title: Do early colonization patterns of periphytic ciliate fauna reveal environmental quality status in coastal waters?
abstract: The feasibility for developing a protocol to assess marine water quality based on early colonization features of periphytic ciliate fauna was studied in coastal waters of the Yellow Sea, northern China. The ciliate communities with 3-28-day ages were collected monthly at four stations with a spatial gradient of environmental stress from August 2011 to July 2012. The spatial patterns of both early (3-7 days) and mature (>10 days) communities of the ciliates represented significant differences among the four stations, and were significantly correlated with environmental variables, especially nutrients and chemical oxygen demand (COD). Seven and eight dominant species were significantly correlated with nutrients or COD within the early and mature communities, respectively. The species richness indices were strongly correlated with nutrients, especially in mature communities. These findings suggest that it is possible to assess the status of water quality using early colonization features of periphytic ciliate fauna in coastal waters.
authors.affiliation: Department of Marine Ecology, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266003, China, henglongxu@126.com.
authors.forename: Henglong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jiang
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D044822:Biodiversity; D057919:Biological Oxygen Demand Analysis; D002681:China; D016798:Ciliophora / Q000254:growth & development*; D004777:Environment; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009792:Oceans and Seas; D013045:Species Specificity; D060753:Water Quality / Q000592:standards*