Freshwater samples in MZNA-INV-FRW: Macroinvertebrate samples from the water quality monitoring network along the Ebro Basin

Study Extent

The Ebro River Basin is situated in the Northeast of the Spain (Western Europe) and drains an area of 85.362 km2. It is the second largest catchment in the Iberian Peninsula and has 702 tributaries and 110 lakes. from the western Pyrenees to the south of the Iberian Mountains, discharging into the Mediterranean Sea. The prevailing climate of the basin is Mediterranean with an average yearly precipitation of 620 mm. The basin hosts a large number of ecosystems from the head of the Ebro River to its mouth. Eurosiberian communities (beech, grasslands) dominate the highest part of the river whereas Mediterranean ones take over in the middle region until the mouth. The water uses of the basin are principally urban water supply, livestock, farming, and industry. However, the highest water consumption comes from agriculture (4,574 hm3/year) dedicated to 906,000 ha of irrigated crops. Samplings were carried out annually from late spring to early autumn when macroinvertebrate communities reach their highest diversity, although samplings could be postponed to summer in the case of unfavorable environmental conditions such as high rainfall in elevated areas (e.g., the Pyrenees). Likewise, in the event of floods, samplings were conducted 15 days after the incident.Temporary streams were sampled when the conditions were optimal, that is, in the presence of running water. A total of 473 sampling sites belonging to the CEMAS network were sampled from 2005 to 2015. Each sampling site covered a selected 100-m segment of the river having the essential habitats of that river’s stretch. Therefore, all the data obtained was assumed to be representative of that stretch of the river, and all variety of habitats were sampled. The following features were taken into account for selecting a segment: •The presence of rapid-slow running water. •Fluvial Morphology. For example, natural courses were chosen over channeled water. •Vegetation cover. Shady areas were avoided if they were not characteristic of the stretch. •Areas near bridges and weirs were avoided unless they were representative of the stretch. •Accessibility. Sampling sites were accessible and crossable.

Sampling

1. Fieldwork At each sampling site, five types of habitats were selected: hard substrates, plant debris, bank bordered by vegetation, submerged macrophytes (if present), sand and other fine sediments. Once identified the microhabitats and the area occupied by each one, the sampling units (kicks) were distributed proportionally to the area of each habitat in the section. As a general rule, twenty sampling units were used. Macroinvertebrates were collected using a hand-net (25 cm x 25 cm aperture, 500-µm-mesh size). In each sampling unit (kick), the substrate was removed 0.5 m in front of the mouth of the net. The final sampled area resulting from the twenty sampling units was approximately 2.5 m2. Samples were fixed in 4% buffered formaldehyde, stored in plastic sealed jars, labeled and brought to the laboratory. Simultaneously, electrical conductivity (precision 1 µS/cm), dissolved oxygen (precision 0.01 mg/L), temperature (precision 0.1°C) and pH were measured using a multi-parameter water quality monitoring system (WTW Multi 340i) at each sampling. Each instrument was calibrated daily during the sampling period. 2. Laboratory work Samples were transported to the laboratory for analysis. The samples were sieved through 5 mm, 1 mm and 0,5 mm mesh sieves. Then, the material was washed with abundant running water, separating the organisms from the remaining debris, gravel, and sand. Finally, the sample was divided into the respective fractions of the sieves: •5mm fraction: all organisms were identified to the taxon level required by the IBMWP index and counted. •1 mm and 0.5 mm fractions: organisms were identified to the taxon level required for the IBMWP index. Samples were divided into subsamples (eg., one-quarter size) and organisms from one subsample were counted.Total abundance of each taxon was estimated from the subsample counts. The remaining sample (eg., the uncounted three-quarters of the sample) was examined for families not caught in the subsample, but organisms were not counted. For further details, see Wrona, Culp & Davies, 1982. •Finally, all the material was stored in plastic jars with 70°ethlyl alcohol, labeled and stored at the MZNA facilities. After processing the samples, the IBMWP and IASPT scores were calculated (Alba-Tercedor, J., P. Jaimez-Cuellar et al., 2002). More details of the sampling protocol can be found in “Protocolo De Muestreo Y Laboratorio De Fauna Bentónica De Invertebrados En Ríos Vadeables” (MAGRAMA, 2013). The environmental variables, the biological indices, and the occurrences can be found in the MeasurementsOrFacts and Occurrence extensions respectively, uploaded together with the Sampling Event dataset.

Quality Control

Specimen identification was carried by Javier Oscoz using suitable literature (Tachet et al., 2000; Oscoz, Galicia & Miranda, 2011). Scientific names were validated according to the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy (GBIF, 2017). All samples were fully analyzed for the entire range of potential taxa. Taxon absences recorded in the dataset are thus true absences as regards to the taxa listed in the IBMWP indices. The MZNA stores samples from 2005 to 2015 derived from the monitoring network. Field data was digitalized and incorporated into the MZNA database (Ariño, 1991). Unique accession numbers were assigned to each sample. The dataset was standardized to the Darwin Core standards. Guidelines by Chapman (2005) were followed to check for taxonomical, geographical and temporal errors in the dataset. Coordinates in UTM/MGRS were transformed to the geographic system. The consistency of all records was inspected by overlapping sampling site coordinates with a map of the Ebro Basin (CHE, 2017). The entire process of debugging the dataset was done with R version 3.3.2 (R Core Team, 2016). Packages used included rgdal (Pebesma, Sumner & Hijmans, 2013), sp (Pebesma & Bivand, 2005) for geographic data and reshape2 (Wickham, 2007) for handling with the dataset.

Method steps

1. Selection of sampling sites. The list of sampling sites for each year was given by the CHE.
2. Microhabitat selection at each sampling site.
3. Measurement of environmental variables including electrical conductivity, water temperature, pH and dissolved oxygen.
4. Macroinvertebrate sampling by sweeping in the five microhabitats, proportionally to the microhabitat cover. Samples fixed with 4% buffered formaldehyde.
5. Sampling processing in the laboratory: identification of taxon, count of the number of individuals per taxon and calculation of biotic indices including IBMWP and IASP.
6. Sample storage in the MZNA facilities.
7. Digitalization of the data in the MZNA database.
8. Standardisation of the dataset to Darwin Core standards and publication through the Integrated Publishing Toolkit.

150 taxa were recorded in the Ebro River Basin belonging to 141 families, 31, orders, 14 classes and 9 phyla.

1. Annelida
   rank: phylum
2. Arthropoda
   rank: phylum
3. Bryozoa
   rank: phylum
4. Cnidaria
   rank: phylum
5. Mollusca
   rank: phylum
6. Nematoda
   rank: phylum
7. Nematomorpha
   rank: phylum
8. Platyhelminthes
   rank: phylum
9. Porifera
   rank: phylum
10. Arachnida
    rank: class
11. Bivalvia
    rank: class
12. Branchiopoda
    rank: class
13. Clitellata
    rank: class
14. Demospongiae
    rank: class
15. Gastropoda
    rank: class
16. Gordioida
    rank: class
17. Hydrozoa
    rank: class
18. Insecta
    rank: class
19. Malacostraca
    rank: class
20. Maxillopoda
    rank: class
21. Ostracoda
    rank: class
22. Rhabditophora
    rank: class
23. Amphipoda
    rank: order
24. Anthoathecatae
    rank: order
25. Arhynchobdellida
    rank: order
26. Branchiobdellida
    rank: order
27. Coleoptera
    rank: order
28. Collembola
    rank: order
29. Cycloneritimorpha
    rank: order
30. Decapoda
    rank: order
31. Diplostraca
    rank: order
32. Diptera
    rank: order
33. Ephemeroptera
    rank: order
34. Gordioidea
    rank: order
35. Hemiptera
    rank: order
36. Hygrophila
    rank: order
37. Hymenoptera
    rank: order
38. Lepidoptera
    rank: order
39. Megaloptera
    rank: order
40. Isopoda
    rank: order
41. Littorinimorpha
    rank: order
42. Neuroptera
    rank: order
43. Odonata
    rank: order
44. Plecoptera
    rank: order
45. Trichoptera
    rank: order
46. Rhynchobdellida
    rank: order
47. Trombidiformes
    rank: order
48. Unionoida
    rank: order
49. Veneroida
    rank: order
50. Seriata
    rank: order
51. Aeschnidae
    rank: family
52. Ichneumonidae
    rank: family
53. Ancylidae
    rank: family
54. Anthomyiidae
    rank: family
55. Aphelocheiridae
    rank: family
56. Asellidae
    rank: family
57. Astacidae
    rank: family
58. Athericidae
    rank: family
59. Atydae
    rank: family
60. Baetidae
    rank: family
61. Beraeidae
    rank: family
62. Bithyniidae
    rank: family
63. Blephariceridae
    rank: family
64. Brachycentridae
    rank: family
65. Branchiobdellidae
    rank: family
66. Caenidae
    rank: family
67. Calamoceratidae
    rank: family
68. Calopterygidae
    rank: family
69. Cambaridae
    rank: family
70. Capniidae
    rank: family
71. Ceratopogonidae
    rank: family
72. Chaoboridae
    rank: family
73. Chironomidae
    rank: family
74. Chloroperlidae
    rank: family
75. Chrysomelidae
    rank: family
76. Clambidae
    rank: family
77. Coenagrionidae
    rank: family
78. Corbiculidae
    rank: family
79. Cordulegrastridae
    rank: family
80. Corduliidae
    rank: family
81. Corixidae
    rank: family
82. Corophidae
    rank: family
83. Culicidae
    rank: family
84. Curculionidae
    rank: family
85. Dendrocoelidae
    rank: family
86. Dixidae
    rank: family
87. Dolichopodidae
    rank: family
88. Dreissenidae
    rank: family
89. Dryopidae
    rank: family
90. Dugesiidae
    rank: family
91. Dytiscidae
    rank: family
92. Ecnomidae
    rank: family
93. Elmidae
    rank: family
94. Empididae
    rank: family
95. Ephemerellidae
    rank: family
96. Ephemeridae
    rank: family
97. Ephydridae
    rank: family
98. Erpobdellidae
    rank: family
99. Gammaridae
    rank: family
100. Gerridae
     rank: family
101. Glossiphoniidae
     rank: family
102. Glossosomatidae
     rank: family
103. Goeridae
     rank: family
104. Gomphidae
     rank: family
105. Gordiidae
     rank: family
106. Gyrinidae
     rank: family
107. Haemopidae
     rank: family
108. Haliplidae
     rank: family
109. Hebridae
     rank: family
110. Helophoridae
     rank: family
111. Heptageniidae
     rank: family
112. Hirudinidae
     rank: family
113. Hydraenidae
     rank: family
114. Hydridae
     rank: family
115. Hydrobiidae
     rank: family
116. Hydrochidae
     rank: family
117. Hydrometridae
     rank: family
118. Hydrophilidae
     rank: family
119. Hydropsychidae
     rank: family
120. Hydroptilidae
     rank: family
121. Hygrobiidae
     rank: family
122. Lepidostomatidae
     rank: family
123. Leptoceridae
     rank: family
124. Leptophlebiidae
     rank: family
125. Lestidae
     rank: family
126. Leuctridae
     rank: family
127. Libellulidae
     rank: family
128. Limnephilidae
     rank: family
129. Limoniidae
     rank: family
130. Lymnaeidae
     rank: family
131. Mesoveliidae
     rank: family
132. Molannidae
     rank: family
133. Muscidae
     rank: family
134. Naucoridae
     rank: family
135. Nemouridae
     rank: family
136. Nepidae
     rank: family
137. Neritidae
     rank: family
138. Niphargidae
     rank: family
139. Noteridae
     rank: family
140. Notonectidae
     rank: family
141. Odontoceridae
     rank: family
142. Oligoneuriidae
     rank: family
143. Osmylidae
     rank: family
144. Palaemonidae
     rank: family
145. Pediciidae
     rank: family
146. Perlidae
     rank: family
147. Perlodidae
     rank: family
148. Philopotamidae
     rank: family
149. Phrygaenidae
     rank: family
150. Physidae
     rank: family
151. Piscicolidae
     rank: family
152. Planariidae
     rank: family
153. Planorbidae
     rank: family
154. Platycnemididae
     rank: family
155. Pleidae
     rank: family
156. Poduridae
     rank: family
157. Polycentropodidae
     rank: family
158. Polymitarcidae
     rank: family
159. Potamanthidae
     rank: family
160. Prosopistomatidae
     rank: family
161. Psephenidae
     rank: family
162. Psychodidae
     rank: family
163. Psychomyiidae
     rank: family
164. Ptychopteridae
     rank: family
165. Rhagionidae
     rank: family
166. Rhyacophilidae
     rank: family
167. Sciomyzidae
     rank: family
168. Scirtidae
     rank: family
169. Sericostomatidae
     rank: family
170. Sialidae
     rank: family
171. Simuliidae
     rank: family
172. Siphlonuridae
     rank: family
173. Sisyridae
     rank: family
174. Sphaeriidae
     rank: family
175. Spongillidae
     rank: family
176. Stratiomyidae
     rank: family
177. Succineidae
     rank: family
178. Syrphidae
     rank: family
179. Tabanidae
     rank: family
180. Taeniopterygidae
     rank: family
181. Thaumaleidae
     rank: family
182. Thiaridae
     rank: family
183. Unionidae
     rank: family
184. Tipulidae
     rank: family
185. Unionidae
     rank: family
186. Valvatidae
     rank: family
187. Veliidae
     rank: family
188. Viviparidae
     rank: family
189. Ancylus
     rank: genus
190. Corbicula
     rank: genus
191. Dreissena
     rank: genus
192. Ferrissia
     rank: genus
193. Hydra
     rank: genus
194. Pacifastacus
     rank: genus
195. Podura
     rank: genus
196. Procambarus
     rank: genus
197. Spongillidae
     rank: order
198. Stylommatophora
     rank: order
199. Arrenuridae
     rank: family
200. Pyralidae
     rank: family
201. Thremmatidae
     rank: family
202. Hydracarina
     rank: genus

The spatial coverage of this dataset comprises the Ebro River Basin.