Does restoration age matter?

Abstract In temporary ponds, reestablishment of zooplankton communities depends on recruitment from the egg bank, the arrival of dispersers from within the region, and on successful establishment of newly arrived species following interaction with local abiotic and biotic factors. When the ponds dry up, zooplankton species may survive as dormant eggs, and since not all eggs hatch in the next season, eggs will accumulate in the sediment over time, representing an archive of the pond's historical biodiversity. To study the effect of “restoration age” (the time since a water body was restored), we studied groups of ponds that were restored in different years (1998, 2003 and 2007). The restorat…