Diversity of crustacean zooplankton in riparian wetlands: Colonization and egg banks

Abstract

Levee breaks from the Great Flood of 1993 opened up hundreds of new scour basins in the floodplain of the Missouri River. Subsequent floods, with sediment erosion and deposition, cause these lakes to be temporary features of the landscape. Within two years of the 1993 flood, the majority of zooplankton species from the region had colonized these sites. A positive correlation between species richness and connectivity indicates that sites having higher exchange with the river tended to have more species present, a result which is consistent with higher colonization rates to these sites. Hatching experiments from the sediments revealed that remnant oxbows have a highly diverse egg bank, whereas the young scour sites have limited species and numbers present. The depauperate egg bank implies that long-term population dynamics of the scours may be more dependent upon repeated colonizations than are lakes with regular emergence from the egg bank.

Department(s)

Biology
Geography, Geology, and Planning

Document Type

Article

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009918703131

Keywords

Dispersal, Great Flood of 1993, Missouri River, Oxbows, Scour basins

Publication Date

1-1-2000

Journal Title

Aquatic Ecology

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