Microspatial heterogeneity in the distribution of ciliates in a small pond

Abstract

Five transects of contiguous samples from the surface of a small pond and one transect from its bottom were collected in order to quantify microspatial heterogeneity in the distribution of ciliated protozoa. Examination of the frequency-abundance relations for these transects suggests that they can be approximated by negative binomial distributions with a commonk of 1.87. Contagiousness or crowding increases with population density. Mean patch size and mean interpatch distance were measured for 4 transects as 1.5 to 2 cm and 3 to 4 cm, respectively. This heterogeneity is suggested to arise from behavioral aggregation about discrete food sources and be very ephemeral. Blocking of adjacent contiguous samples was used to investigate the effect of sample size on the apparent correlation between the numbers of pairs of taxa. In all cases examined, taxa were relatively independent in their distribution at small sample sizes and became more negatively or positively associated as samples were combined. This may reflect that the small scale patches are essentially monospecific.