文章基本信息

标题：The dark side of springs: what drives small-scale spatial patterns of subsurface meiofaunal assemblages?
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作者：Barbara Fiasca ; Fabio Stoch ; Marie-Josè Olivier 等
期刊名称：Journal of limnology
印刷版ISSN：1129-5767
电子版ISSN：1723-8633
出版年度：2014
卷号：73
期号：1
DOI：10.4081/jlimnol.2014.848
出版社：Istituto italiano di idrobiologia
摘要：Springs are amongst the most relevant Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems (GDEs) and are key research environments in freshwater ecology and biology.The strict dependency on ground water of surface spring biodiversity is well known, whereas the biodiversity occurring below the spring is very poorly known.This study analyzes copepod assemblages in the subsurface habitat of a karstic rheo-limnocrenic spring in relation to seventeen environmental parameters.Subsurface copepod assemblages were sensitive to microspatial variation in habitat structure, and species distributions were mostly driven by groundwater flowpath and substratum type, resulting in biologically distinct limnocrenic and rheocrenic sectors at the spring system scale.Habitat patchiness was reflected in differences in the microdistribution of subsurface copepods, stygobiotic assemblages being more sensitive to the measured environmental gradients than non-stygobiotic ones.In spite of the apparent stability of spring environments, copepods, as a target group, performed well as descriptors of sediment texture and hydrodynamics, and may offer relevant information for a better understanding of the potential changes generated by anthropogenic disturbance on these ecosystems..
关键词：Copepoda; small-scale ecology; groundwater; springs; GDE.