Diversity of terrestrial isopods in the northern Tunisian wetlands |
| |
Authors: | Hajer Khemaissia Raja Jelassi Moez Touihri Catherine Souty‐Grosset Karima Nasri‐Ammar |
| |
Institution: | 1. Faculté des Sciences de Tunis, Unité de Recherche de Bio‐Ecologie et Systématique Evolutive, Université de Tunis El Manar, 2092 Manar II, Tunisie;2. UMR CNRS 7267, équipe Ecologie Evolution Symbiose, Laboratoire Ecologie et Biologie des Interactions, Université de Poitiers, 5, rue Albert Turpain, TSA 51106, 86073 Poitiers Cedex 9, France |
| |
Abstract: | To evaluate the influence of wetland types on the distribution of terrestrial isopods, species richness, relative abundance and diversity indices were studied in the supralittoral zone of 95 wetlands in the north‐western of Tunisian dorsal, belonging to six types: lagoon, hill reservoir, river, dam, lake and sebkha. We tested the following hypothesis: (i) is isopod diversity influenced by wetland types? (ii) is isopod diversity influenced by bioclimatic zones? and (iii) what are the environmental factors influencing isopod distribution? A total of 3255 individuals belonging to twenty species of terrestrial isopods were captured. Species richness differs significantly between wetland types. A highly significant positive relationship between species richness and both humidity and altitudinal gradient was described. The dendrogram of similarities showed a divergence of the lagoons compared to the remaining wetland types. |
| |
Keywords: | density distribution isopod fauna species richness Tunisian dorsal wetlands |
|
|