Relationships Between Macroinvertebrate Assemblages of Stony Littoral Habitats and Water Chemistry Variables Indicative of Acid-stress

Gradient analyses were used to correlatively determine the importance of acid-related variables for littoral macroinvertebrate assemblages. To better ascertain the effects of acidity on macroinvertebrate assemblages we removed sites judged to be affected by other stressors such as agriculture, urbanization and liming. PCA of land use and water chemistry confirmed the presence of an acidity gradient; several acidity variables (e.g. pH and buffering capacity) were strongly correlated with the first PC axis, which explained Ca 32% of the variance in the environmental data. Partial constrained ordination of littoral macroinvertebrate assemblages with water chemistry, after removing the effect of other confounding variables (e.g. land use/type), showed that acidity variables accounted for significant amounts of among-lake variability in assemblage structure. Regression of canonical scores (a metric of community composition) and diversity with pH and alkalinity was used to visually determine ecological breakpoints or threshold values. Five classes were established for pH: pH≺5 (extremely acid), 5≺pH⩽5.6 (very acid), 5.6≺pH⩽6.2 (acid), 6.2≺pH⩽6.8 (weakly acid) and pH≻6.8 (neutral-alkaline). Similarly, three classes were determined for alkalinity/acidity: ≺0.02, 0.02–0.1 and ≻0.1 meq/L.