Abstract

River restoration enhances not only habitat diversity in the stream channel and riparian zone, but also retention of organic matter, which together are expected to enhance aquatic-terrestrial linkages, and the range of autochthonous and allochthonous resources. Consequently, alterations of food-web structure and trophic relationships can be expected. We applied stable isotope analysis (delta C-13, delta N-15) to characterize changes in the trophic structure of benthic invertebrate communities between paired restored and unrestored river reaches across 16 European catchments. We sampled dominant taxa of invertebrate assemblages belonging to different functional feeding groups and calculated delta C-13 range to estimate the diversity of basal resources assimilated, delta N-15 range as an indicator of the trophic length and standard ellipse area corrected for small samples as a measure of isotopic niche width. We analysed (1) if restoration influences the trophic structure of invertebrates, (2) if effects of restoration depend on the extent of restoration effort, and (3) if effects of restoration depend on restoration measures applied. Our European-scale comparison indicates that river habitat restoration effects trophic structure, primarily by increasing the breadth of resources assimilated by consumers; this effect increases with restoration effort and it depends on restoration measure type.

Keywords

River restoration; Stable isotopes; Trophic structure; Food web; Freshwater; Functional feeding groups; Community metrics; Isotopic niche

Published in

Hydrobiologia
2016, Volume: 769, number: 1, pages: 105-120
Publisher: SPRINGER

SLU Authors

• Mckie, Brendan

  • Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG6 Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all


UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-015-2569-6

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/80831