Journal of Plankton Research Vol.23 no.1 pp.19-26, 2001
© Oxford University Press 2001
Temporal and Ephemeral Variations in Copepod Community in the Estuaries of Mandovi and ZuariWest Coast of India
National Institute of Oceanography, Dona PaulaGoa 403 004, India
In the tidal-dominated conastal plain estuaries, the magnitude of temporal and ephemeral variations in the abundance of the calonoid copepod community was evaluated over two annual cycles by twoway ANOVA. The species by species matrices were subjected to hierarchical classification to delineate clusters of species varying in the same way through time. Complete coexistence was observed between the families Centropagidae, Pontellidae and Acartiidae, indicating that their species combined to form a group by themselves and do coexist. The ANOVA revealed that temporal and ephemeral variations varied with species to species and temporal variance predominated in total variance. The results of the present study indicated that no single factor acted in isolation and there may be several extrinsic factors which control the variations.