Author(s): Yaqi Luo; Mengzhen Xu; Xiongdong Zhou
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau Yarlung Tsangpo Basin glacial zone high-energy river environmental filtering stochastic process
Abstract: The effects of climate change on ecosystems can be significantly observed in the alpine regions. The majority of researches on the alpine river ecosystem were conducted on the high latitude regions rather than subtropic regions. Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP), serving as the Asian Water Tower as well as a global biodiversity hotspot, receives global attention due to its vital ecological functions but fragile ecosystems. This study characterized the diversity, structure and assembly process of macroinvertebrates of rivers with various runoff components in the middle and lower Yarlung Tsangpo Basin (YTB), a typical alpine river basin in the margin of the QTP. It was found that the effects of water temperature were buffered, and hydrodynamics was the primary influential factor on macroinvertebrates, resulting in inconsistent response patterns of macroinvertebrates to runoff components with the temperate patterns. For instance, α diversity were comparable among groundwater-dominated, rainfall-dominated, and meltwater-dominated rivers, and EPT species rather than chironomids were dominant insects in high-energy meltwater-dominated rivers. Besides, deterministic process was dominant as meltwater runoff declines. Therefore, hydrodynamics might be the primary factors influencing macroinvertebrates in QTP alpine rivers, and optimizing the hydrodynamic conditions is worth in consideration for the ecosystem protection in the QTP facing the climate change.
Year: 2025