Coastal waters are ecosystems of great human and ecological interest where complex processes occur. The interaction of physical (e.g., coastal currents, upwelling, tides, and advection) , chemical (variable chemical properties including nutrient inputs) , and ecological (e.g., biological production and its dynamics, and prey / predator interactions) processes induce high spatial and temporal variability in the water. This variability determines the abundance and structure of different biological communities present in coastal waters, in particular zooplankton, which are at the lower levels of the oceanic food chain. To understand coastal zooplankton community structure and explore its relationship with various environmental factors, a zooplankton survey was carried out in Jincheng, Laizhou Bay. Fifteen sampling sites were chosen to http: / / www.ecologica.cn study water temperature, salinity, transparency, COD, pH, Chl a, total nitrogen, and total phosphorus from March 2009 to December 2010. Sampling and testing methods followed those of the Specifications for Oceanographic Surveys and Specifications for Marine Monitoring. The relationships between zooplankton communities and various environmental factors were analyzed by canonical correspondence analysis (CCA). A total of 75 zooplankton species, belonging to 14 taxonomic groups, were recorded in Jincheng over the study period. Copepods and zooplankton larvae were the main taxonomic groups, accounting for 29. 3% and 26. 7% of total species, respectively, followed by Hydromedusa accounting for 14. 7%. Six Amphipod, four Tunicate, four Gastropod, and two Ctenophora species were identified, accounting for 8%, 5.3%, 5.3%, and 2.7% of all species, respectively; whereas only one species each of Cladocera, Chaetognatha, Isopoda, Mysidacea, Euphausiacea, and Scyphomedusae were identified. The dominant species, which exhibited significant seasonal variability (P < 0.05) , were Sagitta crassa (Y = 0.24) , Calanus sinicus (Y = 0.13) , Centropages mcmurrichi (Y = 0.07) , and Acartia hongi (Y = 0.02). Similar seasonal variations in the zooplankton community were observed in 2009 and 2010. Four zooplankton community structure types were observed from the cluster dendrogram; the zooplankton community similarity in different months of the same season reached >40%. The zooplankton community structure in this area had high stability and reproducibility. The highest zooplankton abundances were observed in October 2009 and May 2010, with 951.65 and 1348. 14 ind. / m 3 , respectively. The zooplankton species number reached its maximum in September 2009 and June 2010, with 48 and 40 species, respectively, and exhibited a significant seasonal difference (P < 0.05). The zooplankton biomass reached its maximum in October 2009 and December 2010, and the mean 2009 biomass (648.48 mg / m 3) was higher than that in 2010 (489.32 mg / m 3). Margalef indices revealed an obvious unimodal annual variation trend with higher Margalef indices in summer and lower in other seasons. Shannon鄄Wiener indi...
