The effects of geothermal water inflow on longitudinal changes in benthic macroinvertebrate community composition of a temperate stream

• We monitored effects of water temperature increase on macrozoobenthos communities.
• Water temperature increase severely decreased macrozoobenthos diversity.
• Warm waters were dominated (98.9%) by Chironomidae, Mollusca and Oligochaeta.
• Plecoptera, Coleoptera, Gammaridae, and Odonata completely disappeared in warm waters.
• Significant warm waters annual temperature variations had profound influence too.

Studies of macroinvertebrate communities in thermal streams are highly geographically localized and mostly faunistical, making the efforts to understand in situ water thermal regime effects on those biocoenoses barely achievable. We examined the effects of geothermal water inflow on benthic macroinvertebrate community composition in a temperate stream. Environmental data analysis has shown that water temperature is a major factor determining the faunistical composition, especially downstream of the geothermal water inflow situated some 20 m upstream of locality V3. The increase in mean annual water temperature from 11.5±4.1 °C at locality V2 to 22.0±5.0 °C at locality V3 induced an enormous shift in community composition from a diverse one, composed mainly of Gammaridae, Simuliidae, Chironomidae, Trichoptera and Ephemeroptera, and to a lesser extent of Plecoptera, Coleoptera, other Diptera, Hirudinea, Odonata, Mollusca and Oligochaeta, to a uniform one strongly dominated by Chironomidae, Mollusca and Oligochaeta, comprising 98.9±0.5% of collected individuals. While the disappearance of Plecoptera and Ephemeroptera and the increase in representation of Mollusca and Oligochaeta at locality V3 might be solely explained by water temperature increase, in the case of Chironomidae the increase in water discharge and relatively high annual water temperature variation at locality V3 had additional positive effects. However, the latter factor induced disappearance of Gammaridae at locality V3. In addition to the increase in water temperature, increase of water velocity significantly determined the longitudinal dynamics of Coleoptera.