Distribution of ciliates in relation to environmental factors along the coastline of the Gulf of Gabes, Tunisia

Spatial pattern of ciliates in relation to environmental factors at Sfax south coast (Gulf of Gabes, Tunisia)

“…During this study, the recorded values of temperature and salinity were typical of arid to semi-arid zones (9). The lowest value of pH was observed in the southern stations especially in station 17, in front of the outlet effluent of the industrial park, ONAS and the phosphate treatment plant (SIAPE).…”

“…Thus, high chlorophyll-a concentration together with an N/P ratio lower than the Redfield ratio indicate that this ecosystem is under pollution pressure (31). Spirotrichea was the predominant class in the south coast of Sfax, which is a common feature in many aquatic ecosystems (3,9,(32)(33)(34). During our study, Tintinnidsac counted for a large proportion (61%) of the ciliate communities.…”

“…This result suggests that T.beroidea (medium-size = 39 µm) performed better than other species probably owing to more flexible adaptive strategies, to particular environmental conditions (wind mixing, light,..) and the shallowness of the water sampling (9).According to Pérez et al(42)the copepods preferentially consume small ciliates. Thus, the lowest abundance of the small ciliate, <30 µm, which accounted for about 28% of total biomass may be due to the grazing pressure of mesozoo plankton, such as copepods (9). The diversity index, namely Shannon-Weaver diversity index, can serve as an indicator that the ecosystem is under the influence of pollution stress or eutrophication (43) and higher values for these indices indicate better water quality status (44,45).…”

“…They play a crucial role inthe functioning of microbial food webs as important mediators of energy transfer from low to higher trophic levels (3)(4)(5). Owing to their rapid growth and delicate external membranes, ciliates react more quickly to environmental changes than most other eukaryotic organisms (6,7)and the relationships between ciliate sand environmental conditions were increasingly investigated (7)(8)(9)(10).…”

Spatial pattern of the planktonic ciliate community and its relationship with the environment in spring in the northern Beibu Gulf, South China Sea

“…So far there have been several studies on the spatial patterns of marine planktonic ciliates (Sanders 1987, Montagnes et al 1988, Zhang and Wang 2000, Kchaou et al 2009, Jiang et al 2011, Kim et al 2012. There is, however, limited information about marine ciliate communities in China, and relevant research in China has mostly been conducted in the Bohai and Yellow Seas (Song and Bradbury 1998, Zhang et al 2008, Jiang et al 2011, Yu et al 2011) and the South China Sea (Gómez 2007, Su et al 2007, Feng et al 2010, Liu et al 2010.…”