Chironomid-climate continentality conundrum
(2025) In PLOS ONE 20(8).- Abstract
It is predicted that continentality, a climate parameter representative of a region’s annual temperature and precipitation range, will undergo significant changes in the future. The lack of past continentality reconstructions makes it impossible to decipher any long-term patterns of continentality changes. Here, we investigate the extent to which continentality influences modern chironomid assemblages and evaluate their ecological relevance for palaeolimnological data-based reconstructions of past continentality. We selected 53 lakes along a longitudinal gradient covering the East European Plain (Western part of Russia, Estonia, Latvia) and southern Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway). We analysed the dependency of chironomid assemblages on... (More)
It is predicted that continentality, a climate parameter representative of a region’s annual temperature and precipitation range, will undergo significant changes in the future. The lack of past continentality reconstructions makes it impossible to decipher any long-term patterns of continentality changes. Here, we investigate the extent to which continentality influences modern chironomid assemblages and evaluate their ecological relevance for palaeolimnological data-based reconstructions of past continentality. We selected 53 lakes along a longitudinal gradient covering the East European Plain (Western part of Russia, Estonia, Latvia) and southern Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway). We analysed the dependency of chironomid assemblages on a variety of environmental parameters including two continentality indices (annual temperature range (ATR) and the Kerner Oceanity Index (KOI)), growing degree days at base temperature 5 °C, mean air temperatures of July, April, and October, number of ice-cover days, lake-water pH, loss-of-ignition and water depth using redundancy analysis. Correlations between all variables were tested to check for possible confounding effects. KOI had the highest explanatory power of 18.4% in the dataset and an absence of collinearity (correlation index < 0.7) with all the other tested variables. Further, we estimated weighted average optima to investigate the distribution of the morphotypes along the continentality gradient in the dataset. Glyptotendipes pallens-type, Neozavrelia, Polypedilum sordens-type, and Microchironomus showed a preference for a continental climate, while Paratanytarsus penicillatus-type, Pseudorthocladius, Thienemannimyia, and Limnophyes were found mainly in samples from oceanic areas. Weighted averaging-partial least squares regression was used for a trial test of the data, resulting in a promising KOI-based model performance with R2 = 0.73 and RMSEP = 5.1. Despite the relatively small dataset, our study suggests that chironomid data have the potential for further development as a tool for reconstructing palaeocontinentality.
(Less)
- author
- Bakumenko, Varvara ; Poska, Anneli LU ; Birks, H. B.John ; Huser, Brian and Veski, Siim
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025-08
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- PLOS ONE
- volume
- 20
- issue
- 8
- article number
- e0327780
- publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:105012373324
- pmid:40763165
- ISSN
- 1932-6203
- DOI
- 10.1371/journal.pone.0327780
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- additional info
- Publisher Copyright: © 2025 Bakumenko et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
- id
- 0f42cf68-0331-454d-9710-44d9bc0f8bb8
- date added to LUP
- 2025-12-03 13:00:08
- date last changed
- 2025-12-04 03:00:07
@article{0f42cf68-0331-454d-9710-44d9bc0f8bb8,
abstract = {{<p>It is predicted that continentality, a climate parameter representative of a region’s annual temperature and precipitation range, will undergo significant changes in the future. The lack of past continentality reconstructions makes it impossible to decipher any long-term patterns of continentality changes. Here, we investigate the extent to which continentality influences modern chironomid assemblages and evaluate their ecological relevance for palaeolimnological data-based reconstructions of past continentality. We selected 53 lakes along a longitudinal gradient covering the East European Plain (Western part of Russia, Estonia, Latvia) and southern Scandinavia (Sweden and Norway). We analysed the dependency of chironomid assemblages on a variety of environmental parameters including two continentality indices (annual temperature range (ATR) and the Kerner Oceanity Index (KOI)), growing degree days at base temperature 5 °C, mean air temperatures of July, April, and October, number of ice-cover days, lake-water pH, loss-of-ignition and water depth using redundancy analysis. Correlations between all variables were tested to check for possible confounding effects. KOI had the highest explanatory power of 18.4% in the dataset and an absence of collinearity (correlation index < 0.7) with all the other tested variables. Further, we estimated weighted average optima to investigate the distribution of the morphotypes along the continentality gradient in the dataset. Glyptotendipes pallens-type, Neozavrelia, Polypedilum sordens-type, and Microchironomus showed a preference for a continental climate, while Paratanytarsus penicillatus-type, Pseudorthocladius, Thienemannimyia, and Limnophyes were found mainly in samples from oceanic areas. Weighted averaging-partial least squares regression was used for a trial test of the data, resulting in a promising KOI-based model performance with R<sup>2</sup> = 0.73 and RMSEP = 5.1. Despite the relatively small dataset, our study suggests that chironomid data have the potential for further development as a tool for reconstructing palaeocontinentality.</p>}},
author = {{Bakumenko, Varvara and Poska, Anneli and Birks, H. B.John and Huser, Brian and Veski, Siim}},
issn = {{1932-6203}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{8}},
publisher = {{Public Library of Science (PLoS)}},
series = {{PLOS ONE}},
title = {{Chironomid-climate continentality conundrum}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0327780}},
doi = {{10.1371/journal.pone.0327780}},
volume = {{20}},
year = {{2025}},
}