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Environmental Drivers of Temporal and Spatial Fluctuations of Mesozooplankton Community in Daya Bay, Northern South China Sea

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Abstract

The response of zooplankton to the ecological environment in Daya Bay is unclear under the influence of both climate changes and anthropogenic activities on a seasonal to inter-annual scale. Based on monthly surveys and historical data, we found the zooplankton community had changed temporally and spatially. A total of 134 species was recorded during the study, and copepods dominated numerically in terms of diversity and abundance. Both copepods and cladocerans were the main contributors to zooplankton abundance. The community structure of zooplankton was temporally classified into the warm and cold groups, and spatially into the three groups located in the marine cage-culture area (MCCA), the outflow of nuclear power plants (ONPP) and unpolluted waters (UPW). The zooplankton was characterized by low biomass (dry weight), high diversity and abundance in the warm period in contrast to that in the cold period. Compared with the other two groups, the MCCA group of zooplankton showed high abundance, low diversity and biomass. Variations in dominant species were closely related to temperature, salinity and chlorophyll a concentration. Species diversity and dry weight decreased in comparison with 30 years ago, while zooplankton abundance increased. The seasonal variation in zooplankton was affected mainly by temperature that was controlled by monsoon, while the spatial difference in the community structure was probably due to eutrophication in the MCCA and thermal water discharge from ONPP. The zooplankton community is undergoing great changes with the tendency of miniaturization and gelatinization in recent 30 years in Daya Bay.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 31971432, 41976112), the Key Special Project for Introduced Talents Team of Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou) (Nos. GML2019ZD0401, GML 2019ZD0405), the Science and Technology Basic Resources Investigation Program of China (No. 2017FY20 1404) and the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province, China (No. 2020B1212060058).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Tropical Marine Bio-Resources and Ecology (LMB), Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Applied Marine Biology (LMB), South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510301, China

    Kaizhi Li, Liangmin Huang, Yehui Tan & Xingyu Song

  2. Southern Marine Science and Engineering Guangdong Laboratory (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, 511458, China

    Kaizhi Li, Yehui Tan & Xingyu Song

  3. School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China

    Jie Ma

  4. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Liangmin Huang & Yehui Tan

  5. Nansha Marine Ecological and Environmental Research Station, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510301, China

    Xingyu Song

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  1. Kaizhi Li
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Correspondence to Xingyu Song.

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Li, K., Ma, J., Huang, L. et al. Environmental Drivers of Temporal and Spatial Fluctuations of Mesozooplankton Community in Daya Bay, Northern South China Sea. J. Ocean Univ. China 20, 1013–1026 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-021-4602-x

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