Structure of the Zooplankton Community in Sıddıklı Küçükboğaz Dam Lake, Türkiye: The İmportance of Environmental Factors

Abstract

The zooplankton fauna of Sıddıklı Küçükboğaz Dam Lake, located in Kırşehir city in Turkey, was researched as monthly between September 2015 and August 2016. A total of 24 major zooplankton species was determined. Zooplanktonic organisms were presented by three main groups: Rotifera (75%), Cladocera (21%) and Copepoda (4%). The minimum and maximum number of species were revealed in May (4 species) and April (12 species), respectively. Rotifera was the most abundant taxon dominated mainly by the species Keratella cochlearis, Polyarthra dolichoptera, Asplanchna priodonta and Synchaeta pectinata. Brachionus: Trichocerca quotient value of 1.00 was estimated. This result has clearly showed that the Sıddıklı Küçükboğaz Dam lake is oligotrophic. All species of Rotifera, Cladocera and Copepoda group are new records for this dam lake. The fundamental data of the Sıddıklı Küçükboğaz Dam Lake are provided, and the relationships between zooplankton and environmental parameters have researched in this study. Also, this study was supported by academic basics for monitoring a reservoir in Central Anatolia. Redundancy analysis (RDA) showed that all environmental indicators accounted for 34.1% total variance of zooplankton. Besides, RDA results demonstrated that zooplankton abundance is correlated with biological oxygen demand, water temperature, total suspended solid, ammonium and total ammonia nitrogen. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Shiraz University.