RT Journal Article
T1 A heuristic approach to predicting water beetle diversity in temporary and fluctuating waters
A1 Gutiérrez Estrada, Juan Carlos
A1 Bilton, David T.
K1 Ecología de las aguas
AB An understanding of the causal mechanisms and processes that shape macroinvertebrate communities ata local scale has important implications for the management and conservation of freshwater biodiversity.Here we compare the performance of linear and non-linear statistics to explore diversity–environmentrelationships using data from 76 temporary and fluctuating ponds in two regions of southern England.Wefocus on aquatic beetle assemblages, which have been shown to be excellent surrogates of wider freshwatermacroinvertebrate diversity. Ponds in the region contained a rich coleopteran fauna, totaling 68species, which provided an excellent model system with which to compare the performance of two nonlinearprocedures (artificial neural networks—ANNs and generalised additive models—GAMs) and onemore traditional linear approach (Multiple linear regression—MLR) to modelling diversity–environmentrelationships. Of all approaches employed, the best fit was obtained using an ANN model with only fourinput variables (conductivity, turbidity, magnesium concentration and depth). This model accounted for82% of the observed variability in Shannon diversity index across ponds. In contrast, the best GAM andMLR models only explained 50% and 14% of this variation, respectively. Contribution profile analysis ofconductivity, turbidity, magnesium concentration and depth, obtained from the best fit ANN through ahierarchical cluster analysis, allowed the identification of direct and proxy effects in relation to the environmentalvariables measured in this study. In each case, distinct clusters of ponds were identified incontribution profile analysis, suggesting that ponds across the two regions fall into a number of discretegroups, whose beetle faunas respond in subtly yet significantly different ways to key environmental variables.Aquatic coleopteran diversity in ponds in the two regions appears to be driven at a local scale bychanges in relatively few physicochemical gradients, which are related to diversity in a clearly non-linearmanner
PB Elsevier
SN 0304-3800
YR 2010
FD 2010
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10272/6089
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10272/6089
LA eng
NO Gutiérrez Estrada, J.C.. Bilton, D.T.: "A heuristic approach to predicting water beetle diversity in temporary and fluctuating waters". Ecological Modelling. Vol. 221, n. 11, p. 1451-1462 (2010). ISSN 0304-3800
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Huelva
RD 31 may 2026