Effect of Salinity on the Zooplankton Community in the Pearl River Estuary
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Effect of Salinity on the Zooplankton Community in the Pearl River Estuary YUAN Danni1), 2), CHEN Liangdong1), LUAN Leilei1), WANG Qing1), 3), *, and YANG Yufeng1), 3), * 1) Key Laboratory of Eutrophication and Red Tide Control, Institute of Hydrobiology, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China 2) Center for Microalgal Biotechnology and Biofuels, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430072, China 3) Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Zhuhai), Zhuhai 519000, China (Received January 19, 2020; revised April 3, 2020; accepted October 16, 2020) © Ocean University of China, Science Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2020 Abstract Understanding the relationship between the zooplankton distribution and salinity may provide key information to understand ecosystem function under the condition of a global mean sea level rise caused by global climate change. However, little is known about how increasing salinity level will affect the entire zooplankton community on a large scale. Here we completed 1 year of field investigations on the Pearl River Estuary and analyzed the distribution and structure of the zooplankton community. A total of 68 zooplankton species were identified during the survey. The number and diversity (richness, evenness, Shannon index, and Simpson’s index) of the zooplankton species decreased as salinity increased from 0.10 to 21.26. Salinity negatively affected the abundances of rotifers, cladocerans, and total zooplankton, while it had little effect on copepod abundance. Some salt-tolerant species, such as Keratella tropica, Polyarthra vulgaris, and Paracalanus crassirostris, survived at high-salinity sites. A pattern was observed at all sites: the peak in copepod abundance always occurred when rotifers were abundant (sites S1 and S2) or after rotifer abundance reached a maximum level (sites S3, S4, and S5). In general, salinity was the most important environmental factor shaping zooplankton biodiversity and abundance. This study provides insight into potential biodiversity and structure of the zooplankton community in response to salinity change. Key words estuary; zooplankton; species diversity; salinity
1 Introduction The Pearl River Estuary is a unique highly diverse environment in the subtropical region, with a rainy season from April to September, when runoff accounts for 78% of the precipitation of the entire year. The dry season is from October to March, and runoff accounts for approximately 22% of the total for the year. The lowest flow often occurs from December to February, mostly in January (Wang et al., 2009). The Pearl River Estuary is a huge subtropical and permanently open estuary characterized by a horizontal gradient in salinity and temperature caused by high freshwater influx (Li et al., 2006). The Pearl River flows through Guangzhou city, and salinity increases gradually from the Guangzhou city segment to the estuary. The salinity in the Guangzhou segment of the Pearl River is < 2 (Wang et al., 2009), which can be distinguished
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