Planktonic Microcrustacean Community Structure Varies with Trophic Status and Environmental Variables in Tropical Shallow Lakes in Malaysia

Abstract

A study was conducted to evaluate planktonic microcrustacean species composition, abundance, and diversity in lakes with different trophic status and to determine the relationship between microcrustacean community structure and lake environmental conditions. This study hypothesized that there are correlations between eutrophication levels and microcrustacean community structures in a lake. Three shallow lakes of different trophic status (Sembrong, Putrajaya and Subang lakes) were selected for this study. Two-Way Analysis of similarities (ANOSIM) revealed differences in microcrustacean diversity and density amongst lakes, where the hypereutrophic condition in Sembrong lake resulted in the lowest diversity but the highest density of microcrustaceans. Similarity percentage (SIMPER) analysis identified the discriminator species among lakes where the domination of small-sized microcrustaceans was observed in lakes with high levels of eutrophication; the hypereutrophic Sembrong lake (Ceriodaphnia cornuta, 74.0%); the meso-eutrophic Putrajaya lake (Bosmina longirostris, 46.9%; C. cornuta, 19.4%). Chlorophyll a, total phosphorus and water transparency showed significant roles in the distribution of microcrustaceans. The canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) scores indicated that small-sized C. cornuta and B. longirostris were related to the eutrophic conditions of lakes. This study elucidated that the lake trophic status could be one of the main factors contributing to the community restructuring of microcrustaceans in tropical lakes.

Diversity, Distribution, and Habitat Occurrence of the Diaptomid Copepods (Crustacea: Copepoda: Diaptomidae) in Freshwater Ecosystems of Thailand

“…This species has been reported in Singapore [55] and Cambodia [46]. Recently, M. malaindosinensis has been found in two shallow meso-eutrophic and hypereutrophic lakes in Malaysia [26].…”

“…Of the 30 calanoid species, 27 diaptomid species were reported from Southeast Asia [3]. Most of the studies were conducted in Thailand since 1994 [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22], while a few investigations have been documented in Cambodia [20,21,23], Laos [16,20,24], Malaysia [25][26][27], Singapore [28], the Philippines [29,30], and Indonesia [31]. A few studies were conducted in Vietnam [20], but most of the publications were published in Vietnamese with an English abstract [32].…”

Distribution and Diversity of Diaptomid Copepods in Freshwater Habitats of Cambodia (Crustacea: Copepoda: Calanoida: Diaptomidae)

“…Mongolodiaptomus malaindosinensis (Figure 2n), the most common species of diaptomid in Cambodia, was present in 40.5% of locations in every type of habitat in all the four regions (Figure 3e) in every season throughout the year. This species has also been reported from Singapore, Malaysia [44], Thailand [19], and Vietnam [25].…”

“…A moderately high cooccurrence of 1-4 diaptomid species was reported in India's Northern Western Ghats [39] and in a tropical karst lake district of Mexico [49]. However, in most waterbodies from other regions, only one species was collected from each waterbody, such as in Malaysia [44], Japan [50], and New Zealand [51]. The reason for having a high species number of diaptomids in each site in Cambodia is probably that they are different in body sizes so that they are able to eat different sizes of algae, which are diverse in the lower Mekong Basin [52].…”

Growth of tropical cladocerans Ceriodaphnia cornuta G.O. Sars, 1885 and Moina micrura Kurz, 1875 fed with different diets

“…In this study, C. cornuta was able to grow well on C. sorokiniana but showed poor growth on C. vulgaris, probably due to the fact that C sorokiniana was smaller (mean size < 3 μm) than C. vulgaris (mean size > 5 μm). Umi et al (2020) reported that C. cornuta was dominant in eutrophic lake as they can feed on small bacterial cells from the decomposed algal mass. Thus, lower growth rates of small C. cornuta when fed with C. vulgaris could be due to larger cell size of C. vulgaris as compared to C. sorokiniana.…”