Odonata Concordance amongst aquatic taxa in brazilian savanna streams

Abstract

Environmental management is one of the most important activities in ecological conservation at present. Faced with various socioeconomic impacts (e.g., urbanization, agriculture, and logging), practical and effective ways to analyze and determine how biodiversity is affected by these anthropogenic activities are essential. Utilizing niche theory helps to understand how similar groups of organisms respond to environmental changes based on the assumption that organisms with some niche overlap (i.e., similar resources) will respond similarly to these changes. Members of the order Odonata are frequently used as biological indicators due to their low survey costs, relatively easy taxonomic identification, and sensibility to environmental changes. In this study, using the PROTEST method, we analyze the cross-taxon congruence between Odonata and two aquatic organisms in Brazilian savanna streams: Gerromorpha and fishes. Although congruence was found between aquatic insects (~ 45%), this result changed when we only considered the species’ genera: no congruence for the aquatic insects was found, but instead we found a congruence between Odonata and fishes (~ 44%). Since Odonata showed congruence with the other groups in different taxonomical resolutions and it is a relatively easy and cheap group to collect and identify, we suggest that Odonata could be used as an indicator of disturbance for this set of organisms and hence serve as an alternative method to traditional environmental management techniques.