A comparative survey of the freshwater copepods of two different regions of the Central Palaearctic: European and Siberian

Abstract

We studied the taxonomic composition and the ecological characteristics of freshwater copepods collected from two lakes and 41 water bodies of the European northeast tundra and from 39 lakes in the northern taiga of Central Siberia. Both regions are situated beyond the Arctic Circle (Russia). Up to seven planktonic and 13 benthic species were recorded in the European tundra lakes and 27 species occurred in the small tundra water bodies. The taiga lakes of the Siberian region harboured 31 species. We confirmed the exclusively European distribution of Bryocamptus zschokkei komi Borutzky and the restricted distribution of Leptodiaptomus angustilobus (Sars) and Neutrodiaptomus pachypoditus (Rylov) in Asian ponds. Overall, we found a higher diversity of calanoids in the Siberian taiga than in the European tundra region. In addition, our results show that the biomass of particular copepod species, but not the total copepod biomass, is related to the surface area of lakes, size of small water bodies, the ecological category, pH, temperature, oxygen concentration and metal content.

Keywords:

• planktonic copepods
• benthic copepods
• tundra lakes
• taiga lakes
• small water bodies

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr Maria Baturina (Institute of Biology, Komi Scientific Centre, Ural Branch, Russian Academy of Science) for providing copepod specimens from benthic samples collected from Kharbeyskie Lakes. Dr. Iliada V. Gribovskaya helped in the processes derived from the chemical analysis of water from the Siberian lakes. The work was supported by joint projects of Ural and Siberian Branches of Russian Academy of Science (no. 12-C-4-1011 and no. 8), Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Science (no. 12-4-7-004-ARCTICA) and RFBR (no. 11-05-00246-a).