Abstract
The species richness, composition, abundance, and biomass of pelagic rotifers were determined in 17 karst lakes of the “Lagunas de Montebello” National Park, Chiapas, Mexico. The species richness of the region (21 species) and single lakes (1–12 species) was smaller than that of other Mexican, tropical, and temperate lakes. It is worth noting the high dissimilarity in species composition—about half (52%) of the species were observed in only 1–3 lakes. A total of eight rotifer families, all from the Monogononta subclass, were recorded. Keratella americana was the species with the highest occurrence (13 lakes), followed by Ptygura sp. (8 lakes). The abundance (0 to 536 ind L−1) and biomass (0 to 21 µg L−1) of rotifers were low. The highest values of species richness, abundance, and biomass were found in eutrophic lakes, and the lowest in oligotrophic lakes. The low values of rotifer biodiversity, abundance, and biomass in the Montebello lakes are probably the product of the interaction of different factors—such as environmental homogeneity (all water bodies are karst lakes), the low availability of “good-quality” food, and predation by cyclopoid copepods in the eutrophic lakes, and the low availability of food, and competitive interference by calanoid copepods and cladocerans in the oligotrophic lakes.
Highlights
Species diversity of terrestrial ecosystems increases in the tropics, which results in high biodiversity in tropical rainforests [1]
Rotifer inventories of Mexican inland waters report species richness values of 10–125 in rivers [9,11], 7–60 in reservoirs [7,8,9], 10–65 in oligotrophic [10,45], and 35–80 in eutrophic lakes [9,12]; our 21 pelagic rotifer species richness for the PNLM lakes is on the lower limit of those ranges
It is noteworthy that the low biodiversity recorded in the pelagic rotifer assemblage from the lakes of the PNLM matches the low biodiversity reports for other biological assemblages of these same lakes
Summary
Species diversity of terrestrial ecosystems increases in the tropics, which results in high biodiversity in tropical rainforests [1]. Mexico is one of the 12 top megadiverse countries holding 70% of the vertebrate (amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals) and vascular plant diversity worldwide [2]; the studies of aquatic invertebrates in Mexican freshwaters is scant, and to date [3], it is undetermined whether these inland aquatic ecosystems display the same tendency of high biodiversity that terrestrial communities show [4,5]. The three studies found that the water bodies within the same geographic region (i.e., lake district) share few rotifer species in common [13,14,15]
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