Environmental and spatial patterns as drivers of littoral macroinvertebrate assemblages in patchily distributed mountain lakes: Contribution to typology design

Biological assemblages are affected by both environmental and spatial processes. Spatial autocorrelation can be specially marked in discrete ecosystems patchily distributed over a large region (e.g., lakes arranged in districts). Lake typologies are exclusively based on environmental features, but we hardly know to what extent spatial patterns can hinder their implementation. We analysed the role of environmental factors and spatial autocorrelation in shaping littoral macroinvertebrate communities of 51 mountain lakes from a large Spanish region in order to test: 1) the suitability of the variables currently used to construct typologies; 2) the influence of spatial patterns on typology implementation. Biologically meaningful types of lakes were created and described by means of cluster analysis (Jaccard index) and multiple discriminant analysis. Water permanence, substrate type and vegetation were the main drivers of the assemblage composition. The cluster analysis and Mantel tests showed that spatial patterns did not generally hamper recognizing lake types. Only in the district with lakes closest to each other (Sanabria Natural Park), spatial autocorrelation was strong enough to overcome the effects of some factors (substrate type), but not others (water permanence).