River Drying Causes Local Losses and Regional Gains in Aquatic Invertebrate Metacommunity Diversity: A Cross‐Continental Comparison

作者：Daniel Escobar‐Camacho, Julie Crabot, Rachel Stubbington, Judy England, Romain Sarremejane, Núria Bonada‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬, José María Fernández‐Calero, Miguel Cañedo‐Argüelles, Carla Ferreira Rezende, Pierre C. M. Chanut, Zoltán Csabai, Andrea C. Encalada, Alex Laini, Heikki Mykrä, Nabor Moya, Petr Pařil, Daniela Rosero‐López, Thibault Datry · 发表于：Global Change Biology · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1111/gcb.70068 · 被引用次数：5 · 研究领域：Freshwater macroinvertebrate diversity and ecology、Fish Ecology and Management Studies、Hydrology and Watershed Management Studies

Drying river networks include non-perennial reaches that cease to flow or dry, and drying is becoming more prevalent with ongoing climate change. Biodiversity responses to drying have been explored mostly at local scales in a few regions, such as Europe and North America, limiting our ability to predict future global scenarios of freshwater biodiversity. Locally, drying acts as a strong environmental filter that selects for species with adaptations promoting resistance or resilience to desiccation, thus reducing aquatic α-diversity. At the river network scale, drying generates complex mosaics of dry and wet habitats, shaping metacommunities driven by both environmental and dispersal processes. By repeatedly resetting community succession, drying can enhance β-diversity in space and time. To investigate the transferability of these concepts across continents, we compiled and analyzed a unique dataset of 43 aquatic invertebrate metacommunities from drying river networks in Europe and South America. In Europe, α-diversity was consistently lower in non-perennial than perennial reaches, whereas this pattern was not evident in South America. Concomitantly, β-diversity was higher in non-perennial reaches than in perennial ones in Europe but not in South America. In general, β-diversity was predominantly driven by turnover rather than nestedness. Dispersal was the main driver of metacommunity dynamics, challenging prevailing views in river science that environmental filtering is the ...