Phytoplankton Species Diversity of 27 Lakes And
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Phytoplankton species diversity of 27 lakes and ponds of Costa Rica (Central America) by Gerardo Umana V. A thesis submitted to the Department of Biological Sciences in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science July 1985 Brock University St. Catharines, Ontario ~ Gerardo Umana v., 1985 2. Abstract The literature on species diversity of phytoplankton of tropical lakes is scarce, and for the main part comes from studies of the big lakes in Africa, or deep lakes in South America, leaving a gap in the information about small shallow tropical lakes. In the present work the phytoplankton species composition and diversity of 27 shallow lakes and ponds in Costa Rica (Central America) was studied. The species composition was found to agree with other studies of tropical lakes, with a dominance of Chlorophyta, Cyanophyta, or in some cases Bacillariophyta or Euglenophyta; and a general paucity of Chrysophyta and Cryptophyta. Species richness varied considerably among the lakes, and tended to decrease with an increase in lake elevation. A low evenness in the species abundances was found, with one or more species outnumbering the rest by several orders of magnitude. Individual species abundances and species composition was found to vary with time in Rio Cuarto Lake, a meromictic lake situated in a region with low seasonal change in precipitation. In comparison with the phytoplankton of temperate lakes, the phytoplankton of the tropical lakes studied tended to have a lower evenness of species abundances, although species richness may be similar to temperate figures in some cases. Diversity indices sensitive to changes in the abundance of rare species tend to be higher in the tropical lakes studied; diversity indices sensitive to changes in the numbers of abundant species tend to be similar between the temperate and tropical lakes examined. J. Acknowledgements I wish to express my gratitude to Dr. Manuel M. Murillo who made possible the collection of samples in Costa Rica. To Mr. Hernan Chavez for his help in the field sampling during 1984. It is also my wish to thank Dr. William Bussing and Dr. Ricardo Soto for their help in the collection of data; Dr. Mike Dickman and Dr. Ralph Morris for their advice and encouragement during different stages of my work; Dr. R.H. Collins, who kindly allowed me to make use of his unpublished phytoplankton data of Ontario lakes. This research was made possible by a grant to Dr. M. Dickman from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. 4. Table of Contents Page Abstract 2 Acknowaledgements 3 Table of Contents 4 List of Tables 6 List of Figures 9 List of Plates 12 Introduction 14 I) Purpose of the study 14 II) Species diversity; its definition 16 III) Explanation of species diversity patterns 19 A) Theory of spatial heterogeneity 21 B) Stability theory of species diversity 23 a) Climatic stability or temporal heterogeneity 24 b) Community stability and equilibrium of populations 28 C) Competition, niches and species diversity 30 D) Productivity and species diversity 33 IV) Indices to measure species diversity 35 V) Interpretation of Hill's diversity numbers 41 Site and Climatic description 45 I) Description of lakes 45 A) Lakes sampled during 11983 and 1984 45 i) San Joaqu!n Lagoon 45 ii) R!o Cuarto Lake 48 iii) Lake Fraijanes 48 iv) Barba Lake 49 B) Lakes for which samples were kept at the University of Waterloo Museum 50 i) Tres de Junio pond 50 ii) Para!so pond (Dona Ana) 50 iii) Cach! reservoir 50 iv) La Sabana pond 51 v) Ojo de Agua lake 51 C) Nunez tilapia ponds 51 II) Weather description 51 Methods 58 I) Sampling 58 II) Settling 59 III) Counting 60 IV) Estimation of accuracy of counts 63 A) Species-Area Curves 63 B) Effect if count size and total density on count accuracy 64 C) Effect of replicated counts 64 Results 66 Page I) Phytoplankton composition 66 A) Lakes sampled in 1983 with a depth-integrating sampler 66 i) Barba Lake 66 ii) Fraijanes Lake 71 iii) San Joaqu!n Lagoon 73 B) Lakes included in the set from the Univ. of Waterloo Mus. 77 i) Tres de Junio pond 77 ii) Para!so pond (Dona Ana) 81 iii) La Sabana pond 82 iv) Cach! Reservoir 86 v) Ojo de Agua lake 87 C) Samples from R!o Cuarto Lake 91 D) Samples from the Nunez tilapia ponds 105 II) Diversity Number values 119 A) Altitudinal variation of diversity 123 B) Temporal variation in R{o Cuarto Lake 132 Discussion 137 I) Species Composition 137 A) Change in species composition with altitude 140 B) Temporal variation in R!o Cuarto Lake 142 II) Diversity indices and species abundance curves 143 A) Evenness of the species abundance distributions 143 B) Altitudinal changes in diversity values 144 C) Species abundance curves 146 D) Comparison with other lakes 148 i) Species Richness 148 ii) Evenness of species abundances 151 Summary and Conclusions 151 Literature cited 154 Appendix I Results of tests for accuracy and completeness of counts 165 I) Species Area Curves 165 a) Results 165 b) Discussion and interpretation 167 II) Analysis of the effects of dilution and the effect of scanning area 169 a) Results 169 1) Counts of Pteromonas rectangularis 169 2) Count of Crucigenia tetrapedia 171 b) Discussion and interpretation 171 III) Analysis of replicate counts 175 a) Results 175 b) Discussion and interpretation 175 Appendix II List of species found per lake 185 6. List of Tables Table page 1. Number of species per major taxonomic group for each 67 sample from 27 Costa Rican lakes and ponds 2. Relative abundance (% of total number of cells) of the 68 major taxonomic groups of phytoplankton for each sample from 27 Costa Rican lakes and ponds 3. List of species with proportional abundance greater than 72 1.0% of the total number of cells (TNC*) for Barba lake 4. List of species with proportional abundance greater than 72 1.0"/. of TNC* for Fraijanes Lake 5. List of species with proportional abundance greater than 74 1.0"/. of TNC* for San Joquin lagoon 6. List of most abundant species in Tres de Junio pond 78 (Percent abundance greater than 1.0% of TNC*) 7. List of species with a percent abundance greater than 1.0% 78 of TNC* for Paraiso pond (Dona Ana) 8. List of species with a percent abundance greater than 1.0% 83 of TNC* in La Sabana pond 9. List of species with a proportional abundance greater than 83 1.0% of TNC for Cachi Reservoir (TNC= 1110755) 10. List of Most abundant species (percent abundance greater 88 than 1.0% of TNC) for Ojo de Agua lake (TNC= 80596) 11. List of species with a proportional abundance greater than 92 1.0% of Total Number of Cells (TNC*) in Rio Cuarto Lake. "X" indicate presence with a percent abundance less than 1.0% in other samples (Collecting dates were: RC-1, RC-2, RC-3 on 23.111.83; RCI1, RCI2 on 27.VIII.84; RCI3, RCI4 on 8.X.84; RCI5, RCI6 on 5.XI.84; RCI7, RCI8 on 3.XII.84) 12. Goodness of fit to the truncated log normal distribution 96 for the frequency distributions of the logarithm of the species abundances of phytoplankton of Rio Cuarto Lake based on the Kolmogorov-Smirnov one sample test Table page 13. Comparisons among dates for selected species from R{o 98 Cuarto. All the species appear in at least one sample from each date or were absent in either the first or the final date. Kruskal-Wallis non-parametric test was used due to low sample sizes. The one way ANOVA results are also provided for comparison (log transformation on the raw data was used for the ANOVA) 14. Correlation matrix between the samples from R!o Cuarto 104 Lake, based on the abundances of the species found 15. List of species with a proportional abundance greater 107 than 1. 070 of TNC* for the Nunez tilapia ponds. "X" indicates presence with a lower proportion. Part A (3 sections): ponds No.1 to 10. Part B (3 sections): ponds No. 11 to 26 16. Goodness of fit to the truncated log normal distribution 116 for the frequency distributions of the logarithm of the abundances of the Nunez tilapia ponds. The Kolmogorov Smirnov one sample test was used. 17. Diversity number values of the orders -~, -1, 0, 1, 2, 120 and +«, according to the formulae given by Hill (1973), for several Costa Rican lakes and ponds 18. Diversity number values of the orders -~, -1, 0, 1, 2, 121 and ~, according to the formulae given by Hill (1973), for the Nunez tilapia ponds (Guanacaste) 19. Correlation matrix for different diversity numbers of 122 several orders according to the formulae given by Hill (1973). (n= 48) Log transformation was used on the raw data 20. Correlations between lake altitudinal ranks and several 124 phytoplankton diversity number values of the orders -~, -1, 0, 1, 2, and ~ (Hill 1973) for 26 Costa Rican lakes. R{o Cuarto lake was not included in the analysis due to its special characteristics 21. Comparison of diversity number values of the orders~, 133 -1, 0, 1, 2, and ~ (Hill 1973) among sampling dates in R!o Cuarto Lake. Kruskall and Wallis non-parametric test was used Al.l. Co~par i son of coefficients of determination 166 (R ) for the two regression models used to fit the species area curves for phytoplankton counts from several lakes from Costa Rica. Y= number of species; X= are. Comparisons were made on correlation coefficients by means of the test of homogeneity of correlation coefficients 8 .