Environmental drivers of aquatic macrophyte communities in southern tropical African rivers: Zambia as a case study

Michael P. Kennedy; Pauline Lang; Julissa Tapia Grimaldo; Sara Varandas Martins; Alannah Bruce; Adam Hastie; Steven Lowe; Magdi M. Ali; Henry Sichingabula; Helen Dallas; John Briggs; Kevin J. Murphy

doi:10.1016/j.aquabot.2015.03.002

Environmental drivers of aquatic macrophyte communities in southern tropical African rivers: Zambia as a case study

Michael P. Kennedy, Pauline Lang, Julissa Tapia Grimaldo, Sara Varandas Martins, Alannah Bruce, Adam Hastie, Steven Lowe, Magdi M. Ali, Henry Sichingabula, Helen Dallas, John Briggs, Kevin J. Murphy

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Abstract

The first-ever extensive macrophyte survey of Zambian rivers and associated floodplain waterbodies, conducted during 2006–2012, collected 271 samples from 228 sites, mainly located in five freshwater ecoregions of the world primarily represented in Zambia. The results supported the hypothesis that variation in macrophyte community structure (measured as species composition and diversity) in southern tropical African river systems, using Zambia as a case study area, is driven primarily by geographical variation in water physico-chemical conditions. In total, 335 macrophyte taxa were recorded, and a chronological cumulative species records curve for the dataset showed no sign of asymptoting: clearly many additional macrophyte species remain to be found in Zambian rivers. Emergent macrophytes were predominant (236 taxa), together with 26 floating and 73 submerged taxa. Several species were rare in a regional or international context, including two IUCN Red Data List species: Aponogeton rehmanii and Nymphaea divaricata. Ordination and classification analysis of the data found little evidence for temporal change in vegetation, at repeatedly-sampled sites, but strong evidence for the existence of seven groups of samples from geographically-varied study sites. These supported differing sets of vegetation (with eight species assemblages present in the sample-groups) and showed substantial inter-group differences in both macrophyte alpha-diversity, and geographically-varying physico-chemical parameters. The evidence suggested that the main environmental drivers of macrophyte community composition and diversity were altitude, stream order, shade, pH, alkalinity, NO3-N, and underwater light availability, while PO4-P showed slightly lower, but still significant variation between sample-groups.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	19-28
Number of pages	9
Journal	Aquatic Botany
Volume	124
Early online date	14 Mar 2015
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquabot.2015.03.002
Publication status	Published - Jul 2015

Bibliographical note

NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Aquatic Botany. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Aquatic Botany, [124, (2015)] DOI: 10.1016/j.aquabot.2015.03.002

© 2015, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Funder

European Commission/African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (EC/ACP) Science & Technology Programme

Keywords

River plants
Africa
Macrophyte diversity
Tropical river ecology

Access to Document

10.1016/j.aquabot.2015.03.002

Post-PrintAccepted author manuscript, 1.1 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Michael Kennedy
- Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience - Assistant Professor (Research)
Person: Teaching and Research

Cite this

@article{3919a69b24ac442cafbac4bef4d1c6e6,

title = "Environmental drivers of aquatic macrophyte communities in southern tropical African rivers: Zambia as a case study",

abstract = "The first-ever extensive macrophyte survey of Zambian rivers and associated floodplain waterbodies, conducted during 2006–2012, collected 271 samples from 228 sites, mainly located in five freshwater ecoregions of the world primarily represented in Zambia. The results supported the hypothesis that variation in macrophyte community structure (measured as species composition and diversity) in southern tropical African river systems, using Zambia as a case study area, is driven primarily by geographical variation in water physico-chemical conditions. In total, 335 macrophyte taxa were recorded, and a chronological cumulative species records curve for the dataset showed no sign of asymptoting: clearly many additional macrophyte species remain to be found in Zambian rivers. Emergent macrophytes were predominant (236 taxa), together with 26 floating and 73 submerged taxa. Several species were rare in a regional or international context, including two IUCN Red Data List species: Aponogeton rehmanii and Nymphaea divaricata. Ordination and classification analysis of the data found little evidence for temporal change in vegetation, at repeatedly-sampled sites, but strong evidence for the existence of seven groups of samples from geographically-varied study sites. These supported differing sets of vegetation (with eight species assemblages present in the sample-groups) and showed substantial inter-group differences in both macrophyte alpha-diversity, and geographically-varying physico-chemical parameters. The evidence suggested that the main environmental drivers of macrophyte community composition and diversity were altitude, stream order, shade, pH, alkalinity, NO3-N, and underwater light availability, while PO4-P showed slightly lower, but still significant variation between sample-groups.",

keywords = "River plants, Africa, Macrophyte diversity, Tropical river ecology",

author = "Kennedy, {Michael P.} and Pauline Lang and Grimaldo, {Julissa Tapia} and Martins, {Sara Varandas} and Alannah Bruce and Adam Hastie and Steven Lowe and Ali, {Magdi M.} and Henry Sichingabula and Helen Dallas and John Briggs and Murphy, {Kevin J.}",

note = "NOTICE: this is the author{\textquoteright}s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Aquatic Botany. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Aquatic Botany, [124, (2015)] DOI: 10.1016/j.aquabot.2015.03.002 {\textcopyright} 2015, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ ",

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TY - JOUR

T1 - Environmental drivers of aquatic macrophyte communities in southern tropical African rivers

T2 - Zambia as a case study

AU - Kennedy, Michael P.

AU - Lang, Pauline

AU - Grimaldo, Julissa Tapia

AU - Martins, Sara Varandas

AU - Bruce, Alannah

AU - Hastie, Adam

AU - Lowe, Steven

AU - Ali, Magdi M.

AU - Sichingabula, Henry

AU - Dallas, Helen

AU - Briggs, John

AU - Murphy, Kevin J.

N1 - NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Aquatic Botany. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Aquatic Botany, [124, (2015)] DOI: 10.1016/j.aquabot.2015.03.002 © 2015, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

PY - 2015/7

Y1 - 2015/7

N2 - The first-ever extensive macrophyte survey of Zambian rivers and associated floodplain waterbodies, conducted during 2006–2012, collected 271 samples from 228 sites, mainly located in five freshwater ecoregions of the world primarily represented in Zambia. The results supported the hypothesis that variation in macrophyte community structure (measured as species composition and diversity) in southern tropical African river systems, using Zambia as a case study area, is driven primarily by geographical variation in water physico-chemical conditions. In total, 335 macrophyte taxa were recorded, and a chronological cumulative species records curve for the dataset showed no sign of asymptoting: clearly many additional macrophyte species remain to be found in Zambian rivers. Emergent macrophytes were predominant (236 taxa), together with 26 floating and 73 submerged taxa. Several species were rare in a regional or international context, including two IUCN Red Data List species: Aponogeton rehmanii and Nymphaea divaricata. Ordination and classification analysis of the data found little evidence for temporal change in vegetation, at repeatedly-sampled sites, but strong evidence for the existence of seven groups of samples from geographically-varied study sites. These supported differing sets of vegetation (with eight species assemblages present in the sample-groups) and showed substantial inter-group differences in both macrophyte alpha-diversity, and geographically-varying physico-chemical parameters. The evidence suggested that the main environmental drivers of macrophyte community composition and diversity were altitude, stream order, shade, pH, alkalinity, NO3-N, and underwater light availability, while PO4-P showed slightly lower, but still significant variation between sample-groups.

AB - The first-ever extensive macrophyte survey of Zambian rivers and associated floodplain waterbodies, conducted during 2006–2012, collected 271 samples from 228 sites, mainly located in five freshwater ecoregions of the world primarily represented in Zambia. The results supported the hypothesis that variation in macrophyte community structure (measured as species composition and diversity) in southern tropical African river systems, using Zambia as a case study area, is driven primarily by geographical variation in water physico-chemical conditions. In total, 335 macrophyte taxa were recorded, and a chronological cumulative species records curve for the dataset showed no sign of asymptoting: clearly many additional macrophyte species remain to be found in Zambian rivers. Emergent macrophytes were predominant (236 taxa), together with 26 floating and 73 submerged taxa. Several species were rare in a regional or international context, including two IUCN Red Data List species: Aponogeton rehmanii and Nymphaea divaricata. Ordination and classification analysis of the data found little evidence for temporal change in vegetation, at repeatedly-sampled sites, but strong evidence for the existence of seven groups of samples from geographically-varied study sites. These supported differing sets of vegetation (with eight species assemblages present in the sample-groups) and showed substantial inter-group differences in both macrophyte alpha-diversity, and geographically-varying physico-chemical parameters. The evidence suggested that the main environmental drivers of macrophyte community composition and diversity were altitude, stream order, shade, pH, alkalinity, NO3-N, and underwater light availability, while PO4-P showed slightly lower, but still significant variation between sample-groups.

KW - River plants

KW - Africa

KW - Macrophyte diversity

KW - Tropical river ecology

U2 - 10.1016/j.aquabot.2015.03.002

DO - 10.1016/j.aquabot.2015.03.002

M3 - Article

VL - 124

SP - 19

EP - 28

JO - Aquatic Botany

JF - Aquatic Botany

ER -

Environmental drivers of aquatic macrophyte communities in southern tropical African rivers: Zambia as a case study

Abstract

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Michael Kennedy

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