River ecosystems are among the most affected habitats globally by human activities, such as the release of chemical pollutants. However, it remains largely unknown how and to what extent many communities such as zooplankton are affected by these environmental stressors in river ecosystems. Here, we aim to determine major factors responsible for shaping community structure of zooplankton in heav...

Rotifer samples were obtained from 29 localities in northern Guatemala and central-southern Belize during March 2000 and June 2001. A total of 119 species were identified. Ten selected taxa are illustrated and commented: Euchlanis semicarinata, Lepadella apsicora, L. cryphaea, Lecane curvicornis f. lofuana, L. whitfordi, Monommata maculata, Scaridium bostjani, Trichocerca elongata f. braziliens...

Heterogeneity among prey in their susceptibility to predation is a potentially important stabilizer of predator-prey interactions, reducing the magnitude of population oscillations and enhancing total prey population abundance. When microevolutionary responses of prey populations occur at time scales comparable to population dynamics, adaptive responses in prey defense can, in theory, stabilize...

Community biomass is often less variable than the biomasses of populations within the community, yet attempts to implicate compensatory dynamics between populations as a cause of this relationship often fail. In part, this may be due to the lack of appropriate metrics for variability, but there is also great potential for large-scale processes such as seasonality or longer-term environmental ch...

The tropical and subtropical floodplain lakes are hypothesized as one of the globally interesting rotifer rich ecosystems. Our study indicating biodiverse Rotifera ten ‘slightly acidic to circum-neutral, moderately hard-water de-mineralized’ (beels) Majuli River Island Brahmaputra river basin northeast India mendorses this hypothesis. Total richness, richness important families community simila...

The evolution of sex is a classic problem in evolutionary biology. While this topic has been the focus of much theoretical work, there is a serious dearth of empirical data. A simple yet fundamental question is how sex affects the mean and variance in fitness. Despite its importance to the theory, this type of data is available for only a handful of taxa. Here, we report two experiments in whic...

Juvenile hormone (JH) and serotonin (5-HT) were previously shown to enhance mictic (sexual) female production of the rotifer Brachionus plicatilis in batch cultures. To explore the basis of these effects, experiments were conducted on isolated individuals. JH treatment of maternal rotifers with 5 and 50 µgml(-1) (18.8 and 187.7 µM) resulted in significantly higher (P<0.05) mictic female product...

Zooplankton abundance, composition and environmental parameters were monitored in two tropical rivers over a twenty month period. The data was subjected to cluster, factor and correlation analysis to determine the grouping pattern of zooplankton and their relationship to environmental parameters. Environmental factors in Ogunpa and Ona rivers--included buffering capacity, trace metal ions, pH-t...

Rotifers present a high diversity in freshwater ecosystems. This study registered 11 genera and 42 species, new records for the Upper Paraná River floodplain. These results showed an increase in rotifer diversity in this ecosystem from 184 to 230 species. Among them some were registered only in the rivers and others in the lagoons. Thirty-seven species occurred in the littoral zone and 34 speci...