Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T17:49:32.095Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Assessment of richness estimation methods on macroinvertebrate communities of mountain ponds in Castilla y León (Spain)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2010

Carlos Martínez-Sanz*
Affiliation:
Area of Ecology, Faculty of Biology and Environmental Science, University of León, Campus de Vegazana, s/n. C.P. 24071, León, Spain
Francisco García-Criado
Affiliation:
Area of Ecology, Faculty of Biology and Environmental Science, University of León, Campus de Vegazana, s/n. C.P. 24071, León, Spain
Camino Fernández Aláez
Affiliation:
Area of Ecology, Faculty of Biology and Environmental Science, University of León, Campus de Vegazana, s/n. C.P. 24071, León, Spain
Margarita Fernández Aláez
Affiliation:
Area of Ecology, Faculty of Biology and Environmental Science, University of León, Campus de Vegazana, s/n. C.P. 24071, León, Spain
*
*Corresponding author: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

Complete inventories of the fauna at a given place, for a specific community or geographical area are often exceedingly hard to get. In recent years a number of estimation techniques have emerged that can be used to extrapolate from these samples to the true number of species in an area. These estimation models are based on different mathematical approaches and can be classified as either species accumulation curves or nonparametric estimators (Brose et al., 2003, Ecology, 84, 2364–2377). In this paper, we have tested the performance of some of the richness estimators on nineteen mountain ponds in Castilla y León (Spain) in order to provide guidance on their potential use in future researches. We collected benthic macroinvertebrate of these ponds from the littoral zone with a pond net by kicking and sweeping. Ten-second samples were collected in each pond up to a total time of 3 to 5 minutes per pond, depending on the pond size. In addition, two of the ponds, were sampled in 2004, 2006 and 2007 providing a three-year time series. The results of this study showed that Jackknife 2 was the best of the evaluated methods based on all chosen criteria and also performed well across all studied ponds. Jackknife 1, Chao 1 and Chao 2 also presented good results and they were inferior to Jackknife 2 mainly because of the requirement for larger sub-sample sizes.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© EDP Sciences, 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arnott, S.E., Magnuson, J.J. and Yan, N.D., 1998. Crustacean zooplankton species richness: single- and multipleyear estimates. Can. J. Fish. Aquat. Sci. , 55, 15731582.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biggs, J., Williams, P., Whitfield, M., Nicolet, P. and Weatherby, A., 2005. 15 years of pond assessment in Britain: results and lessons learned from the work of Pond Conservation. Aquat. Conserv. Mar. Freshw. Ecosyst. , 15, 693714.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bilton, D.T., McAbendroth, L.C., Nicolet, P., Bedford, A., Rundle, S.D., Foggo, A. and Ramsay, P.M., 2009. Ecology and conservation status of temporary and fluctuating ponds in two areas of southern England. Aquat. Conserv. Mar. Freshw. Ecosyst ., 19, 134146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borges, P.A.V. and Brown, V.K., 2003. Estimating species richness of arthropods in Azorean pastures: the adequacy of suction sampling and pitfall trapping. Graellsia , 59, 724.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brose, U., 2002. Estimating species richness of pitfall catches by non-parametric estimators. Pedobiologia , 46, 101107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brose, U. and Martinez, N.D., 2004. Estimating the richness of species with variable mobility. Oikos , 105, 292300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brose, U., Martinez, N.D. and Williams, R.J., 2003. Estimating species richness: sensitivity to sample coverage and insensitivity to spatial patterns. Ecology , 84, 23642377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruno, A.W. and Joslin, L.M., 2005. The concepts of bias, precision and accuracy, and their use in testing the performance of species richness estimators, with a literature review of estimator performance. Ecography , 28, 815829.Google Scholar
Burnham, K.P. and Overton, W.S., 1979. Robust estimation of population size when capture probabilities vary among animals. Ecology , 60, 927936.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cam, E., Nichols, J.D., Sauer, J.R. and Hines, J.E., 2002. On the estimation of species richness based on the accumulation of previously unrecorded species. Ecography , 25, 102108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlton, C.E. and Robison, H.W., 1998. Diversity of litter-dwelling beetles in the Ouachita Highlands of Arkansas, USA (Insecta: Coleoptera). Biodivers. Conserv. , 7, 15891605.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chao, A., 1984. Non-parametric estimation of the number of classes in a population. Scand. J. Stat. , 11, 265270.Google Scholar
Chao, A., 1987. Estimating the population size for capture-recapture data with unequal catchability. Biometrics , 43, 783791.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chao, A. and Lee, S.-M., 1992. Estimating the number of classes via sample coverage. J. Amer. Stat. Assoc. , 87, 210217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chao, A., Hwang, W.-H., Chen, Y.-C. and Kuo, C.-Y., 2000. Estimating the number of shared species in two communities. Statist. Sinica , 10, 227246.Google Scholar
Chao, A., Chazdon, R., Colwell, R.K. and Shen, T.-J., 2005. A new statistical approach for assessing similarity of species composition with incidence and abundance data. Ecol. Lett. , 8, 148159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapin, F.S., Zavaleta, E.S., Eviner, V.T., Naylor, R.L., Vitousek, P.M., Reynolds, H.L., Hooper, D.U., Lavorel, S., Sala, E.O., Hobbie, S.E., Mack, M.C. and Díaz, S., 2000. Consequences of changing biodiversity. Nature , 405, 234242.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chazdon, R.L., Colwell, R.K., Denslow, J.S. and Guariguata, M.R., 1998. Statistical methods for estimating species richness of woody regeneration in primary and secondary rain forests of NE Costa Rica. In: Dallmeier, F. and Comiskey, J.A. (eds.), Forest Biodiversity Research, Monitoring and Modeling: Conceptual Background and Old World Case Studies> , Parthenon Publishing, Paris, 285309.Google Scholar
Chiarucci, A., Maccherini, S. and De Dominicis, V., 2001. Evaluation and monitoring of the flora in a nature reserve by estimation methods. Biol. Conserv. , 101, 305314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chiarucci, A., Enright, N.J., Perry, G.L.W., Miller, B.P. and Lamont, B.B., 2003. Performance of nonparametric species richness estimators in a high diversity plant community. Divers. Distrib. , 9, 283295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clench, H., 1979. How to make regional fists of butterflies: some thoughts. J. Lepid. Soc. , 33, 216231.Google Scholar
Coddington, J.A., Young, L.H. and Coyle, F.A., 1996. Estimating spider species richness in a southern Appalachian cove hardwood forest. J. Arachnol. , 24, 111128.Google Scholar
Colwell, R.K., 1997. Estimates: Statistical Estimation of Species Richness and Shared Species from Samples, Version 5. User's guide and application published at: http://viceroy.eeb.uconn.edu/estimates.
Colwell, R.K., 2004. Estimates: Statistical Estimation of Species Richness and Shared Species from Samples, Version 7. User's Guide and application published at: http://purl.oclc.org/estimates, University of Connecticut, Storrs.
Colwell, R.K. and Coddington, J.A., 1994. Estimating terrestrial biodiversity through extrapolation. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Series B , 345, 101118.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Condit, R., Hubbel, S.P., Lafrankie, J.V., Sukumar, R., Manokaran, N., Foster, R.B. and Ashton, P.S., 1996. Species–area and species–individual relationships for tropical trees: a comparison of three 50-ha plots. J. Ecol. , 84, 549562.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conroy, M. and Noon, B.R., 1996. Mapping of species richness for conservation of biological diversity: conceptual and methodological issues. Ecol. Appl. , 6, 763773.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dumont, H.J. and Segers, H., 1996. Estimating lacustrine zooplankton species richness and complementarity. Hydrobiologia , 341, 125132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flather, C.H., 1996. Fitting species-accumulation functions and assessing regional land use impacts on avian diversity. J. Biogeogr. , 23, 155168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foggo, A., Rundle, S.D. and Bilton, D.T., 2003. The net result: evaluating species richness extrapolation techniques for littoral pond invertebrates. Freshwater Biol. , 48, 17561764.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaston, K.J., 1996. Species richness: measure and measurement. In: Gaston, K.J. (ed.), Biodiversity: a biology by numbers and difference , Blackwell Science, Oxford, 77113.Google Scholar
Gaston, K.J., 2000. Global patterns in biodiversity. Nature , 405, 220227.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gotelli, N.J. and Colwell, R.K., 2001. Quantifying biodiversity: procedures and pitfalls in the measurement and comparison of species richness. Ecol. Lett. , 4, 379391.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammond, P.M., 1994. Practical approaches to the estimation of the extent of biodiversity in speciose groups. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. Series B , 345, 119136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hellmann, J.J. and Fowler, G.W., 1999. Bias, precision, and accuracy of four measures of species richness. Ecol. Appl. , 9, 824834.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heltshe, J. and Forrester, N.E., 1983. Estimating species richness using the jackknife procedure. Biometrics , 39, 111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holdridge, L.R., Grenke, W.C., Hatheway, W.H., Liang, T. and Tosi, J.A., 1971. Forest environments in tropical life zones , Pergamon Press, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hortal, J.,Garcia-Pereira, P. and García-Barros, E., 2004. Butterfly species richness in mainland Portugal: predictive models of geographic distribution patterns. Ecography , 27, 6882.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hortal, J., Borges, P.A. and Gaspar, C., 2006. Evaluating the performance of species richness estimators: sensitivity to sample grain size. J. Anim. Ecol. , 75, 274287.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Karakoç, G., Erkoç, F.U. and Katırcıoglu, H., 2003. Water quality and impacts of pollution sources for Eymir and Mogan Lakes (Turkey). Environ. Int. , 29, 2127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keating, K.A., Quinn, J.F., Ivie, M.A. and Ivie, L., 1998. Estimating the effectiveness of further sampling in species inventories. Ecol. Appl. , 8, 12391249.Google Scholar
Keddy, P.A. and Drummond, C.G., 1996. Ecological properties for the evaluation, management, and restoration of temperate deciduous forest ecosystems. Ecol. Appl. , 6, 748762.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerr, J.T., 1997. Species richness, endemism, and the choice of areas for conservation. Conserv. Biol. , 11, 10941100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, S.-M. and Chao, A., 1994. Estimating population size via sample coverage for closed capture-recapture models. Biometrics , 50, 8897.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Longino, J.T., Coddington, J.A. and Colwell, R.R., 2002. The ant fauna of a tropical rain forest: estimating species richness in three different ways. Ecology , 83, 689702.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magurran, A.E., 1988. Ecological Diversity and its Measurement , Croom-Helm, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martinez, N.D., Hawkins, B.A., Dawah, H.A. and Feifarek, B.P., 1999. Effects of sampling effort on characterization of food-web structure. Ecology , 80, 10441055.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melo, A.S. and Froehlich, C.G., 2001. Evaluation of methods for estimating macroinvertebrate species richness using individual stones in tropical streams. Freshwat. Biol. , 46, 711721.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Melo, A.S., Pereira, R.A.S., Santos, A.J., Shepherd, G.J., Machado, G., Medeiros, H.F. and Sawaya, R.J., 2003. Comparing species richness among assemblages using sample units: why not use extrapolation methods to standardize different sample sizes? Oikos , 101, 398410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michaelis, M. and Menten, M.L., 1913. Der kinetik der invertinwirkung. Biochem. Z. , 49, 333369.Google Scholar
Miller, R.I. and Wiegert, R.G., 1989. Documenting completeness, species-area relations, and the species-abundance distribution of a regional flora. Ecology , 70, 1622.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oertli, B., Auderset, J.D., Castella, E., Juge, R., Cambin, D. and Lachavanne, J.B., 2002. Does size matter? The relationship between pond area and biodiversity. Biol. Conserv. , 104, 5970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oertli, B., Biggs, J., Céréghino, R., Grillas, P., Joly, P. and Lachavanne, J.-L., 2005. Conservation and monitoring of pond biodiversity: introduction. Aquat. Conserv. Mar. Freshw. Ecosyst., 15, 535540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, M.W., 1990. The estimation of species richness by extrapolation. Ecology , 71, 11951198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petersen, F.T. and Meier, R., 2003. Testing species-richness estimation methods on single-sample collection data using the Danish Diptera. Biodiv. Conserv. , 12, 667686.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peterson, A.T. and Slade, N.A., 1998. Extrapolating inventory results into biodiversity estimates and the importance of stopping rules. Divers. Distrib. , 4, 95105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prendergast, J.R., Quinn, R.M., Lawton, J.H., Eversham, B.C. and Gibbons, D.W., 1993. Rare species, the coincidence of diversity hotspots and conservation strategies. Nature , 365, 335337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pressey, R.L., Humphries, C.J., Margules, C.R., Vane-Wright, R.I. and Williams, P.H., 1993. Beyond opportunism: key principles for systematic reserve selection. Tr. Ecol. Evol. , 8, 124128.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raaijmakers, J.G.W., 1987. Statistical analysis of the Michaelis-Menten equation. Biometrics , 43, 793803.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schindler, D.E., Knapp, R.A. and Leavitt, P.R., 2001. Alteration of nutrient cycles and algal production resulting from fish introductions into Mountain lakes. Ecosystems , 4, 308321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schippers, P.,van de Weerd, H., Klein, J., Jong, B. and Scheffer, M., 2006. Impacts of agricultural phosphorus use in catchments on shallow lake water quality: About buffers, time delays and equilibria. Sci. Total Environ. , 369, 280294.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, E.P. and van Belle, G., 1984. Nonparametric estimation of species richness. Biometrics , 40, 119129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soberón, J. and Llorente, J., 1993. The use of species accumulation functions for the prediction of species richness. Conserv. Biol. , 7, 480488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Søndergaard, M. and Jeppesen, E., 2007. Anthropogenic impacts on lake and stream ecosystems, and approaches to restoration. J. Appl. Ecol. , 44, 10891094.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toro, M., Granados, I., Robles, S. and Montes, C., 2006. High mountain lakes of the Central Range (Iberian Peninsula): Regional limnology & environmental changes. Limnetica , 25, 1-2, 217252.Google Scholar
Walther, B.A. and Martin, J.L., 2001. Species richness estimation of bird communities: how to control for sampling effort? Ibis , 143, 413419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walther, B.A. and Morand, S., 1998. Comparative performance of species richness estimation methods. Parasitology , 116, 395405.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Walther, B.A. and Moore, J.L., 2005. The definitions of bias, precision, and accuracy, and their use in testing the performance of species richness estimators, with a literature review of estimator performance. Ecography , 28, 815829.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walther, B.A., Cotgreave, P., Gregory, R.D., Price, R.D. and Clayton, D.H., 1995. Sampling effort and parasite species richness. Parasitol. Today , 11, 306310.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Whittaker, R.J., Willis, K.J. and Field, R., 2001. Scale and species richness: towards a general, hierarchical theory of species richness. J. Biogeogr. , 28, 453470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, R.J. and Martinez, N.D., 2000. Simple rules yield complex food web dynamics. Nature , 404, 180183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, P., Whitfield, M., Biggs, J., Bray, S., Fox, G., Nicolet, P. and Sear, D., 2004. Comparative biodiversity of rivers, streams, ditches and ponds in an agricultural landscape in Southern England. Biol. Conserv. , 115, 329341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar