Abstract

Summary Five meander lakes in the valley of the Rio Suia Missu were sampled during September to the end of November 1968. A total of 40 species of rotifers were found in the samples; 36 were assigned to species and five to their genera. The lakes were arranged in a sequence of presumed age, size and depth. The associations of rotifers in the youngest and deepest lakes were dominated by Brachionus gessneri. The older and shallower lakes had a greater variety of rotifiers, including several species of Lecane and Trichocerca. The greatest diversity of species was found in shallow water in the lake in the middle of the sequence. More species were found in all the lakes than would be expected from MacArthur's broken stick model with non-overlapping niches. The majority of the species (69%) were cosmopolitan, 17% were cosmotropical, and 14% were species known only from the Americas.

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