Metacomunidades de macroinvertebrados aquáticos em áreas úmidas intermitentes de altitude do sul do Brasil

Abstract

Wetlands are priority ecosystems for conservation, because of its high biological diversity, provided by its complexity and heterogeneity of habitats and its numerous functions and values, such as intermittency. The search for the processes that shape its communities and for the determinants of its biodiversity is focused on the role of local environmental factors and regional spatial factors. A metacommunity may be defined as a set of local communities connected by the dispersion of species that potentially interact with each other. Another way to understand the factors that determine diversity of species at different spatial scales is investigating, simultaneously, the beta diversity and the relationship between local and regional diversity. The goal of this study was to analyze the influence of local factors and regional factors in the composition of aquatic macroinvertebrate communities, as well as verifying how the beta diversity varies between different spatial scales and between different types of habitat. Three collections of aquatic macroinvertebrates were performed in 20 high altitude wetlands in southern Brazil. The main results were: the samples showed a total of 27,884 individuals in 64 taxa; local and regional factors of wetlands did not explain the structure of aquatic macroinvertebrates metacommunities, considering all taxa or taxa classified according to the dispersal strategies (active and passive); a weak contribution of the habitats in the number of species or diversity variation in the community. The beta diversity is higher among wetlands (regional scale) than among habitats of the same wetland, regardless of their hydroperiod, thus indicating strong influence of regional factors in species composition. The development of ecological studies that address the metacommunity theory, conciliated with how the diversity of species varies between different spatial scales, is fundamental, considering the biodiversity conservation priority of wetlands in southern Brazil.