Assessment of Diversity, density and distribution of zooplankton of estuarine region of Tajan River

Subject Areas : Marine Biology

M.  Shapoori ¹ (Young Researchers Club, Islamic Azad University, Savadkooh Branch)
A.  Javanshir ² (Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran)
H.  Azarbad ³ (Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran)

Received: 2010-08-08 Accepted : 2010-10-08 Published : 2010-12-21

Keywords: Diversity, Zooplankton, Tajan River, Shannon Index, estuarine region,

Abstract :

Assessed region consisted of TajanRiver estuarine region is one of the sub-basins of the Caspian Sea in flow basin, which has a 2-km2 area. In this assessment, 6 stations were chosen in riverine, estuarine and marine regions, and density, diversity and distribution of zooplankton were measured by monthly sampling. Identified zooplankton of Tajan region consisted of 4 main groups, including Protozoa, Rotatoria، Cladocera,and Copepoda while Temporary zooplankton comprised bivalve larvae (veliger), Barnacles ، Ostracoda and Tintinidium. Totally, 19 genera of the above mentioned groups were identified. Copepoda was recognized as the most important and dominant planktonic group .The results of one-way Analysis of Variance and descriptive statistics showed a significant difference among 3 reveries, estuarine and marine regions. For the average amount of zooplankton diversity index with confidence percentage of 99. Tukey multi- range comparison test showed that Shannon diversity index indicated a significant difference between the river and the sea. Assessing the diversity index in 3 riverine, estuarine and marine regions during a year, estuarine region had the highest diversity compared with riverine and marine regions.