Abstract
Meteor crater ponds are extremely rare types of water body and consequently their environment, along with inhabiting fauna, are poorly recognised. We investigated the zooplankton community structure of three meteorite ponds. Their hydroperiod is usually the longest during the spring season, therefore the study-time covered the months between April and June. Within the craters we found 140 zooplankton species, which contributed to 20% of rotifer, 19% of cladoceran, 15% of copepod and 3% of ostracod Polish species. Our results showed a high diversity of zooplankton inhabiting these temporary ecosystems, even though we examined craters before the optimum of macrophyte development, which supports increase of invertebrate species richness. Only 43% of the species were common for all three ponds, although the meteorite craters were located very close to each other, possess the same catchment area and all were Ashless. The high specificity of each pond was underlined by a high number of distinctive species (containing almost 30% of the total taxonomic structure). Zooplankton mainly consisted of eurytopic and common species, with representatives of families Brachionidae, Daphnidae and Cyclopidae having the highest frequency. However, over 10% of all species (e.g., Lecane elsa and Tretocephala ambigua) were determined as rare in Poland. Therefore these meteorite ponds are of a high conservation value despite the close proximity of a large urban agglomeration.
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This work was supported by the Polish Committee for Scientific Research (KBN) under grant no. N N305 042739.
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Świdnicki, K., Basińska, A.M., Pronin, M. et al. Meteorite crater ponds as source of high zooplankton biodiversity. Biologia 71, 1361–1368 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1515/biolog-2016-0162
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/biolog-2016-0162