Trait modality distribution of aquatic macrofauna communities as explained by pesticides and water chemistry

Ecotoxicology, May 2016

Analyzing functional species’ characteristics (species traits) that represent physiological, life history and morphological characteristics of species help understanding the impacts of various stressors on aquatic communities at field conditions. This research aimed to study the combined effects of pesticides and other environmental factors (temperature, dissolved oxygen, dissolved organic carbon, floating macrophytes cover, phosphate, nitrite, and nitrate) on the trait modality distribution of aquatic macrofauna communities. To this purpose, a field inventory was performed in a flower bulb growing area of the Netherlands with significant variation in pesticides pressures. Macrofauna community composition, water chemistry parameters and pesticide concentrations in ditches next to flower bulb fields were determined. Trait modalities of nine traits (feeding mode, respiration mode, locomotion type, resistance form, reproduction mode, life stage, voltinism, saprobity, maximum body size) likely to indicate pesticides impacts were analyzed. According to a redundancy analysis, phosphate -and not pesticides- constituted the main factor structuring the trait modality distribution of aquatic macrofauna. The functional composition could be ascribed for 2–4 % to pesticides, and for 3–11 % to phosphate. The lack of trait responses to pesticides may indicate that species may have used alternative strategies to adapt to ambient pesticides stress. Biomass of animals exhibiting trait modalities related to feeding by predation and grazing, presence of diapause form or dormancy, reproduction by free clutches and ovoviviparity, life stage of larvae and pupa, was negatively correlated to the concentration of phosphate. Hence, despite the high pesticide pollution in the area, variation in nutrient-related stressors seems to be the dominant driver of the functional composition of aquatic macrofauna assembly in agricultural ditches.

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Trait modality distribution of aquatic macrofauna communities as explained by pesticides and water chemistry

Ecotoxicology Trait modality distribution of aquatic macrofauna communities as explained by pesticides and water chemistry O. Ieromina 0 1 C. J. M. Musters 0 1 P. M. Bodegom 0 1 W. J. G. M. Peijnenburg 0 1 M. G. Vijver 0 1 0 National Institute for Public Health and Environment , P.O. Box 1, 3720 Bilthoven, BA , The Netherlands 1 & O. Ieromina Analyzing functional species' characteristics (species traits) that represent physiological, life history and morphological characteristics of species help understanding the impacts of various stressors on aquatic communities at field conditions. This research aimed to study the combined effects of pesticides and other environmental factors (temperature, dissolved oxygen, dissolved organic carbon, floating macrophytes cover, phosphate, nitrite, and nitrate) on the trait modality distribution of aquatic macrofauna communities. To this purpose, a field inventory was performed in a flower bulb growing area of the Netherlands with significant variation in pesticides pressures. Macrofauna community composition, water chemistry parameters and pesticide concentrations in ditches next to flower bulb fields were determined. Trait modalities of nine traits (feeding mode, respiration mode, locomotion type, resistance form, reproduction mode, life stage, voltinism, saprobity, maximum body size) likely to indicate pesticides impacts were analyzed. According to a redundancy analysis, phosphate -and not pesticides- constituted the main factor structuring the trait modality distribution of aquatic macrofauna. The functional composition could be ascribed for 2-4 % to pesticides, and for 3-11 % to phosphate. The lack of trait responses to pesticides may indicate that Aquatic community; Traits; Pesticides stress; Environmental factors; Nutrients - Institute of Environmental Sciences, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9518, 2300 Leiden, RA, The Netherlands species may have used alternative strategies to adapt to ambient pesticides stress. Biomass of animals exhibiting trait modalities related to feeding by predation and grazing, presence of diapause form or dormancy, reproduction by free clutches and ovoviviparity, life stage of larvae and pupa, was negatively correlated to the concentration of phosphate. Hence, despite the high pesticide pollution in the area, variation in nutrient-related stressors seems to be the dominant driver of the functional composition of aquatic macrofauna assembly in agricultural ditches. Introduction Traditionally, the responses of biotic communities to human-induced disturbances have been evaluated based on taxonomic approaches, e.g. by estimating the species composition or the performance of selected indicator species (Mouillot et al. 2006) . During the recent decades, the use of traits-based approaches, i.e. characterizing communities according to functional characteristics, has gained an increasing interest. The reason is that functional traits were shown to reflect the mechanisms underlying community responses to environmental drivers (Poff 1997; Statzner and Beche 2010) . Information obtained using traits-based approaches may thus be extrapolated to a broader range of species and geographical zones (Baird et al. 2008; Dole´dec et al. 2006; Charvet et al. 2000) . These approaches have been successfully developed for a wide array of plant (for instance, Engelhardt 2006; Que´tier et al. 2007; Suding et al. 2008; Van Bodegom et al. 2014) and animal communities, including invertebrates (for instance, Culp et al. 2011; Poff et al. 2006; Charvet et al. 2000; Dole´dec et al. 2006; Vieira et al. 2006; Magbauna et al. 2010; Menezes et al. 2010; Statzner and Beche 2010; Ippolito et al. 2012) . Increasingly, traits-based approach is also applied to understand the impacts of pesticides on community responses of aquatic invertebrate communities (Liess and Von Der Ohe 2005; Ippolito et al. 2012; Rubach et al. 2010) . So far, traits-based approaches characterizing invertebrate community responses to pesticides have mostly treated pesticides impacts in isolation. However, in multistressor field conditions, pesticides are not the only drivers of invertebrate community composition. A number of key environmental factors varying over time and space may influence the performance of aquatic biota in water systems around agricultural areas. First, the use of pesticides in the agricultural fields results in the presence of pesticide mixtures in surface waters. Therefore, aquatic biota may be affected by mixtures of pesticides. Second, nutrients (phosphorus and nitrogen) are commonly applied to the fields to enhance yields and are often transported to surface waters in relatively large amounts along with pesticides (EPA 2012; Tilman et al. 2002) . Nutrients were shown to affect the responses of aquatic invertebrates to pesticides in the laboratory and semi-field conditions (Alexander et al. 2013; Ieromina et al. 2014a, b) . Third, other physicochemical paramete (...truncated)


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O. Ieromina, C. J. M. Musters, P. M. Bodegom, W. J. G. M. Peijnenburg, M. G. Vijver. Trait modality distribution of aquatic macrofauna communities as explained by pesticides and water chemistry, Ecotoxicology, 2016, pp. 1170-1180, Volume 25, Issue 6, DOI: 10.1007/s10646-016-1671-5