Abstract
Mesozooplankton communities in marine ecosystems are mainly influenced by both anthropogenic pollutants (e.g. nutrients and heavy metals) and natural variables (e.g. temperature, salinity and geographic distance). To achieve a deeper understanding of the effects of anthropogenic pollutants on mesozooplankton communities, we analyzed the community structure of mesozooplankton from 91 stations representing five typical estuarine regions in the Bohai Sea and assessed the relative importance of anthropogenic pollutants and natural variables by using multiple statistical approaches. Cd was identified as the leading pollutant for observed community variation among the five regions, followed by NH4-N and COD. Redundancy analysis (RDA) model demonstrated that mesozooplankton communities were largely determined by both anthropogenic pollutants and natural variables, and the indicator species of mesozooplankton also varied when responding to different factors. Variance partitioning analysis showed both anthropogenic pollutants and natural variables posed significant influences (ANOVA, P < 0.05) on the mesozooplankton community structure, but the explanatory power of anthropogenic pollutants overrode the natural variables. These observations highlighted the importance of anthropogenic pollutants in the shifts of zooplankton structures among different regions. Our results obtained in this study provided new insights into the mechanism of the influence of anthropogenic pollutants on mesozooplankton communities in estuarine areas.
Highlights
The estuarine ecosystems, which link the sea with freshwater habitats, are among the most ecologically and social-economically important globally[1,2]
When exploring the influence of anthropogenic pollutants on marine communities, we should consider the impact of natural variables, which may mask the ecological influence of anthropogenic pollutants[6,7,8,9,10]
Zooplankton assemblages consist of species highly sensitive to environmental pollutants such as nutrients and heavy metals, and their variation could be attributed to different levels of pollution in marine systems, such as estuarine systems[19,22,23] and coastal systems[24,25], making them good indicators to explore ecological effects of anthropogenic pollutants
Summary
The estuarine ecosystems, which link the sea with freshwater habitats, are among the most ecologically and social-economically important globally[1,2]. Mounting evidence demonstrated that natural variables including temperature, salinity and geographic distance play key roles in shaping species richness and abundance[10,11,12,13,14] Anthropogenic pollutants, such as nutrients and heavy metals, could influence biodiversity and geographical distribution of marine communities. We aimed to: (1) characterize the community structure of mesozooplankton in the typical Bohai estuarine regions, (2) identify the key factors responsible for local and regional community structure variation, and further (3) explore the respective ecological roles of anthropogenic pollutants and natural variables on community structure
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