Climatic aridity increases temporal nestedness of invertebrate communities in naturally drying rivers

Climate change is altering the water cycle globally, increasing frequency and magnitude of floods droughts. An outstanding question whether biodiversity responses to hydrological disturbance depend on background climatic context – if so, which contexts increase vulnerability disturbance. Answering this requires comparison organismal across environmental gradients. However, opportunities track disturbed communities against an undisturbed baseline remain rare. Here we gathered a global dataset capturing aquatic invertebrate river drying, includes 112 sites spanning gradient aridity. We measured effects drying taxonomic richness temporal ?-diversity (turnover nestedness components). also relative abundance invertebrates with strategies that confer resilience (or resistance) drying. Contrary our expectations, found recovered from similarly aridity gradient. The turnover component (i.e. species replacements over time) largely accounted for differences in community composition before versus after was associated greater nestedness-driven compositional changes at intermittent is, became subsets those These results show can explain variation same (drying), suggest increased will constrain regional scales. Further consideration hydroecological research may help improve predictions local impacts by identifying climate regions where are more less) sensitive extremes, including events.