Composition and variability of the rotifers community in a tropical reservoir

Abstract

The rotifer community from the hydroelectric power plant's reservoir of Tucuruí­­, Northern Brazil, was studied as the rotifer community composition and the answer to it in relation to spatial and temporal variations in the region, correlating them with phytoplankton. Samples of rotifer and phytoplankton communities were collected on the surface with plankton nets (60 and 20 µm respectively) in ten locations distributed upstream and downstream of the UHE and during both rainy and dry seasons. In relation to the frequency, 29 rotifer and 19 phytoplankton taxa were considered very frequent, from which the rotifers Keratella americana, K. cochlearis and Rotaria sp., and the microalgae Eudorina elegans, Micrasterias radiata and Microcystis aeruginosa were the dominant species. The ecological indexes estimated here showed no significant spatial and temporal variations, suggesting that the rotifer community is possibly resilient to seasonal disturbances, since most taxa sampled distributes uniformly in the area.