Actual Biol Volumen 39 / Numero 107, 2017 Artículo científi co completo Riparian spider communities as indicators of stream ecosystem condition in the Río Piedras watershed of Puerto Rico Comunidades de arañas ribereñas como indicadores de la condición de los ecosistemas fluviales en la cuenca del Río Piedras de Puerto Rico Roberto Reyes-Maldonado1,3, José A. Sánchez-Ruiz2,4, Alonso Ramírez2,5 Sean P. Kelly*1,6 Abstract Human degradation of stream ecosystems has led to the creation of a number of methods to assess the severity of such anthropogenic impacts. Biomonitoring protocols that utilize aquatic organisms, in particular macroinvertebrates, are used worldwide as a way to evaluate stream ecosystems. Despite the various benefits these methods provide, they only take into account the stream channel, ignoring altogether the condition of the riparian zone. Other methods look at physical characteristics of both the riparian area and the stream, but ignore biota. Riparian consumers such as spiders have been proposed as potential bioindicators because they could provide a more holistic alternative for assessing stream impair- ment. Our aim was to determine whether changes in riparian spider communities could be used as indicators to separate sites with different levels of impact along an urban gradient. We conducted correlation analyses of riparian spider commu- nity metrics (abundance and species richness) and the percent of vegetation cover in subwatersheds with varying levels of urbanization, along with three other popular stream monitoring protocols. We found a clear difference in spider com- munity composition among subwatersheds, with an overall trend for lower richness and abundances in more impacted sites. Spider abundance correlated significantly with percent vegetation coverage and spider family richness correlated significantly with two widely employed stream monitoring protocols. These findings support the utility of riparian spider communities as indicators for disturbances of stream ecosystems in Puerto Rico and should be incorporated into future biomonitoring protocols to ensure a more holistic view of the condition of stream ecosystems. Key words: aquatic macroinvertebrates, Araneae, bioindicators, biomonitoring, tropical urban streams Resumen La degradación de los sistemas ribereños, por causa de las actividades humanas, ha permitido el desarrollo de nume- rosos métodos que evalúan la severidad de los impactos antropogénicos. Los protocolos de biomonitoreo, empleando macroinvertebrados acuáticos, son usados mundialmente en estas evaluaciones. No obstante, estos métodos tienen la desventaja que solo evalúan el canal del río, ignorando la zona ribereña adyacente. Otros métodos consideran, en su evaluación, las características físicas de ambas zonas, pero ignoran la biota del lugar. Las arañas ribereñas se han discu- tido como potenciales bioindicadores dado que podrían proveer una alternativa más holística para evaluar los sistemas ribereños. Nuestro objetivo fue determinar si los cambios en las comunidades de arañas ribereñas podrían utilizarse para separar lugares con diferentes niveles de impacto. Se correlacionó el porcentaje de cobertura vegetal y diferentes proto- colos de biomonitoreo, con métricas de riqueza y abundancia de arañas a lo largo de un gradiente urbano. Se encontraron diferencias en la composición de la comunidad de arañas entre lugares, con una tendencia general de menor riqueza y menor abundancia en los sitios más impactados. La abundancia de las arañas se correlacionó significativamente con el porcentaje de cobertura vegetal y la riqueza de familias se correlacionó con dos de los protocolos de monitoreo usados. Estos hallazgos respaldan la utilización de las comunidades de arañas como indicadoras de disturbio en los ecosistemas ribereños de Puerto Rico. Sugerimos incorporar las comunidades de arañas ribereñas en futuros protocolos de biomoni- toreo para asegurar una visión más holística de las condiciones de los lugares evaluados. Palabras claves: macroinvertebrados acuáticos, Araneae, bioindicadores, biomonitoreo, ríos urbanos tropicales Received: November 2016; accepted: October 2017. 1. University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Department of Biology. 2. University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Department of Environmental Sciences. emails: 3<[email protected]>, 4<[email protected]>, 5<[email protected]>, 6<[email protected]> *Corresponding author 58 Artículo científi co completo Actual Biol 39 (107): 58 - 65, 2017 | DOI: 10.17533/udea.acbi.v39n107a07 INTRODUCTION addition to traditional monitoring methods. Spiders are commonly found in a wide range of habitats and because of their sensitivity Human degradation of stream ecosystems has led to the creation to changes in prey, habitat, and land use, they have been widely of several methods to assess the severity of anthropogenic im- discussed as possible bioindicator taxa (Chan et al. 2009, Kato et pacts. An accurate assessment of the state of stream ecosystems al. 2003, Rodrigues and Mendonça 2012). Spiders commonly re- would involve the integration of biotic and abiotic components, side in the riparian zone of streams, preying on emergent aquatic such as water quality, and surrounding land use, along with the insects and other terrestrial organisms that inhabit these ecotones organisms inhabiting the channel and its riparian zone (Gonçalves (Akamatsu et al. 2004, Gillespie 1987, Kato et al. 2003). Riparian and de Menezes 2011). Some techniques used to assess stream spider communities can consist of many different taxa with a va- ecosystems involve the evaluation of physical and chemical pa- riety of different hunting strategies (v. g., web spinners, cursorial rameters, analyses utilizing microbiota, and some of the most hunters, ambush hunters) which should respond differently to spa- common methods utilize biomonitoring indices. Biotic indices, in tial structure and prey availability. comparison with other methods, are of great advantage because they are practical, low cost techniques that require relatively little In this study, our objective is to assess the utility of changes in training to implement (Alba-Tercedor and Sánchez-Ortega 1988). spider community metrics (abundance and richness) as possible Although other water quality methods detect physical-chemical bioindicators of stream ecosystems. We sought to determine whe- parameters directly, they can only reflect the water quality at the ther these changes in the spider communities within an urban wa- moment of the sampling (Gonçalves and de Menezes 2011). On tershed are related to changes in surrounding land use and how the other hand, biological indices provide us with an idea of the they compare to well-known stream monitoring protocols that have long term state of the aquatic ecosystem due to the fact that bio- recently been adapted for the island of Puerto Rico. We expect logical communities are constantly being exposed to the possible that riparian spider communities can be an important component anthropogenic or natural disturbances (Alba-Tercedor and Sán- for the creation of a more holistic approach to evaluating stream chez-Ortega 1988). ecosystems and we propose the use of spiders as indicators of riparian habitats that can be utilized when designing future inte- Biotic indices are often based on tolerance metrics attributed to grated biotic indices for aquatic ecosystems. organisms according to their life history, in which the presence or absence of certain taxa indicates the state of the ecosystem MATERIALS AND METHODS (Washington 1984). While there are a large variety of biomonito- ring indices, two commonly used for aquatic ecosystems are the The selected study area was within the Río Piedras watershed lo- Family Biotic Index (FBI) created by Hilsenhoff (1988) in the Uni- cated in northeastern Puerto Rico within the greater metropolitan ted States and the Biological Monitoring Working Party (BMWP) area of San Juan, which has a population density of around 3,190 created by Armitage et al. (1983) in England. The FBI has been people/km2 (Ramírez et al. 2014). The Río Piedras watershed flows used in the continental U.S.A (Hilsenhoff 1988), and also adapted through the center of the San Juan metropolitan area and repre- for El Salvador (Sermeño Chicas et al. 2010) and Puerto Rico (Gu- tiérrez-Fonseca and Ramírez 2016). The BMWP has been adap- sents a drainage area of 67 km2 with a predominantly urban land ted for a number of regions throughout Latin America, including use (Lugo et al. 2011). The watershed forms an urban gradient, Costa Rica (MINAE-S 2007), Cuba (Naranjo-López et al. 2005), with the least amount of urbanization around its headwaters and Colombia (Roldán 2003) and Puerto Rico (Gutiérrez-Fonseca and then increasing levels of urbanization in the lowlands to where it Ramírez 2016). Both indices use tolerance values for aquatic ma- empties into the San Juan Bay (Ramírez et al. 2014). We selec- croinvertebrates (v. g., shrimp, insects, gastropods, acari) with the ted six sites that are a part of a long term sampling program for goal of obtaining an index score that represents the water qua- the Río Piedras watershed, with each site representing an indivi- lity due to the level of disturbance for a given area (Armitage et dual subwatershed. Sites were numbered 1 to 6 according to the al. 1983, Hilsenhoff 1988). Another method for assessing stream percent vegetation (%VEG) within each subwatershed, with lower impairment is the Stream Visual Assessment