Saturação em comunidades zooplanctônicas de ambientes perenes e temporários: uma abordagem experimental

Abstract

Many studies about species saturation try to find out the relative role of the local and regional factors on the communities structure. Regarding to zooplankton communities, the results obtained are very divergent requiring the filling of certain gaps. One of these gaps is on the comparison between different types of environments, like perennial and temporary which have communities with very different features. Temporary ponds are periodically affected by drought events and, considering the aquatic organisms, this is one of the strongest disturbs that they experienced because it imposes physiological and behavioral restrictions. Based on these facts, the principal hypothesis of this study is that temporary ponds have unsaturated zooplankton communities while permanent ponds have saturated zooplankton communities. To test it, an experiment was made in mesocosms where the communities of both ponds were manipulated as well as the dispersion event. The results indicate that both communities are saturated and therefore local factors are predominantly more important than the dispersion (regional factor) on the structuring of these communities. Among these local factors, the abiotic factors act as species selectors filters and seems to be more relevant than the biotic interactions with the resident species.