Check List 11(3): e19231, doi: 10.15560/11.3.1633
Phytoplankton in a tropical estuary, Northeast Brazil: composition and life forms
Eveline P. Aquino‡, Gislayne C. P. Borges‡, Marcos Honorato-da-Silva‡, José Zanon O. Passavante‡, Maria G. G. S. Silva-Cunha‡‡ Federal University of Pernambuco, Brazil
Corresponding author: Eveline Aquino ( eveline_aquino@yahoo.com.br ) © 2017 Eveline Aquino, Gislayne Borges, Marcos Honorato-da-Silva, José Passavante, Maria Silva-Cunha. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Aquino E, Passavante J, Borges G, Honorato-da-Silva M, Silva-Cunha M (2015) Phytoplankton in a tropical estuary, Northeast Brazil: composition and life forms. Check List 11(3): 1633. https://doi.org/10.15560/11.3.1633 |  |
Abstract
We aimed verify the composition of the phytoplankton community and this life forms that occur in the Capibaribe River estuary, Pernambuco, Brazil. This is a highly impacted ecosystem by anthropic activities. We collected samples of the phytoplankton community at three stations, during three months of each season: dry, from October to December 2010; rainy, from May to July 2011. We collected samples during the low and high tide, at the spring tide. We classified the species based on life forms. We identified 127 taxa, and the majority of species were freshwater planktonic form (FP; 30%), followed by marine oceanic planktonic (MOP; 25%), marine neritic tichoplanktonic (MNT; 22%) and planktonic (MNP; 19%,), and tichoplanktonic estuarine (TE; 3%) and freshwater (TF; 1%). The majority of species identified were diatoms, since it assumes the most variability of life forms, therefore enabling its presence in the different portions at the estuary.
Keywords
diatoms; freshwater; marine; plankton; tichoplankton