Macrophyte community structure across Serbian water-body types: foundations for developing bioassessment tools

Macrophytes are widely used as biological quality elements in ecological assessment, yet the extent to which they reflect water-body typology remains insufficiently evaluated in Serbia. We analyzed macrophyte assemblages from 99 sites representing nine nationally designated water-body types to determine (i) whether assemblages differ among types, (ii) which environmental gradients structure these differences, (iii) which species contribute most strongly to typological separation, and (iv) how accurately typology can be predicted from macrophyte composition. Presence-absence and abundance data were assessed using incidence-based rarefaction/extrapolation (iNEXT), non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) with fitting of environmental vectors (envfit), community differentiation analysis (PERMANOVA/PERMDISP), distance-based redundancy analysis (dbRDA), Indicator Value Analysis (IndVal), dissimilarity analysis (SIMPER), and Random Forest (RF) classification. Diversity patterns, constrained ordination, and multivariate tests revealed clear typological structure, with conductivity, water temperature, and elevation emerging as the strongest predictors of community composition. IndVal, SIMPER, and RF consistently identified a small suite of submerged, floating, and emergent species that characterized individual types or shared ecological gradients. The RF classifier achieved 72.7% out-of-bag accuracy, demonstrating strong predictive signal despite heterogeneity in some modified or sparsely sampled types. Overall, macrophyte assemblages responded coherently to the interacting hydro-morphological and physicochemical gradients that define Serbia’s surface-water typology. These findings establish a robust ecological foundation for the future development of macrophyte-based bioassessment tools and support the implementation of WFD-compliant ecological status classification in Serbia.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Frontiers in Environmental Science

• Publication date

  2026-01-29

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3389/fenvs.2026.1768883
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Influence of morphology and functional properties of floodplain water bodies on species diversity of macrophyte communities

  2025cited by this paper
• Freshwater plant macroecology needs to step forward from the shadows of the terrestrial domain

  2025cited by this paper
• Environmental heterogeneity governing river macrophyte beta diversity in Europe is scale- and context-dependent

  2025cited by this paper
• The Influence of Abiotic Factors on the Distribution of Macrophytes in Small Water Bodies in Temperate Ecosystems

  2024cited by this paper
• Discovering the ecological structure of different macrophyte groups in rivers using non-parametric and parametric multivariate ordination techniques

  2024cited by this paper
• Relationships between Environmental Factors and Functional Traits of Macrophyte Assemblages in Running Waters of Greece

  2023cited by this paper
• Reach hydromorphology: a crucial environmental variable for the occurrence of riverine macrophytes

  2022cited by this paper
• Distribution of the Macrophyte Communities in the Danube Reflects River Serial Discontinuity

  2021cited by this paper
• Impact of anthropogenic transformations on the vegetation of selected abiotic types of rivers in two ecoregions (Southern Poland)

  2020cited by this paper
• Multiple stressors determine river ecological status at the European scale: Towards an integrated understanding of river status deterioration

  2020cited by this paper
• Global patterns in the metacommunity structuring of lake macrophytes: regional variations and driving factors

  2018cited by this paper
• Response of Submerged Macrophyte Communities to External and Internal Restoration Measures in North Temperate Shallow Lakes

  2018cited by this paper
• Relationships of macrophyte species richness and environment in different water body types in the Central European region

  2018cited by this paper
• Environmental drivers of aquatic macrophyte assemblages in ponds along an altitudinal gradient

  2018cited by this paper
• Comparative Macrophyte Diversity of Waterbodies in the Central European landscape

  2018cited by this paper
• Variable importance for sustaining macrophyte presence via random forests: data imputation and model settings

  2018influential reference
• Environmental effects on macrophyte assemblages of small and medium-sized rivers in two bioregions of Central Europe

  2017cited by this paper
• iNEXT: an R package for rarefaction and extrapolation of species diversity (Hill numbers)

  2016cited by this paper
• Environmental thresholds and predictors of macrophyte species richness in aquatic habitats in central Europe

  2016cited by this paper
• Is the macrophyte diversification along the trophic gradient distinct enough for river monitoring?

  2016cited by this paper
• Environmental Factors Influencing Macrophytes Assemblages in a Middle‐Sized Mediterranean Stream

  2016cited by this paper
• Development of comprehensive river typology based on macrophytes in the mountain-lowland gradient of different Central European ecoregions

  2015cited by this paper
• Indicators of hemeroby for the monitoring of landscapes in Germany

  2014cited by this paper
• Comparability of river quality assessment using macrophytes: a multi-step procedure to overcome biogeographical differences.

  2014cited by this paper
• Rarefaction and extrapolation with Hill numbers: a framework for sampling and estimation in species diversity studies

  2014cited by this paper
• Environmental factors explaining the distribution and diversity of vascular aquatic macrophytes in a highly heterogeneous Mediterranean region

  2014cited by this paper
• Parameters structuring macrophyte communities in rivers and lakes – results from a case study in North-Central Poland

  2014cited by this paper
• Cabomba caroliniana A. Gray 1837 - a new, alien and potentially invasive species in Serbia.

  2013cited by this paper
• Effect of environmental conditions on species composition of macrophytes – study from two distinct biogeographical regions of Central Europe

  2013cited by this paper
• Three hundred ways to assess Europe's surface waters: An almost complete overview of biological methods to implement the Water Framework Directive

  2012cited by this paper
• Response of macrophyte communities and status metrics to natural gradients and land use in boreal lakes

  2012cited by this paper
• Riparian vegetation metrics as tools for guiding ecological restoration in riverscapes.

  2011cited by this paper
• The relative importance of dispersal and the local environment for species richness in two aquatic plant growth forms

  2011cited by this paper
• Environmental drivers, life strategies and bioindicator capacity of bryophyte communities in high-latitude headwater streams

  2011cited by this paper
• Choosing the best method for stream bioassessment using macrophyte communities: Indices and predictive models

  2011cited by this paper
• The European Water Framework Directive at the age of 10: a critical review of the achievements with recommendations for the future.

  2010cited by this paper
• Towards harmonization of ecological quality classification: establishing common grounds in European macrophyte assessment for rivers

  2010cited by this paper
• Distribution of aquatic macrophytes in contrasting river systems: a critique of compositional-based assessment of water quality.

  2009cited by this paper
• Climate‐related differences in the dominance of submerged macrophytes in shallow lakes

  2009cited by this paper
• Associations between species and groups of sites: indices and statistical inference.

  2009cited by this paper
• Global diversity of aquatic macrophytes in freshwater

  2007cited by this paper
• Environmental influences on aquatic plants in freshwater ecosystems

  2006cited by this paper
• Intercalibration of assessment methods for macrophytes in lowland streams: direct comparison and analysis of common metrics

  2006influential reference
• Macrophyte communities in unimpacted European streams: variability in assemblage patterns, abundance and diversity

  2006cited by this paper
• Distance‐Based Tests for Homogeneity of Multivariate Dispersions

  2006cited by this paper
• Macrophyte communities of European streams with altered physical habitat

  2006cited by this paper
• VEGAN, a package of R functions for community ecology

  2003cited by this paper
• Area, altitude and aquatic plant diversity

  2003cited by this paper
• Hydrologic and hydraulic control of macrophyte establishment and performance in streams

  2003influential reference
• FITTING MULTIVARIATE MODELS TO COMMUNITY DATA: A COMMENT ON DISTANCE‐BASED REDUNDANCY ANALYSIS

  2001cited by this paper
• Ecologically meaningful transformations for ordination of species data

  2001cited by this paper
• A new method for non-parametric multivariate analysis of variance in ecology

  2001cited by this paper
• Random Forests

  2001cited by this paper
• The impact of eutrophication on aquaticmacrophyte diversity in weakly mineralized streams in the Northern Vosges mountains(NE France)

  1998cited by this paper
• SPECIES ASSEMBLAGES AND INDICATOR SPECIES:THE NEED FOR A FLEXIBLE ASYMMETRICAL APPROACH

  1997cited by this paper
• Habitat partitioning in riverine macrophyte communities

  1996cited by this paper
• Non‐parametric multivariate analyses of changes in community structure

  1993cited by this paper
• Production, Nutrient Content and Decomposition of Phragmites Communis Trin. and Typha Angustifolia L.

  1975cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.