PRIMARY RESEARCH PAPER
Cumulative ecological effects of a Neotropical reservoir
cascade across multiple assemblages
Nata
´
lia Carneiro Lacerda dos Santos
.
Emili Garcı
´
a-Berthou
.
Juliana De
´
o Dias
.
Taise Miranda Lopes
.
Igor de Paiva Affonso
.
William Severi
.
Luiz Carlos Gomes
.
Angelo Antonio Agostinho
Received: 24 July 2017 / Revised: 15 April 2018 / Accepted: 22 April 2018 / Published online: 2 May 2018
Ó Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Dams have altered the physiography and
ecology of large rivers, causing severe environmental
changes at a global scale. Assuming that series of
reservoirs induce physical, chemical, and biological
longitudinal changes in rivers, we tested the hypothe-
ses that (i) the structure of biological communities in
reservoir cascades is not only affected by changes in
water quality, but also by cumulative hydrological
alteration and impacts on river connectivity; and (ii)
fish are more affected by cumulative effects of
reservoirs when compared to other aquatic assem-
blages. Samplings of three assemblages (phytoplank-
ton, benthic macroinvertebrates, and fish) were
conducted in the reservoir cascade of Sa
˜
o Francisco
River, Brazil. We estimated the relative role of
environmental and spatial predictors through variation
partitioning analyses. Environmental variables, cumu-
lative reservoir volume, longitudinal position, and
distances from nearest reservoirs were used as
explanatory variables. Environmental variables were
the most important for the phytoplankton community.
No significant effects of the predictors used were
found for benthic macroinvertebrates, whereas spatial
variables and cumulative reservoir volume were the
most important predictors for fish. Therefore, our
results provide evidence of impacts along reservoir
Electronic supplementary material The online version of
this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-018-3630-z) con-
tains supplementary material, which is available to authorized
users.
Handling editor: Andre
´
Padial
N. C. L. dos Santos (&) Á T. M. Lopes Á
L. C. Gomes Á A. A. Agostinho
Nu
´
cleo de Pesquisas em Limnologia, Ictiologia e
Aquicultura – Programa de Po
´
s-graduac¸a
˜
o em Ecologia de
Ambientes Aqua
´
ticos Continentais, Universidade
Estadual de Maringa
´
, Av. Colombo, 5790, Maringa
´
,
PR 87020-900, Brazil
e-mail: natalia.ictio@gmail.com
N. C. L. dos Santos Á E. Garcı
´
a-Berthou
GRECO, Institute of Aquatic Ecology, University of
Girona, Campus de Montilivi, 17003 Girona, Spain
J. D. Dias
Departamento de Oceanografia e Limnologia,
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Via
Costeira Senador Dinarte Medeiros Mariz, Natal,
RN 59014-002, Brazil
I. P. Affonso
Universidade Tecnolo
´
gica Federal do Parana
´
- Campus
Ponta Grossa, Av. Monteiro Lobato S/N, Ponta Grossa,
PR 84016-210, Brazil
W. Severi
Departamento de Pesca e Aquicultura, Laborato
´
rio de
Limnologia, Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco,
Av. Dom Manoel de Medeiros, 68, Dois Irma
˜
os, Recife,
PE 52171-900, Brazil
123
Hydrobiologia (2018) 819:77–91
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-018-3630-z
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