ArticleCommunications biology2022
A whole-ecosystem experiment reveals flow-induced shifts in a stream community.
Article in Communications biology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Widespread Underestimation of Drought Impacts on River Ecosystems Due to Weak Experimental Designs.Global change biology · 2026Pooled it
- Experimental insights in taxon-specific functional responses to droughts in glacier-fed stream biofilms.Microbiome · 2026Article
- Spatiotemporal intermittence effect on periphyton microbial communities in a tropical drying river network.ISME communications · 2026Article
- Climate change is poised to alter mountain stream ecosystem processes via organismal phenological shifts.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- An abrupt regime shift of bacterioplankton community from weak to strong thermal pollution in a subtropical bay.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible changes to the functioning of freshwater ecosystems compels robust measures of tipping point thresholds. To determine benthic cyanobacteria regime shifts in a potable water supply system in the tropical Andes, we conducted a whole ecosystem-scale experiment in which we systematically diverted 20 to 90% of streamflow and measured ecological responses. Benthic cyanobacteria greatly increased with a 60% flow reduction and this tipping point was related to water temperature and nitrate concentration increases, both known to boost algal productivity. We supplemented our experiment with a regional survey collecting > 1450 flow-benthic algal measurements at streams varying in water abstraction levels. We confirmed the tipping point flow value, albeit at a slightly lower threshold (40-50%). A global literature review broadly confirmed our results with a mean tipping point at 58% of flow reduction. Our study provides robust in situ demonstrations of regime shift thresholds in running waters with potentially strong implications for environmental flows management.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.