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Living and Dead Ostracod Assemblages in a Coastal Mediterranean Wetland

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Abstract

The Mediterranean coast holds a wide and rich variety of wetlands, some of which are protected by international laws, but at the same time have been historically subjected to threatening activities such as agriculture, pollution and aquifer overexploitation. As part of a conservation and restoration project at the Marjal dels Moros coastal wetland (Eastern Iberian Peninsula) we initiated investigations to begin to characterise aquatic environments, and evaluate changes in the system experienced in recent times. To this aim, we collected four seasonal samples at seven points of the Marjal dels Moros wetland, varying in salinity, permanence and other environmental conditions, and studied the recent past (early modern to contemporary remains) and present (living) communities of Ostracoda. We found relatively poor species richness overall, possibly related to the brackish and seasonal character of large parts of the wetland. Of the seven species encountered the most common ostracods were tolerant to these stressing conditions: Heterocypris salina, Sarscypridopsis aculeata, Ilyocypris gibba and Cypridopsis vidua. A comparison of dead and living assemblages showed no significant differences, suggesting that the overall ostracod metacommunity was resilient to the perturbations experienced in the area, despite some particular locations recording notable shifts in their communities during the sampling period.

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Acknowledgments

The study was mainly funded by the Conselleria de Medi Ambient de la Generalitat Valenciana and the “Life” European environmental program. Partial funding has been received from the Spanish Ministries of Science and Innovation, and of Economy and Competitiveness through projects ECOINVADER (CGL2008-01296/BOS) and ECOLAKE (CGL2012-38909). We are grateful to the Microscopy Unit of the SCSIE-UVEG for their help with the SEM. We would like to thank Ignacio Lacomba and Yuri Rueda for providing facilities and for their help during fieldwork, and two anonymous reviewers and D. J. Horne for their suggestions to earlier versions of this work.

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  1. Department of Microbiology and Ecology and “Cavanilles” Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, University of València, Av. Dr. Moliner, 50, E-46100, Burjassot, Spain

    L. Valls, L. Zamora, J. Rueda & F. Mesquita-Joanes

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  1. L. Valls
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Valls, L., Zamora, L., Rueda, J. et al. Living and Dead Ostracod Assemblages in a Coastal Mediterranean Wetland. Wetlands 36, 1–9 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13157-015-0709-4

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