A human challenge: discovering and understanding continental copepod habitats

Abstract

Copepods have invaded an astonishing variety of aquatic and humid continental environments and microhabitats. The historical process of discovery and investigation of copepods in ephemeral, acid and thermal waters, subterranean waters and sediments, phytotelmata, humid soils, leaf litter, human-modified and artificial habitats, and other situations extends over about 130 years. The methods developed to collect in and study these habitats range from simple nets to elaborate pumping systems and diving techniques. Investigations of non-lacustrine continental environments have contributed greatly to the understanding of aspects of copepod biology such as reproduction, diapause and population dynamics. Questions regarding faunistics and biological diversity, biogeography, evolution, transport and introductions of alien species have also been informed by such studies. This article briefly reviews these topics, and provides detailed lists of records from some of the less well-known kinds of habitats.

First record of Phyllognathopus bassoti Rouch, 1972 from India, with remarks on the family Phyllognathopodidae Gurney, 1932 (Crustacea, Copepoda, Harpacticoida)

“…It is the sole copepod, co-occuring with oligochaetes, chironomid larvae, odonate nymphs and mites in the algal mass that accumulates at the bottom of the reservoir. Algal scrapings from the inner walls yielded P. bassoti, suggesting the tendency FIRST RECORD OF PHYLLOGNATHOPUS BASSOTI FROM INDIA (9)of the species to crawl or climb out of water, as observed in other copepod species (see Reid 2001). What is remarkable is the persistence of this species in the above reservoir, notwithstanding periodic treatmans with bleaching powder.…”

“…If experiments on drying and recovering parts of the subterranean freshwater communities succeed, they would certainly change our present perception of their complex zoogeography. Also, as Reid (2001) rightly observed, «further pursuit of imaginative collecting and ecologically oriented studies on copepods living at the natural extremes permissible to these basically aquatic forms are bound to provide additional insights on many aspects of their fundamental biology». Phyllognathopus bassoti has been found consistently and in fairly good numbers, mainly as adults (females outnumbering males) along with its late copepodids, on several occasions in a domestic reservoir, fed from a bore-well, at Guntur (see Material and methods).…”

Are botanical gardens a risk for zooplankton invasions?

“…Additionally, while we sampled ponds, a number of studies have recorded copepods from water pools in bromeliads (Reid 2001;Reid and Hribar 2006) and from the soil of plant nurseries (Reid 1999;Bruno et al 2005). This infers that some gardens do possess nonindigenous species available for spread, and that there are other means by which small aquatic animals may be transported in association with plants among public gardens.…”

Collecting and processing non-planktonic copepods

“…They also inhabit groundwater, cave pools of all sizes, and other subterranean habitats. Reid (2001) reviewed some of the more unusual habitats utilised by freshwater copepods including: ephemeral waterbodies, rock hollows, phytotelmata (pitcher plants, bromeliad pools, tree holes), leaf litter, damp moss, and moist soils.…”