Climate warming shifts riverine macroinvertebrate communities to be more sensitive to chemical pollutants

Freshwaters are highly threatened ecosystems that are vulnerable to chemical pollution and climate change. Freshwater taxa vary in their sensitivity to chemicals and changes in species composition can potentially affect the sensitivity of assemblages to chemical exposure. Here we explore the potential consequences of future climate change on the composition and sensitivity of freshwater macroinvertebrate assemblages to chemical stressors using the UK as a case study.
Macroinvertebrate assemblages under end of century (2080-2100) and baseline (1980-2000) climate conditions were predicted for 608 UK sites for four climate scenarios corresponding to mean temperature changes of 1.28°C to 3.78°C. Freshwater macroinvertebrate toxicity data were collated for 19 chemicals and the hierarchical Species Sensitivity Distribution (hSSD) model was used to predict the sensitivity of untested taxa using relatedness within a Bayesian approach. All four future climate scenarios resulted in shifts in asse..., , , # Climate warming shifts riverine macroinvertebrate communities to be more sensitive to chemical pollutants

Access these data on https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.zs7h44jhb

Software/code available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10811583

Tom Sinclair1, Peter Craig2 and Lorraine Maltby1

1 Department of Biosciences, University of Sheffield, Alfred Denny Building, Western Bank, Sheffield, S10 2TN, United Kingdom

2 Department of Mathematical Sciences, Durham University, Upper Mountjoy Campus, Stockton Road, Durham DH1 3LE, United Kingdom

This work was supported by the award of a NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) studentship to TMS (1945243) via the ACCE (Adapting to the Challenges of a Changing Environment) Doctoral Training Programme. NERC is a section of the UKRI (United Kingdom Research and Innovation).

## Data file structure

Missing values in data are denoted by NA. The files have been broken down to the step in pipeline they are produced and used

### UKCP18:

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