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Abstract
Ciliates are abundant microplankton that are widely distributed in the ocean. In this paper, the distribution patterns of ciliate diversity in the South China Sea (SCS) were analyzed by compiling community data from previous publications. Based on morphological identification, a total of 592 ciliate species have been recorded in the SCS. The ciliate communities in intertidal, neritic and oceanic water areas were compared in terms of taxonomy, motility and feeding habit composition, respectively. Significant community variation was revealed among the three areas, but the difference between the intertidal area and the other two areas was more significant than that between neritic and oceanic areas. The distributions of ciliates within each of the three areas were also analyzed. In the intertidal water, the community was not significantly different among sites but did differ among habitat types. In neritic and oceanic areas, the spatial variation of communities among different sites was clearly observed. Comparison of communities by taxonomic and ecological traits (motility and feeding habit) indicated that these traits similarly revealed the geographical pattern of ciliates on a large scale in the SCS, but to distinguish the community variation on a local scale, taxonomic traits has higher resolution than ecological traits. In addition, we assessed the relative influences of environmental and spatial factors on assembly of ciliate communities in the SCS and found that environmental selection is the major process structuring the taxonomic composition in intertidal water, while spatial processes played significant roles in influencing the taxonomic composition in neritic and oceanic water. Among ecological traits, environmental selection had the most important impact on distributions.
Highlights
Ciliates are common members of the microplankton, and usually dominate marine microzooplankton communities in terms of both species number and abundance (Azam and Malfatti, 2007; Lynn, 2008; De Vargas et al, 2015)
The ciliate community structure in the mesopelagic zone is mainly controlled by depth and geographic distance (Grattepanche et al, 2016b; Sun et al, 2019), while environmental selection exhibits a greater influence on ciliates than spatial factors in intertidal sandy sediments at continental scale (Pan et al, 2020)
The comparison of species richness among the three areas revealed that the intertidal area possesses a remarkably higher number of ciliate species than neritic and oceanic areas
Summary
Ciliates are common members of the microplankton, and usually dominate marine microzooplankton communities in terms of both species number and abundance (Azam and Malfatti, 2007; Lynn, 2008; De Vargas et al, 2015). Some researchers find that global ciliate diversity is relatively low and local diversity covers a very high proportion of global diversity (Fenchel et al, 1997; Fenchel and Finlay, 2004), while others find an extremely high global diversity and that the proportion of the global species pool found locally is only moderate (Pierce and Turner, 1993; Foissner et al, 2008; Agatha, 2011) To address this issue, it is essential to explore the mechanisms that determine the assembly of ciliate communities (Dolan et al, 2007; Doherty et al, 2010). The ciliate community structure in the mesopelagic zone is mainly controlled by depth and geographic distance (Grattepanche et al, 2016b; Sun et al, 2019), while environmental selection exhibits a greater influence on ciliates than spatial factors in intertidal sandy sediments at continental scale (Pan et al, 2020)
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