Assessing the Ecological Status of the Seekoeivlei Wetland, South Africa: a Nematode Community Case Study
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GENERAL WETLAND SCIENCE
Assessing the Ecological Status of the Seekoeivlei Wetland, South Africa: a Nematode Community Case Study Candice Jansen van Rensburg 1 Received: 16 September 2019 / Accepted: 6 March 2020 # Society of Wetland Scientists 2020
Abstract The nematofauna of the Seekoeivlei Wetland in the north-eastern Free State province of South Africa was studied in order to determine its ecological status. Nematodes were collected in three different surveys, in October 2011, and in February and May 2012. Samples were taken from three sites within the reserve, each representing a different habitat. A total of 37 genera belonging to 21 nematode families were identified. The highest nematode diversity was observed during the summer sampling survey. All trophic groups were represented in only two sites in February. Maturity index was lowest in February (MI2-5 = 1.99) and highest in May (MI2-5 = 3.25). Non-metric multidimensional scaling analysis showed separation of seasons with winter and spring being most different from each other, which was supported by ANOSIM (R = 0.704; p < 0.001). The nematode faunal analysis profile of most of the soil food webs per locality per survey clustered into quadrat C, demonstrating that overall the Seekoeivlei Wetland was undisturbed with moderate enrichment and represented by fungal decomposition pathways. This study was the first to use nematode community data solely to determine the ecological status of a wetland in South Africa, which may henceforth be used for reference purposes. Keywords Ecology . Food web . Diversity . Nematode community . South Africa . Wetland
Introduction Nematodes are known to be present in all soil substrata, sediment types and in every climatic zone including the Antarctic (Barbuto and Zullini 2005). Since nematodes are numerically dominant in most soils and dominate meiofaunal communities in both lotic and lentic environments, they have been used in biomonitoring studies of aquatic habitats for several years (Coull and Palmer 1984; Bongers and Ferris 1999; Höss et al. 2006; Lv et al. 2014). They regulate the turnover of microbial communities (Ingham et al. 1985; Coull 1999) and thus play an important role in ecosystem functioning (Ekschmitt et al. 2001; Ferris et al. 2001). Ferris et al. (2001) and Briar et al. (2011) showed that nematode faunal analysis founded on a weighted abundance of coloniser–persister (c–p) classes can demonstrate the probable conditions of a food web.
* Candice Jansen van Rensburg [email protected] 1
Department of Zoology & Entomology, University of the Free State, P.O. Box 339, Bloemfontein 9301, South Africa
Bongers (1990) found that nematode community composition can be used as a sensitive indicator of ecosystem change, since nematodes may be present in settings ranging from the pristine to the extremely polluted (Moreno et al. 2011). Freckman and Ettema (1993) noted that nematodes respond to ecosystem disturbance in predictable ways as a result of their life-history strategies and high turnover rates (Wardle et al.
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