Document Type : ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Authors

• T.T. Tran ¹
• Y.M.T. Nguyen ¹
• L.T. Pham ^{1, 2}
• B.K. Veettil ^{3, 4}
• S.N. Hoang ^{1, 2}
• Q.X. Ngo ^{1, 2}

¹ Institute of Tropical Biology, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam

² Graduate University of Science and Technology, Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, Hanoi 100000, Vietnam

³ Institute of Fundamental and Applied Sciences, Duy Tan University, Ho Chi Minh City 700000, Vietnam

⁴ Faculty of Information Technology, Duy Tan University, Da Nang 550000, Vietnam

Abstract

The Lo Go-Xa Mat is a national park in the southeastern region of Vietnam, which has a particularly high biodiversity and it includes different wetlands which are unique diverse in species composition. It can be categorized into two types: temporarily-seasonally and permanently flooded wetlands. Ta Not grassy marsh is representative of the seasonally flooded wetland. Whilst the diversity and ecology of plants and mammals are well documented, little or no information of the benthic ecology in the seasonally flooded wetland exist. This study aims to provide a new database of the nematode’s structure in the seasonally flooded wetland and its relation with environmental variables as well as detection of the ecological quality, considering nematodes as bioindicators. This work is the first investigation on nematodes communities in associate with some environmental variables in the Ta Not grassy marsh. The results showed that free-living nematodes in the Ta Not seasonally flooded grassy marsh are characterized by the high density (ranged from 235.01 to 898.43 inds.10cm^-2) but rather low diversity. More specifically, the genus richness (S) ranged from 8.20 to 8.60. The observed Margalef’s species richness (d) was ranging from 1.07 to 1.53 and the Shannon-Wiener index (H') was measured from 2.36 to 2.52. In addition, the Pielou's evenness (J′) ranged from 0.55 to 0.68 and the Hill indices indicated average values ranging between 5.46- 5.84 for N₁, between 4.32-4.60 for N₂, and between 2.64-2.86 for N_inf. Specifically, our results indicated that deep level, pH, and NH₄⁺ showed a significant correlation with the nematode density and bio-indices. The sediment of the Ta Not grassy marsh was assessed as in good conditions in all stations based on the Maturity Index of nematodes.

Graphical Abstract

Highlights

• The communities are characterized by the slightly high density, low diversity in comparison to other habitats, namely fresh and brackish;
• The study observed the relationship between several environmental variables (such as depth, pH, NH₄⁺) and the nematode’s density, and also bio-indices;
• The sediment of the seasonally flooded wetland was assessed as good conditions in all stations based on the Maturity Index of nematodes. MI could be considered as a good index for the detection of the ecological quality status of sediments.

Keywords

• Benthic fauna
• Biodiversity
• Bioindicators
• Nematodes
• Wetland ecosystems

Main Subjects

• Sustainable agriculture management

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Copyrights

©2021 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.