River drying causes local losses and regional gains in aquatic invertebrate metacommunity diversity: a cross‐continental comparison

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Escobar‐Camacho, D, Crabot, J, Stubbington, R ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8475-5109, England, J, Sarremejane, R, Bonada, N, Fernández‐Calero, JM, Cañedo‐Argüelles, M, Rezende, CF, Chanut, P, Csabai, Z, Encalada, AC, Laini, A, Mykrä, H, Moya, N, Pařil, P, Rosero‐López, D and Datry, T, 2025. River drying causes local losses and regional gains in aquatic invertebrate metacommunity diversity: a cross‐continental comparison. Global Change Biology, 31 (2): e70068. ISSN 1354-1013

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.70068

Abstract

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 primary process shaping aquatic metacommunities. Lastly, α-diversity decreased as drying duration increased, but this was not consistent across Europe. Overall, drying had continent-specific effects, suggesting limited transferability of knowledge accumulated from North America and Europe to other biogeographic regions. As climate change intensifies, river drying is increasing, and our results underscore the importance of studying its effects across different regions. The importance of dispersal also suggests that management efforts should seek to enhance connectivity between reaches to effectively monitor, restore and conserve freshwater biodiversity.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	Global Change Biology
Creators:	Escobar‐Camacho, D., Crabot, J., Stubbington, R., England, J., Sarremejane, R., Bonada, N., Fernández‐Calero, J.M., Cañedo‐Argüelles, M., Rezende, C.F., Chanut, P., Csabai, Z., Encalada, A.C., Laini, A., Mykrä, H., Moya, N., Pařil, P., Rosero‐López, D. and Datry, T.
Publisher:	Wiley
Date:	February 2025
Volume:	31
Number:	2
ISSN:	1354-1013
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1111/gcb.70068 DOI 2390616 Other
Rights:	© 2025 The Author(s). Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Science and Technology
Record created by:	Laura Borcherds
Date Added:	03 Mar 2025 10:50
Last Modified:	03 Mar 2025 10:50
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/53158