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Published on: September 13, 2019
Bioassessment of water quality status using a potential bioindicator based on functional groups of planktonic
Henglong Xu1, Jiang Yong1, Guangjian Xu2
1Department of Marine Ecology, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266003, China.
Abstract:
The feasibility of a potential ecological indicator based on functional groups of planktonic ciliates for bioassessment of water quality status were studied in a bay, northern Yellow Sea. Samples were biweekly collected at five stations with different water quality status during a 1-year period. The multivariate approach based on "bootstrap-average" analysis was used to summarize the spatial variation in functional structure of the samples. The functional patterns represented a significant spatial variability, and were significantly correlated with the changes of nutrients (mainly nitrate nitrogen, NO3-N), alone or in combination with dissolve oxygen and salinity among five stations. The functional diversity represented a clear spatial variation among five stations, and was found to be significantly related to the nutrient NO3-N. According to the results, we suggest that the ecological parameter based on functional groups of planktonic ciliates may be used as a potential bioindicator of water quality status in marine ecosystems.
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