Spatial and temporal changes in occupancy frequency distribution patterns of freshwater macrophytes in Finland

A useful method for characterizing biological numerous assemblages at regional scales is the species occupancy frequency distribution (SOFD). An SOFD shows the number or proportion of study sites each species occurred. Species that occur at only a few sites are termed satellite species, while species that occur at many sites are termed core species. This study is the first to document and assess SOFD patterns in aquatic macrophytes. It characterizes SOFD patterns of freshwater macrophyte assemblages in Finland at two spatial and two temporal scales. For this, I analyzed three published datasets on freshwater macrophyte distributions: two from studies conducted at a local scale and the third from large national surveys. One local study and the national study also included data on temporal variation in species occupancy frequencies. In the national study, the number of core and satellite species varied slightly between the older and the newer survey, respectively. Among the 113 waterbodies surveyed as part of the national study, the SOFD followed a unimodal satellite pattern. However, for the older dataset (from the 1930s), a bimodal symmetric pattern also fit the SOFD data well. At the local scale, I observed geographical variation in SOFD patterns. The dataset from southern Finland followed a unimodal satellite SOFD pattern; data from central Finland instead displayed a bimodal symmetric SOFD pattern, although they also fit equally well with a bimodal truncated pattern. Moreover, temporal patterns in central Finland seemed to demonstrate a shift from a bimodal symmetric to a bimodal asymmetric SOFD probably. Geographical variation in the SOFD pattern may be due to variation in the regional species pool. The temporal changes in SOFD pattern may be due to lake eutrophication and anthropogenic disturbance around waterbodies, which may increase number of macrophyte species.