Two practical approaches to monitoring the zooplanktonic community at Lago Grande do Curuai, Pará, Brazil

Abstract

The use of substitute groups in biomonitoring programs has been proposed to minimize the high financial costs and time for samples processing. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the correlation between (i) the spatial distribution among the major zooplankton groups (cladocerans, copepods, rotifers, and testaceans protozoa), (ii) the data of density and presence/ absence of species, and (iii) the data of species, genera, and families from samples collected in the Lago Grande do Curuai, Pará, Brazil. A total of 55 sample of the zooplanktonic community was collected, with 28 samples obtained in March and 27 in September, 2013. The agreement between the different sets of data was assessed using Mantel and Procrustes tests. Our results indicated high correlations between genus level and species level and high correlations between presence/absence of species and abundance, regardless of the seasonal period. These results suggest that zooplankton community could be incorporated in a long-term monitoring program at relatively low financial and time costs. KEYWORDS: Biomonitoring, Cladoceran, Copepod, Rotifer, Testate amoebae. Duas abordagens práticas para o monitoramento da comunidade zooplanctônica no Lago Grande do Curuai, Pará, Brasil RESUMOO uso de grupos substitutos em programas de biomonitoramento tem sido proposto para minimizar os altos custos financeiros e tempo para processamento das amostras. Os objetivos deste estudo foram avaliar a correlação entre (i) a distribuição espacial nos principais grupos zooplanctônicos (cladóceros, copépodes, protozoários testáceos e rotíferos), (ii) os dados de densidade e presença/ausência de espécies, e (iii) os dados de espécies, gêneros e famílias a partir de amostras coletadas no Lago Grande do Curai, Pará, Brasil. Um total de 55 amostras da comunidade zooplanctônica foi coletada, sendo 28 em março e 27 em setembro de 2013. A concordância entre os diferentes conjuntos de dados foi avaliada por meio dos testes de Mantel e Procrustes. Nossos resultados indicam alta correlação entre nível de gênero e espécies e entre a presença/ausência de espécies e abundância, independentemente do período sazonal. Estes resultados sugerem que a comunidade zooplanctônica pode ser incorporada em programas de monitoramento a longo prazo com custos financeiros e de tempo relativamente menores.

Is it possible to simplify environmental monitoring? Approaches with zooplankton in a hydroelectric reservoir

“…(Bessa et al, 2011;Giehl et al, 2014;Heino, 2008;Valente-Neto et al, 2016). However, some studies indicate the use of numerical resolution for zooplanktonic community (Gomes et al, 2015) and other groups (Carneiro et al, 2010;Ribas & Padial, 2015).…”

“…However, the increase in sampling number brings cost growth, while evaluate biological dimension brings the need of specialists in different biological groups. To mitigate this problem is possible to use biological surrogate groups, which is the use of substitution between groups that present congruent patterns over time and space for biomonitoring purposes (Padial et al, 2012) or to work with presence/absence of species (rather than density) at lower taxonomic resolutions (Gomes et al, 2015;Machado et al, 2015).…”

Alternatives for the biomonitoring of fish and phytoplankton in tropical streams

“…Other studies have also found similar results regarding the use of higher taxonomic levels for aquatic organisms, such as benthic macroinvertebrates and diatoms (Heino and Soininen 2007), phytoplankton (Carneiro et al 2010(Carneiro et al , 2013, aquatic Nepomorpha (Giehl et al 2014), zooplankton (Gomes et al 2015;Mis-sias et al 2017), phytoplankton, periphyton, zooplankton, aquatic macrophytes and fish (Ribas and Padial 2016). A study with marine mollusks has shown that beta diversity is maintained for genus and family ), demonstrating that heterogeneous patterns are maintained at coarser levels.…”

“…taxonomic resolution, where higher taxonomic levels (genus or family) are used as surrogates for species (Heino and Soininen 2007;Carneiro et al 2010;Machado et al 2015); ii.) numerical resolution, where species presence/ absence data are used as surrogates for abundance data (Landeiro et al 2012;Rosa et al 2014;Gomes et al 2015); iii.) substitute groups, where a group can replace another when they are present in concordance with species distribution variation (Bini et al 2007;Gioria et al 2011;Ruhí and Batzer 2014); iv.)…”

“…The proposed simplification protocols for sampling, identification and characterization of species have involved different water bodies (e.g., streams, rivers, lakes, ponds) and several aquatic groups, such as phytoplankton (Gallego et al 2012;Carneiro et al 2010;Machado et al 2015), zooplankton (Gomes et al 2015;Vieira et al 2017), macroinvertebrates (Sanchez-Moyano et al 2006;Tataranni et al 2009) and mollusks (Zuschin et al 2015). However, it is noteworthy that most studies mainly focus on evaluating the use of substitute groups.…”