The River Continuum Redux: Aquatic Insect Diets Reveal the Importance of Autochthonous Resources in the Salmon River, Idaho
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Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Master's Theses Theses and Dissertations 2011 The River Continuum Redux: Aquatic Insect Diets Reveal the Importance of Autochthonous Resources in the Salmon River, Idaho Kathryn Vallis Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses Part of the Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology Commons Recommended Citation Vallis, Kathryn, "The River Continuum Redux: Aquatic Insect Diets Reveal the Importance of Autochthonous Resources in the Salmon River, Idaho" (2011). Master's Theses. 561. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/561 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2011 Kathryn Vallis LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO THE RIVER CONTINUUM REDUX: AQUATIC INSECT DIETS REVEAL THE IMPORTANCE OF AUTOCHTHONOUS RESOURCES IN THE SALMON RIVER, IDAHO A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE PROGRAM IN BIOLOGY BY KATHRYN LYNDSEY VALLIS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS DECEMBER 2011 Copyright by Kathryn Lyndsey Vallis, 2011 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Although the end result of a Master’s program is a degree celebrating an individual’s achievement, the journey to get to that point is certainly not traveled alone. I would first like to thank all of those that I had the privilege of working alongside in the Rosi-Marshall lab at Loyola and the Cary Institute, particularly Dr. Heather Bechtold, Holly Wellard Kelly, Dustin Kincaid, and Sarah Zahn Seegert, for their help with the many and various aspects of this project, for their perspective and good humor, and for their support and friendship both in and out of the lab. I would also like to thank Sylvia Lee, for generously offering her time and diatom expertise when it was most needed. I would also like to thank the Baxter lab at Idaho State University for their accommodating and welcoming ways during the time I spent in Pocatello. I would especially like to thank Jennifer Cornell, Kevin Donner, Hannah Harris, Jessica Lueders- Dumont, Rebecca Martin, and Cameron Morris for teaching me the ways of the wild West and for their help in the field and the lab. I must also thank Dr. G. Wayne Minshall, for giving me access to the Idaho State University archives, and Dave Funk, for his insect identification work and meticulously labeled specimen vials. This work was supported by a grant from Idaho NSF-EPSCoR (EPS-0814387). I would also like to thank the staff at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, for facilitating my transition to New York and a new laboratory environment. I would particularly like to thank Heather Malcolm and Deana Machtley for sharing their iii extensive scientific knowledge, lab space, and equipment, and for their continual encouragement and support. I would like to thank Dr. David Strayer, for allowing me to spend many microscope hours in his lab, and on his microscopes. I’d also like to thank Dr. John Davis for all of the time and energy invested toward me and this project, for his willingness to be a sounding-board and editor, for his invaluable perspective, and for his constant encouragement and understanding. I must also thank Dr. Colden Baxter for welcoming me into his lab at Idaho State University, for his stream-side instruction and campfire-side tunes, and for his great insight, thoughtful comments, and valued assistance throughout the course of this project. I would like to thank my committee members Dr. Martin Berg, for his expertise in all things aquatic insects and statistics, and for all of his time, effort, and support invested in me and this project, and Dr. Christopher Peterson, for his help and constructive remarks, for sharing his classroom with me, and for his assistance in the development and writing of this work. I thank my advisor, Dr. Emma Rosi-Marshall, for her endless enthusiasm, her staunch support, her insightful contributions, and her constant guidance and encouragement throughout my undergraduate and Master’s programs. For this, and for all of the new experiences and incredible people I encountered as a result of her mentorship and this project, I will always be thankful. Finally, I must thank my family – especially my parents, George and Josephine, and my brother, Christopher – and my friends for listening to me in times of exhilaration and frustration, for offering invaluable advice and perspective, and for providing constant iv and necessary reminders of the “bigger picture.” It was your support and love that saw me through this journey, and I am incredibly grateful you were there to travel it with me. v To my parents, George and Josephine, and my brother, Christopher, for all of their love and support. To the memory of my grandfather, Milton, who gave his family a place to enjoy and appreciate all that our freshwater ecosystems have to offer. No man ever steps in the same river twice… Heraclitus TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii LIST OF TABLES ix LIST OF FIGURES x ABSTRACT xii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER TWO: METHODS 6 Study sites 6 Taxa studied 9 Diet analysis 11 Statistical analysis 12 CHAPTER THREE: RESULTS 14 Community resource use and the predictions of the RCC 14 Functional feeding groups 17 Shredders 17 Collector-gatherers 18 Collector-filterers 18 Scraper-grazers 19 CHAPTER FOUR: DISCUSSION 26 The River Continuum Redux 26 Global climate change signals in macroinvertebrate diet composition 28 Functional feeding groups and gut content analysis 29 Facultative diet-switching may help stabilize food webs 32 Hidden treasures: Archived insects and the value of invertebrate diet composition 33 Conclusions 35 LITERATURE CITED 36 VITA 44 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Percent of (un-weighted) allochthonous (AL), autochthonous (AU), amorphous detritus (AD), and animal (AN) materials in the diets of individual taxa collected from Camp Creek (Site A) in summer and fall 1976 and 2009. 21 Table 2. Percent of (un-weighted) allochthonous (AL), autochthonous (AU), amorphous detritus (AD), and animal (AN) materials in the diets of individual taxa collected from Smiley Creek (Site B) in summer and fall 1976 and 2009. 22 Table 3. Percent of (un-weighted) allochthonous (AL), autochthonous (AU), amorphous detritus (AD), and animal (AN) materials in the diets of individual taxa collected from Obsidian (Site C) in summer and fall 1976 and 2009. 23 Table 4. Percent of (un-weighted) allochthonous (AL), autochthonous (AU), amorphous detritus (AD), and animal (AN) materials in the diets of individual taxa collected from Casino (Site D) in summer and fall 1976 and 2009. 24 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. The Salmon River basin is located in central Idaho (inset). My sampling sites were located in the upper Salmon River, in the Sawtooth National Recreation area near Stanley, Idaho. Adapted from Minshall et al. 1982. 8 Figure 2. Allochthonous material in insect diets decreased downstream, while autochthonous materials comprised a substantial amount of invertebrate diets at all sites in both years. Stream order and catchment area increased from Camp (A), the headwater site, to Casino (D). Community-weighted data was used to show the consumption of allochthonous, autochthonous, amorphous detritus, and animal material at each site in 1976 and 2009. Percent of the community represented by analyzed taxa (based on community data from Minshall et al. 1982), as well as sample size at each site (n) are also indicated. 9 Figure 3. Variation in the proportion of (a) allochthonous materials (b) autochthonous materials, and (c) amorphous detritus among individual insect diets at each Salmon River, ID site in 1976 and 2009. Consumption of all materials was similar at all sites in both years. 15 Figure 4. (a) Hypothetical changes in the presence of allochthonous resources and autochthonous resources along the longitudinal gradient, as predicted by the RCC: allochthonous resources should be highest in the headwaters, decreasing downstream; autochthonous resources should increase downstream. (b) Regression lines of allochthonous and autochthonous resources in the diets of individual insects collected in 1976 and 2009 from the Salmon River, ID. Autochthonous material in diets is similar across sites, and allochthonous material in diets decreases downstream; however, consumption of allochthonous materials is not as dramatic as originally predicted. 16 x Figure 5. Proportion allochthonous, autochthonous, amorphous detritus, and animal materials found in the diets of (a) shredders, (b) collector-gatherers, (c) collector-filterers, (d) scraper-grazers collected from the Salmon River, ID in summer and fall 1976 and 2009. Overall, shredders consumed the most allochthonous material, and autochthonous material was consumed by all functional feeding groups (FFGs). In general, diets were similar across sites, seasons, and years. 25 xi ABSTRACT Along a river network, changes in the physical characteristics of a stream – changes articulated by the River Continuum Concept (RCC) – have been predicted to influence stream food webs, particularly the resources supporting aquatic macroinvertebrates. Although diets of macroinvertebrates can track resource availability along the longitudinal gradient of streams, insect diets were not assessed in the original RCC study; rather, insects were grouped into functional feeding groups (FFGs). In addition, global climate change is increasing the frequency and spatial extent of wildfire and beetle outbreaks throughout the western United States and could affect riparian vegetation and the amount of allochthonous inputs entering the system. Based on gut- content analysis of insects collected and archived from the Salmon River (SR), ID in 1976 and used in the development of the RCC, I first tested whether insect diets followed the original predictions of the RCC.