The perils of unpalatable periphyton: Didymosphenia and other mucilaginous stalked diatoms as food for tadpoles

Proliferations of Didymosphenia geminata are becoming prevalent in rivers around the globe. In the Sierra Nevada of California, Didymosphenia and other taxa that produce mucopolysaccharide stalks (e.g., Gomphoneis, Cymbella) can dominate benthic environments, particularly in the altered hydrologic and thermal regimes downstream of dams. We compared the prevalence of stalked diatoms in paired reaches, one free-flowing and the other regulated, within two Sierran river systems, the American and Feather Rivers. In the regulated reaches, short-term power generation caused daily flow fluctuations and periphyton biovolume was dominated by either Didymosphenia (where hypolimnetic releases created cool summer temperatures) or other stalked diatom taxa (where temperatures were warm). Periphyton assemblages from the unregulated sites were significantly different from the regulated reaches based on biovolume, with Gomphonema being the genus at unregulated sites contributing to the dissimilarities after accounting for...