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Mobility-dependent response of aquatic animal species richness to a wetland network in an agricultural landscape

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Abstract

Management of wetland connectivity is important for biodiversity conservation. In the modern agricultural landscape, the natural connections between floodplain wetlands have been greatly altered. Agricultural ditches and channelized streams are widely distributed in floodplains, which may contribute to the maintenance of wetland connectivity and biodiversity. To determine how these watercourse networks affect wetland biodiversity, we examined the relationship between the species richness of aquatic animals and wetland connectivity, with a special focus on species mobility. From July to August 2011, fish and aquatic insects were collected from 24 wetlands in northern Japan. To determine the degree of wetland connectivity, we assessed the relative importance of individual wetlands in maintaining the entire wetland network using two connectivity indices: hydrologic connectivity via watercourses and spatial connectivity defined as Euclidian distances between wetlands using graph theory. We found that only high mobility groups of both taxa could enhance species richness in either a hydrologic (fish) or spatial (insect) wetland network. The species richness of insects with high-flying ability was found to increase as spatial connectivity increased. Furthermore, the species richness of fish with high-swimming ability was positively influenced by hydrologic connectivity, most likely because highly mobile species were able to reach suitable habitats and migrate from source populations in a wetland network owing to their good mobility. Our findings indicate that hydrologic network is important for maintaining biodiversity as well as spatial connectivity. It is important to focus conservation efforts on key wetlands with high hydrologic and spatial connectivity in future wetland management.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Yuichi Yamaura and Masanao Sueyoshi of Hokkaido University for their conceptual and technical help. Critical and helpful comments from reviewers and an editor greatly improved the manuscript. We also thank the members of the Forest Ecosystem Management Laboratory of Hokkaido University for their help in conducting the fieldwork and for productive comments regarding the study. We thank the Ikeda, Toyokoro, and Urahoro town offices for their assistance in selecting the study sites. This study was supported by Grants in Aid for Scientific Research (No. 23248021) from the Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture, Japan; a Grant of the Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (S9 and 4D-1201) from the Ministry of the Environment of Japan; and the research fund for the Tokachi River provided by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport, and Tourism of Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forest Science, Graduate School of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, Kita 9 Nishi 9, Kita-ku, Sapporo, 060-8589, Japan

    Nobuo Ishiyama, Takumi Akasaka & Futoshi Nakamura

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  1. Nobuo Ishiyama
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  2. Takumi Akasaka
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  3. Futoshi Nakamura
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Correspondence to Nobuo Ishiyama.

Electronic supplementary material

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Supplementary Fig. 1 Individual-based rarefaction curves for estimated fish species richness in each wetland. Numbers beside each curve indicate the wetland ID. Numbers in parentheses denote the abundance of fish captured in each wetland.

Supplementary Fig. 2 Sample-based rarefaction curves for estimated insect species richness in each wetland. Numbers beside each curve indicate the wetland ID. Numbers in parentheses denote the number of sampling points in each wetland.

Supplementary material 1 (DOCX 1164 kb)

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 2, 3, 4.

Table 2 Wetland environmental characteristics and importance measured by dIIC value
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Table 3 List of study species and ecological characteristics used for mobility grouping
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Table 4 Species richness used for statistical analyses
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Ishiyama, N., Akasaka, T. & Nakamura, F. Mobility-dependent response of aquatic animal species richness to a wetland network in an agricultural landscape. Aquat Sci 76, 437–449 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-014-0345-8

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