Abstract
BackgroundNematodes are a very diverse and extremely abundant group of animals, but their occurrence in the tropics is surprisingly little understood. We investigated the meiofauna of epiphytic tank bromeliads in the lowlands of Panama with particular emphasis on nematodes.ResultsWe encountered 89 morphospecies of nematodes in 54 bromeliad tanks, which were sampled in the wet and the dry season. Rotifers were by far the most abundant group in both the dry and the wet season (with up to 960 individual ml−1), followed by nematodes, annelids and harpacticoid copepods. Individual plants hosted up to 25 nematode species. These nematodes represented a diversity of feeding guilds, suction-feeders and deposit-feeders being most abundant. The relative abundances of feeding-types of nematodes differed considerably in the wet and dry season. Both species richness and abundance were strongly correlated with the size of the phytotelms and the season, while species diversity assessed with the Shannon-index was affected by neither of the two.ConclusionThis is the first study with a particular focus on the diversity of nematodes in tank bromeliads. We document a meiofauna of considerable abundance and diversity, which suggests important functional roles in ecological processes such as decomposition, which in turn warrants further study.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12898-016-0069-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Nematodes are a very diverse and extremely abundant group of animals, but their occurrence in the tropics is surprisingly little understood
Plant size and amount of detritus The volume of detritus, which was only determined in the wet season, scaled with plant size (Fig. 1) in all four species, but the total amount was consistently larger in Werauhia sanguinolenta (ANCOVA, p = 0.04, Additional file 1: Table S2)
Only rotifers, nematodes and mites were found in all samples irrespective of season, mites were far less abundant than the first two groups
Summary
Nematodes are a very diverse and extremely abundant group of animals, but their occurrence in the tropics is surprisingly little understood. There are some indications that nematode communities in the tropics are less species-rich than those in temperate ecosystems, in contrast to the usual decrease in species numbers with latitude [2]. Such a conclusion may be premature and represent a sampling artefact: (1) only 10 of 134 published ecosystem surveys analysed in the review of Boag and Yeates [3] were from tropical latitudes. Nematodes represent an important link between microbenthos and macrobenthos, e.g., they do increase the activity of bacteria and serve as food for many other benthic organisms, like crustaceans and chironomids [24, 25]
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