ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Ecol. Evol.
Sec. Conservation and Restoration Ecology
Drivers of Functional Trait Based Differentiation in Macroinvertebrate Community Between lowland and Mountainous Rivers
Provisionally accepted
- 1Yellow River Conservancy Technical University, Kaifeng, China
- 2China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing, China
- 3Hebei Water Conservancy Engineering Bureau Group Limited, Shijiazhuang, China
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Using the macroinvertebrates collected from mountain and lowland ecoregions in the Beijing rivers as indicators, we compared the differences in the composition of 33 macroinvertebrate trait categories and 6 traits and functional diversity indices between the two ecoregions. The combination of the joint analysis of R (environmental factor matrix), L (species community matrix), and Q (biological trait matrix) (RLQ) and fourth-corner analysis methods was conducted to explore the relationships between macroinvertebrate trait composition and hydrological, physical and chemical factors. We then used a generalized linear model (GLM) to compare differences in the responses of macroinvertebrate traits and functional diversity to environmental variables at different spatial scales between the two ecoregions, determine which traits and functional diversity can be used as sensitive indicators for ecosystem assessment applications. Our results showed that 28 of the 33 biological traits significantly differed between the two ecoregions. Macroinvertebrates with biological traits such as semivoltine, small and medium size individuals, strong swimming ability, abundant drift, Clinger, Shredder and Predator preferred habitats in mountain ecoregion. While biological traits with Bi-or multivoltine, large size individuals, depositional substrate, warm eurythermal, weak swimming ability, rare drift and collector-gatherer tended to frequently occur in the lowland ecoregion under higher intensity of human activities. All traits and functional diversity indices, except Functional divergence, were significantly higher in mountain ecoregion than in lowland, which demonstrated that environmental stressors significantly decreased the biological traits and functional diversity in lowland. The combination of RLQ and fourth-corner methods revealed that biological traits demonstrated a predictable response of trait patterns along the environmental gradient. The GLM model predicted that the trait and functional diversity in mountain and lowland ecoregions could be explained by different environmental variables at different spatial scales, with hydrologic, physical factors explaining most variations within the biological traits and functional diversity in the mountain ecoregion, but with reach chemical factors mainly explaining the decrease of the functional diversity in the lowland ecoregion. This study highlights the utility of indicators based on macroinvertebrates trait and functional diversity in river ecosystem health assessment, which is crucial for river ecological restoration and sustainable river management.
Keywords: Beijing River, biological traits, functional diversity, RLQ analysis, Fourth-corner, Environmental Variables
Received: 26 Aug 2025; Accepted: 07 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Zhang, QU, Zhang, Zhang, Wang and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Min Zhang, zhangmin@iwhr.com
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