Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Nature Communications
Volume
15
Issue
1
PubMed ID
39174521
Publisher
Nature
School
Mine Water and Environment Research Centre
Funders
Université Grenoble Alpes / H2020 European Research and Innovation (869226) / Serra Húnter / Government of the Balearic Islands and the European Social Fund (PD/031/2018) / Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación (IJC2019-041601-I) / David H. Smith Conservation Research / Czech Science Foundation (GA23-05268S)
Abstract
More than half of the world’s rivers dry up periodically, but our understanding of the biological communities in dry riverbeds remains limited. Specifically, the roles of dispersal, environmental filtering and biotic interactions in driving biodiversity in dry rivers are poorly understood. Here, we conduct a large-scale coordinated survey of patterns and drivers of biodiversity in dry riverbeds. We focus on eight major taxa, including microorganisms, invertebrates and plants: Algae, Archaea, Bacteria, Fungi, Protozoa, Arthropods, Nematodes and Streptophyta. We use environmental DNA metabarcoding to assess biodiversity in dry sediments collected over a 1-year period from 84 non-perennial rivers across 19 countries on four continents. Both direct factors, such as nutrient and carbon availability, and indirect factors such as climate influence the local biodiversity of most taxa. Limited resource availability and prolonged dry phases favor oligotrophic microbial taxa. Co-variation among taxa, particularly Bacteria, Fungi, Algae and Protozoa, explain more spatial variation in community composition than dispersal or environmental gradients. This finding suggests that biotic interactions or unmeasured ecological and evolutionary factors may strongly influence communities during dry phases, altering biodiversity responses to global changes.
DOI
10.1038/s41467-024-50873-1
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Comments
Foulquier, A., Datry, T., Corti, R., von Schiller, D., Tockner, K., Stubbington, R., ... & Zoppini, A. (2024). Unravelling large-scale patterns and drivers of biodiversity in dry rivers. Nature Communications, 15(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50873-1