Untitled

Abstract

River ecosystems are among the most affected habitats globally by human activities, such as the release of industrial, agricultural and domestic pollutants to the rivers. However, how affected zooplankton functional groups in rivers are largely unknown. In the present study zooplankton functional and taxonomic structure were investigated seasonally in relation to environmental parameters between 2013 and 2015 in Kocaçay Delta located on the South of the Marmara Region. The environmental parameters (e.g. water temperature, conductivity, dissolved oxygen, pH, chlorophylla and nutrients) were measured at four sampling station covering estuarine and riverine area. A total of 44 taxa of zooplankton were identified and mostly dominated by cosmopolite microphagous rotifers reflecting the proper intervals of environmental parameters for their habitat choices. Among rotifers Microcodides chlaena and Keratella serrulata were the new records for the study site and Turkish rotifer list. The only selective filter feeder was Bosmina longirostris in Kocacay Delta. The zooplankton functional group, microphagous, showed seasonal variations and affected by chlorophyll-a content. We suggested that trait-based approaches would be a useful tool to assess the degree of environmental disturbance and interaction between trophic levels.

Trait-Based Research on Rotifera: The Holy Grail or Just Messy?

“…We found that when trophi types were combined with size, an unambiguous reconstruction of traits was impossible. For example, Palazzo et al [37] established a classification into small, medium, and large, which was related to absolute size, and Wang et al [49] used relative size based on quartiles, but Tavsanoglu and Akbulut [50] did not provide an explanation for how they assessed size categories. Interestingly, Jannsson et al [51] assigned to zooplankton, including rotifers, a complexity trait, probably based on behavioral and morphological diversity.…”

“…The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https:// www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/w15081459/s1, Table S1: List of the 66 inspected studies with their publication year, studied habitat, country of provenance, journal name, impact factor, quartile rank, provision of traits, and application of the guild ratio [20][21][22]24,34,37,38,44,[47][48][49][50][51][52][54][55][56][57]80,83,; Table S2: Trait assignment for the 138 genera of phylum Rotifera [31,32,59,60,64,77,; Table S3: Rotifer genera with their traits and their cluster number as assigned by hierarchical, divisive clustering.…”

Climate change impacts on river discharge to the Sea of Marmara

“…Recent limited observations in the riverine waters that feeds the coastal waters of the Sea of Marmara point to high concentrations of DIN along the coastline: 350-600 (~450) μM in the Kocasu Delta, i.e., the Cross River observations from Tavsanoglu and Akbulut (2019) are averaged over the sampling period, leading to higher nutrient concentrations and enhanced algal production in the coastal waters and enclosed bays (Izmit, Bandırma, Gemlik; Figure 2) (Ozbayram et al, 2022).…”