Colonization dynamics of periphytic ciliate communities on an artificial substratum in coastal waters of the Yellow Sea, northern China

Abstract

Colonization dynamics of periphytic ciliate communities were studied in coastal waters of the Yellow Sea, northern China from May to June 2010, using an artificial substratum. Samples were collected at two depths of 1 and 3 m. The temporal patterns of ciliate colonization had similar dynamics and were fitted to the MacArthur–Wilson and logistic models in colonization and growth curves at both depths, respectively. The ciliate communities reached equilibrium in species composition within at least 10-days exposure time. However, they differed in both structural and functional parameters between the two layers, despite similar species composition. The species diversity, evenness, the colonization rate (G) and maximum abundance (Amax) were distinctly higher, but the time for reaching 90% equilibrium species number (T90%) was shorter at the depth of 1 m than those at a deeper layer. Results suggest that it is an optimal strategy to collect the ciliate communities within shorter exposure time at 1 m for ecological research and a monitoring programme in marine ecosystems.

Space-time variation of ciliates related to environmental factors in 15 nearshore stations of the Gulf of Gabes

“…Ciliated protozoa (ciliates) play important ecological roles in coastal waters, especially regarding their interaction with environmental parameters . Recent studies suggest that ciliates may also be useful indicators of marine water quality (Kchaou et al, 2009;Jiang et al, 2013;Zhang et al, 2013). Therefore, we investigated the species composition, abundance and biomass of ciliates together with abiotic parameters (water temperature, pH, salinity and nutrients) and biotic parameters (phytoplankton abundance) at 15 stations serving for collecting seashells along the coast of the Gulf of Gabes.…”

An approach to determining functional parameters of microperiphyton fauna in colonization surveys for marine bioassessment based on rarefaction curves

“…The process of colonization events reaching to a predictable level of species richness is commonly variable through space and time. Based on our previous studies, the colonization curves of the microperiphyton species, apart from the photoautotrophs, are generally well-fitted to the MacArthur-Wilson model equation, i.e., they generally increase and then equilibrate within the colonization process (Xu et al 2009(Xu et al , 2011Zhang et al 2012aZhang et al , 2013. The community patterns in both species composition and functional structure showed a significant change during the colonization period: very few functional groups (e.g., bacterivorous, algivores, and nonselectives) occurred within the initial (young) communities with low species number and abundance, while more functional groups (e.g., bacterivorous, algivores, non-selectives, and raptors) comprised the transitional and equilibrium communities (Zhang et al 2012a, b).…”

“…This implies that the young communities have different inherent species diversity from the mature communities, and may explain the findings that young communities had lower species richness than the mature communities. Thus, the classic MacArthur-Wilson model not only summarizes an asymptotic curve of accumulated species number (γ-diversity), but also presupposes that number of species is determined by a dynamic balance between immigration and extinction, rates of which depend upon the richness achieved at that moment (Zhang et al , 2013.…”

“…The functional parameters of the microperiphyton fauna, i.e., the estimated equilibrium species number (S eq ), the colonization rate constant (G), and the time taken to reach 90 % of S eq (T 90 ), have been widely used to evaluate the loading capacity or assimilative capacity of aquatic ecosystems for contaminant inputs (Cairns and Henebry 1982;Xu et al 2009;Zhang et al 2012aZhang et al , 2013. Among these measures, the value of S eq is generally negatively correlated with concentrations of organic and toxic pollutants.…”

Insights into assessing environmental quality status using potential surrogates of biofilm-dwelling ciliate fauna in coastal waters

“…A total of 960 glass slides with a area of 2.5×7.5 cm were used as artificial substrata for collecting the microperiphyton at a depth of 1 m below the water surface. For each station, two PVC frames were immerged to hold the 20 glass slides and all of glass slides were collected at the exposure time of 14 days (Xu et al 2011b;Zhang et al 2013). The glass slides were transported to the laboratory as soon as being transferred into Petri dishes with water from the station using a cooling box for identification and enumeration (Xu et al 2009a, b).…”