The use of genus-level determinations and biovolume classes as surrogates to indicate environmental drivers of stream diatom communities in the Brazilian Pampa.

Abstract

The demand for low-cost and time-efficient biomonitoring and ecological assessment strategies has increased due to threats to biodiversity. We evaluated the ability of surrogates (genera and biovolume classes) to access information provided by diatom species. Moreover, we investigated whether the relative importance of spatial and environment on diatom communities identified at the genus or classified at biovolume classes reflects the ecological responses at the species. We used biotic, environmental, and spatial data from Pampa streams. We employed Procrustes analysis to detect whether the spatial variation of communities at the species level was represented by the surrogates and variation partitioning to evaluate the relative importance of spatial and environment. We found high congruence between the surrogates and diatom species communities. Furthermore, whilst both spatial and environment were important to explain species composition, only the environment was important for both surrogates. We suggest that the use of genus-level determinations can provide information about the environmental relationships of species, whereas biovolume classes may be useful to detect changes in diatom communities. These results are a first step to seek for strategies aiming to simplify biological monitoring and assessments at pampean streams, especially considering the demand for the identification of organisms at the species.