Abstract We investigated the hypothesis that ostracode populations are sensitive to variations in sediment discharge related to watershed differences at Lake Tanganyika. Many ostracode species are documented to be sensitive to high turbidity which increases during runoff from strong rainfall events and changes in ostracode populations can impact organisms higher in the food web. We compared surficial death assemblages of ostracodes around two sites with extensive shell beds, the highly deforested Luiche Platform area, heavily populated since the 20th Century, and the less deforested Mahale Platform area, with recent population increases, to understand the impacts of increasing sedimentation within and between sites. The study found that whereas the Mahale Platform area is less disturbed, the faunal differences between sites is not large. The data showed high species richness and abundance of ostracodes at 10–20 m depth at both sites, within shell bed zones, with no statistical difference in raw species richness between the sites. The Mahale Mountain area ostracode populations were however statistically more diverse (Shannon H) than at Luiche. We conducted a multi-response permutation procedure and found that the sites are statistically different, but with very small differences in species richness and ostracode abundance. Non-metric multidimensional scaling ordination of species assemblages shows that most samples overlap on both major axes. This study synthesized with ongoing research about shell bed communities in less disturbed regions of the lake will give insights into how conservation projects can be optimized to preserve the lake’s benthic ecosystem from the effects of deforestation.

中文翻译：

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坦桑尼亚坦桑尼亚坦噶尼喀湖 Luiche 和 Mahale 平台海岸上不同程度砍伐森林的沉积物流入与 ostracode 种群的关系

摘要 我们研究了 ostracode 种群对与坦噶尼喀湖流域差异相关的沉积物排放变化敏感的假设。许多 ostracode 物种被记录为对高浊度敏感，这在强降雨事件的径流期间会增加，并且 ostracode 种群的变化会影响食物网中更高的生物。我们比较了两个具有广泛贝壳床的地点、高度砍伐森林的 Luiche 台地地区（自 20 世纪以来人口稠密）和最近人口增加的森林砍伐较少的马哈勒台地地区周围 ostracodes 的表层死亡组合，以了解内部沉积物增加的影响。和站点之间。研究发现，虽然马哈勒台地地区受到的干扰较小，但站点之间的动物区系差异并不大。数据显示，两个地点在贝壳床区的 10-20 m 深度处的物种丰富度和丰度很高，地点之间的原始物种丰富度没有统计学差异。然而，与 Luiche 相比，Mahale 山区 ostracode 种群在统计上更加多样化（Shannon H）。我们进行了多响应排列程序，发现这些站点在统计上是不同的，但物种丰富度和 ostracode 丰度的差异很小。物种组合的非度量多维缩放排序显示大多数样本在两个主轴上重叠。