Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Ahead of Print.
The relationship between littoral macroinvertebrate communities and environmental gradients in Arctic lakes is poorly understood, making it difficult to predict whether these important components of lake ecosystems will be affected by emerging stressors such as permafrost thaw and road development. To better understand how littoral macroinvertebrates are related to environmental gradients, we characterized macroinvertebrate communities and environmental variables for 32 Arctic lakes across the boreal–tundra transition in the Northwest Territories. Our analysis showed that a small selection of variables had strong relationships with community structure: calcium, conductivity, latitude, surface area, catchment area, percent fine sediment, chlorophyll a, and whitefish (Coregonus clupeaformis or Coregonus nasus) presence. Many of these variables, including calcium, conductivity, and chlorophyll a levels, are affected by permafrost thaw and road dust contamination. Based on the direction and magnitude of these relationships, we hypothesize that macroinvertebrate abundance might decline in response to permafrost thaw and road dust contamination, while taxon diversity may rise. While correlative in nature, our results and hypotheses may be valuable as future studies evaluate ongoing changes in Canada’s Arctic lakes.

中文翻译：

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北极湖泊滨海大型无脊椎动物群落组成相关的环境变量

《加拿大渔业和水生科学杂志》，印刷前。
人们对北极湖滨海大型无脊椎动物群落与环境梯度之间的关系了解甚少，因此很难预测湖泊生态系统的这些重要组成部分是否会受到诸如永冻土融化和道路发展等新兴压力源的影响。为了更好地了解沿海无脊椎动物与环境梯度之间的关系，我们对西北地区北北向苔原过渡的32个北极湖泊的大型无脊椎动物群落和环境变量进行了表征。我们的分析表明，少量变量与群落结构有很强的关系：钙，电导率，纬度，表面积，集水区，细沉积物百分比，叶绿素a和白鱼（Coregonus clupeaformis或Coregonus nasus）的存在。其中许多变量 其中包括钙，电导率和叶绿素a的含量受多年冻土融化和道路扬尘污染的影响。基于这些关系的方向和大小，我们假设随着冻土融化和道路扬尘污染，大型无脊椎动物的数量可能会下降，而分类群的多样性可能会上升。尽管本质上是相关的，但我们的结果和假设可能有价值，因为未来的研究评估了加拿大北极湖中正在发生的变化。