Weak congruence between biological assemblages of streams and their relationship with the environmental gradient in the Cerrado–Amazon transition area, Brazil

Abstract

Surrogate groups are used to find indicator groups and are a fast and effective way to assess biodiversity. For a surrogate group to be efficient, it needs to have strong congruence between different or similar groups. Understanding the surrogate groups in this area with high deforestation rates is extremely important to avoid or minimize the loss of biodiversity, which is severely threatened. The objective was to evaluate the congruence between fish assemblages, Heteroptera, and Odonata in streams in the Amazon–Cerrado transition area. The results showed weak congruence between Odonata and Heteroptera for both data sets. Discordant Odonata and fish showed weak but significant congruence with the abundance data, and with the incidence data the congruence was not significant. A similar result was obtained in the analysis of fish and Heteroptera, which were not congruent with any of the data sets used. The variance partition test, with abundance data, showed that both environmental and spatial variations are responsible for structuring the Heteroptera community, diverging from fish and Odonata did not respond to any of the variations verified, with incidence and abundance data, showing no relationship with environmental and spatial variations. Suggesting Odonata as a surrogate group for this region.