Plankton and Bottom Communities in the Saline Rivers of Lake Elton Basin: Statistical Analysis of Dependences

Abstract

Hydrological, hydrochemical, and hydrobiological data for five saline rivers of the arid Lake Elton region were analyzed. We found that interactions between plankton and benthic communities, in particular, between macrozoobenthos, meiobenthos and zooplankton, created mixed ecological groups of species. Abundances of plankton and bottom communities significantly correlated, which indicated that there is a close relationship between them due to biotic interactions and their similar responses to the effects of environmental factors. Multidimensional scaling and cluster analyses, the construction of hierarchical trees and species diversity models, the spatial correlation Mantel test, etc., were used to study the structure of communities in strongly disbalanced ecosystems of highly mineralized rivers. Indicator species were established by the TWINSPAN procedure. Our results demonstrated that plankton and bottom communities of the saline rivers can be represented as specific consortia or structural units of the river ecosystems.