The ecology of ostracodes (Ostracoda, Crustacea) in western Mongolia

Abstract

Aquatic biota in Central Asia witnesses and faces a changing environment. Because ostracodes contribute to both extant and fossil lacustrine diversity, they can be used to track evolution in water quality. Living ostracode communities in a variety of aquatic habitats of western Mongolia were analyzed in relation to environmental and hydrochemical variables of those habitats, based on presence/absence data from net samples. The sampled water bodies represent broad gradients in ionic concentration and composition. Ostracode community composition of springs differed from all other sampled habitats, which was also reflected in CCA analyses. Our data indicated that the ostracode fauna of western Mongolia shows a high response to calcium content, alkalinity, salinity, temperature, nutrients, and altitude. Species composition and diversity seem to be determined by solute evolution dominated by Ca-depletion. In general, this seems to be an important regulator of lacustrine ostracode species composition in several semi-arid regions. Binary logistic regression was used to predict the occurrence of the most common species with a minimal set of environmental variables. The resulting models showed on average low performance, and mainly demonstrated the potential of such modeling to predict the distribution of typical bio-indicator species

Distributional patterns of non-marine Ostracoda (Crustacea) in Adiyaman Province (Turkey)

“…Thus, such results cannot be generalized at the moment. Similar to some of the previous studies (e.g., Sar, 2007;Van der Meeren et al, 2010;Szlauer-Łukaszewska, 2014;Uc¸ak et al, 2014), four species (I. inermis, I. bradyi, H. incongruens and D. stevensoni) are located relatively closer to the centre of diagram (Fig. 3).…”

“…They inhabit a variety of aquatic bodies ranging from fresh to saline waters (e.g., lakes, troughs (like narrow canal designed to hold water), ponds, springs, caves) (Delorme, 1991;Yavuzatmaca et al, 2012;Ku¨lko¨ylu¨og˘lu et al, 2013) and are used as bio-indicator of water quality (Delorme, 1991). Published studies are available describing ostracod habitat preferences (Benzie, 1989;Du¨gel et al, 2008), habitat similarities (Sar and Ku¨lko¨ylu¨og˘lu, 2010), and ecology and distribution (Teeter, 1973;Malmqvist et al, 1997;Mezquita et al, 1999;Kiss, 2007;Pieri et al, 2009;Van der Meeren et al, 2010;Ku¨lko¨ylu¨og˘lu et al, 2013). However, with the exception of Heip (1976), there is no specific research on the distributional patterns of ostracods using Poisson probabilities.…”

On some Recent non-marine ostracods from northern China, with description of one new species

“…Aside from the type locality, it was also reported from a lake in western Mongolia (Van der Meeren et al, 2010). In the present study, a dense bisexual population was found in site X36 of Inner Mongolia, and several females were also found at site X4 (table I).…”

Variation in ostracod (Crustacea, Ostracoda) communities in the alluvial valley of the upper Paraná River (Brazil) in relation to substrate

“…Since only a limited number of variables were measured in the present study, other, unmeasured factors could have even more pronounced effects in this category (for example nutrients by Van der Meeren et al, 2010). Higuti et al (2009c), however, showed that hydrodynamic fluctuations of systems and habitats are more important to darwinulid distribution than abiotic variables of the water bodies.…”

“…Comparable surveys have yielded comparable diversities: 47 ostracod species from 33 European lakes (Viehberg, 2006), 29 species from 36 Canadian lakes (Bunbury & Gajewski, 2005), 30 species from 100 lakes in Tibet (Mischke et al, 2007) and 47 species from 106 samples in Western Mongolia (including lakes, springs, streams and pools) ( Van der Meeren et al, 2010). Yet, this is less than one could have expected and this for several reasons.…”