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Spatial niches of dominant zooplankton species in Sanmen Bay, Zhejiang Province of East China.

XU Xiao-qun1,2, ZENG Jiang-ning2, CHEN Quan-zhen2, LIU Jing-jing2, DU Ping2, WANG Gui-zhong1   

  1. (1College of Ocean & Earth Sciences, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, Fujian, China; 2Key Laboratory of Marine Ecosystem and Biogeochemistry, Second Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic Administration, Hangzhou 310012,China)
  • Online:2013-03-18 Published:2013-03-18

Abstract: Ecological niche has close relations with inter-species competition and resources utilization, and thus, can be used as an indicator to symbolize the resources utilization capability of certain groups of related species. In this paper, the niche breadth and overlap of the dominant zooplankton species in the Sanmen Bay of Zhejiang were determined by Shannon’〖KG-*3〗s formula and Petraitis index, respectively, and the differentiation of the niche was studied by canonical correspondence analysis (CCA), aiming to approach the distribution features of coastal zooplankton and related affecting factors in the Bay. In the study area, some coastal species such as Zonosagitta bedoti, Centropages dorsispinatus, and brachyuran larvae had wider niche breadth than the pelagic species such as Flaccisagitta enflata and Pseudeuphausia sinica, and the species of different groups with prey-predator relation had a greater niche overlap than those of the same groups without this relation. The CCA analysis showed that the spatial distribution of the zooplankton was more affected by water temperature, salinity, and chlorophyll a content rather than nutrients. The spatial niche of the zooplankton species was correlated with their living habit, interspecies competition, and prey- predator relationship.