Phenological patterns of neotropical lotic chironomids: Is emergence constrained by environmental factors?

Abstract In this paper we analyzed the emergence phenology of a highly diverse chironomid assemblage to test for association between emergence and some environmental variables and for the presence of synchrony in emergence. We used a time series of 48 weekly samples from a tropical low order forested stream (south‐eastern Brazil) to describe how this assemblage varied in an intra‐annual scale. An eigenvector‐based filtering approach was adapted to create temporal variables that could be used in our multiple regression analyses, trying to overcome the problems of temporal autocorrelation. Emergence of the Chironomidae, two subfamilies, concordant species, and of dominant species was not related to rainfall, temperature, moon phase or photoperiod. Taxonomic composition and species richness did not change across time. The number of emerging individuals of the subfamily Orthocladiinae was significantly related to temperature and to temporal filters. The inclusion of the temporal filters into the analyses almost eliminated autocorrelation in the regression residuals. We detected interspecific synchrony in a group of species, but an absence of trends and periodicity in chironomid emergence, which was not related to environmental variables. This suggests that unknown factors, differing from those known to control emergence in temperate regions, operate in the tropics. The erratic behaviour of the analyzed series raises the question of whether chaotic dynamics may generate this variability.