Invertebrate turnover along gradients of anthropogenic salinisation in rivers of two German regions

Highlights: • EC change calculated as difference of background and observed EC. • Turnover in invertebrates was estimated using the Jaccard index. • Invertebrate turnover identified at the EC change above 0.4 mS cm⁻¹. Rising salinity in freshwater ecosystems can affect community composition. Previous studies mainly focused on changes in freshwater communities along gradients of absolute levels of electrical conductivity (EC). However, both geogenic and anthropogenic drivers contribute to the EC level and taxa may regionally be adapted to geogenic EC levels. Therefore, we examined the turnover in freshwater invertebrates along gradients of anthropogenic EC change in two regions of Germany. The anthropogenic change of EC was estimated as the difference between the measured EC and the modeled background EC driven by geochemical and climate variables. Turnover in freshwater invertebrates (β-diversity) was estimated using the Jaccard index (JI). We found that invertebrate turnover between EC gradient categories is generally greater than 47%, with a maximum of approximately 70% in sites with a more than 0.4 mS cm⁻¹ change compared to the baseline (i.e. no difference between predicted and measured EC). The invertebrates Amphinemura sp., Anomalopterygella chauviniana and Leuctra sp. were reliable indicators of low EC change, whereas Potamopyrgus antipodarum indicated sites with the highest EC change. Variability within categories of EC change was slightly lower than within categories of absolute EC. Elevated nutrient concentrations that are often linked to land use may have contributed to the observed change of the invertebrate richness and can exacerbate effects of EC on communities in water. Overall, our study suggests that the change in EC, quantified as the difference between measured EC and modeled background EC, can be used to examine the response of invertebrate communities to increasing anthropogenic salinity concentrations in rivers. However, due to the strong correlation between EC change and observed EC in our study regions, the response to these two variables was very similar. Further studies in areas where EC change and observed EC are less correlated are required. In addition, such studies should consider the change in specific ions.