A comparison of benthic meiofaunal communities in the oldest European lake

Inventory of the benthic eukaryotic diversity in the oldest European lake

“…The higher diversity of eukaryotes in the deep profundal sediment than in the littoral habitats contradicted with our main hypothesis but also the long-standing literature on Lake Ohrid (Albrecht & Wilke, 2008;Stanković, 1960). That result also differed from a meiofauna-based study of the exact same samples, which found the profundal to be less diverse than the littoral (Wilden et al, 2020).…”

“…The profundal community was more homogeneous, as previously also determined for meiofauna (Wilden et al, 2020), but also more diverse than the littoral communities. The differences in the communities of the three habitats were caused by multiple OTUs or species, and in some cases entire orders, that were limited to or more strongly associated with one versus the other habitats.…”

“…The sampling sites in this study were located along Lake Ohrid's northern shoreline for littoral and periphyton samples, and along a transect within a flat‐bottom section of the lake for the profundal samples (see Wilden et al., 2020 for a detailed map of sampling points).…”

“…These differences in the stability and complexity of the habitats usually translate to the establishment of specific communities (Mougi & Kondoh, 2012;Wilden et al, 2020).…”

“…By contrast, the profundal zone, defined as the area receiving <1% of photosynthetically active radiation, is a relatively stable habitat, with a constant temperature and homogeneous sediment composition (Martens, 1994 ; Rundle et al., 2002 ). These differences in the stability and complexity of the habitats usually translate to the establishment of specific communities (Mougi & Kondoh, 2012 ; Wilden et al., 2020 ).…”