COMMUNITY ANALYSIS OF BELARUSIAN LAKES: RELATIONSHIP OF SPECIES DIVERSITY TO MORPHOLOGY, HYDROLOGY, AND LAND USE

D ow nloaded from 2 In the glacial lake district of northern Belarus, limnologists collected extensive biological, chemical, and physical data on 550 lakes (51 % of all Belarusian glacial lakes). This large data set provided a unique opportunity to examine subtle relationships with great statistical power. Our purpose was to use multivariate and correlation analyses to explore relationships of species richness with morphological and hydrological parameters. A multivariate analysis of the environmental data suggests that the Belarusian lakes can be separated along gradients of size, hydraulic residence time, and watershed development (land use). In most instances, species richness for major planktonic and benthic groups was correlated significantly with lake size and land use. Species richness values were correlated less with watershed size or hydraulic residence time. In each community there was a group of species characterized by higher correlations wit