Flow management for hydropower extirpates aquatic insects, undermining river food webs
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Abstract
Dams impound the majority of rivers and provide important societal benefits, especially daily water releases that enable on-peak hydroelectricity generation. Such “hydropeaking” is common worldwide, but its downstream impacts remain unclear. We evaluated the response of aquatic insects, a cornerstone of river food webs, to hydropeaking using a life history–hydrodynamic model. Our model predicts that aquatic-insect abundance will depend on a basic life-history trait—adult egg-laying behavior—such that open-water layers will be unaffected by hydropeaking, whereas ecologically important and widespread river-edge layers, such as mayflies, will be extirpated. These predictions are supported by a more-than-2500-sample, citizen-science data set of aquatic insects from the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon and by a survey of insect diversity and hydropeaking intensity across dammed rivers of the Western United States. Our study reveals a hydropeaking-related life history bottleneck that precludes viable populations of many aquatic insects from inhabiting regulated rivers.
| Publication type | Article |
|---|---|
| Publication Subtype | Journal Article |
| Title | Flow management for hydropower extirpates aquatic insects, undermining river food webs |
| Series title | BioScience |
| DOI | 10.1093/biosci/biw059 |
| Volume | 66 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Year Published | 2016 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | American Institute of Biological Sciences |
| Publisher location | Washington, D.C. |
| Contributing office(s) | Southwest Biological Science Center |
| Description | 15 p. |
| First page | 561 |
| Last page | 575 |
| Online Only (Y/N) | N |
| Additional Online Files (Y/N) | N |
| Google Analytic Metrics | Metrics page |