Meiobenthos of the Côn Đảo Islands (Vietnam): Differences in the Structure of Taxocenes of Reef Flats and Mangroves

Abstract—

Meiobenthic samples collected on the Côn Đảo archipelago (Vietnam) from two biotopes, in mangroves and on the adjacent reef flat areas, are analyzed. Quantitative characteristics of the dominant groups of meiobenthos are presented, and taxonomic composition of dominant taxa, nematodes, and harpacticoid copepods, are analyzed. It is shown that analysis of species composition is uninformative for a high species richness and a large number of unique species in each sample. It is more informative to use the generalized characteristics of communities, such as spectra of families and ecological and morphological groups of species. At the level of families and subfamilies, there are well-defined differences in the population of the sandy bottom and mangroves. The proportion of life forms in the different biotypes is informative for harpacticoid copepods. Big differences in the taxonomic composition of the studied bays are shown, interbiotopic differences make a smaller contribution to the overall diversity; i.e., each bay has its own set of species, which forms the population of each biotope. Nematodes and harpacticoids are distributed in space independently of each other.