Desert aquatic systems are widely separated, lack hydrologic connections, and are subject to drought. However, they provide unique settings to investigate distributional patterns of micrometazoans, including rotifers. Thus, to understand rotifer biodiversity we sampled 236 sites across an array of habitats including rock pools, springs, tanks, flowing waters, playas, lakes, and reservoirs in the Chihuahuan Desert of the USA (n = 202) and Mexico (n = 34) over a period of >20 years. This allowed us to calculate diversity indices and examine geographic patterns in rotifer community composition. Of ~1850 recognized rotifer species, we recorded 246 taxa (~13%), with greatest diversity in springs (n = 175), lakes (n = 112), and rock pools (n = 72). Sampling effort was positively related to observed richness in springs, lakes, rivers, and tanks. Nestedness analyses indicated that rotifers in these sites, and most subsets thereof, were highly nested (support from 4 null models). Distance was positively correlated with species composition dissimilarity on small spatial scales. We predicted species richness for unsampled locations using empirical Bayesian kriging. These findings provide a better understanding of regional rotifer diversity in aridlands and provide information on potential biodiversity hotspots for aquatic scientists and resource managers.

中文翻译：

---

奇瓦瓦沙漠中轮虫的多样性模式

沙漠水生系统分布广泛，缺乏水文联系，易受干旱影响。但是，它们提供了独特的设置来研究包括轮虫在内的微金属甲的分布模式。因此，为了解轮虫的生物多样性，我们在美国（n = 202）的奇瓦瓦沙漠和墨西哥（n = 34 ）的各种栖息地中采样了236个地点，包括岩石池，泉水，水箱，流水，海滩，湖泊和水库）超过20年的时间。这使我们能够计算多样性指数并检查轮虫群落组成的地理格局。在大约1850种公认的轮虫物种中，我们记录了246个分类单元（〜13％），其中春季（n = 175），湖泊（n= 112）和岩池（n = 72）。采样工作与在泉水，湖泊，河流和水箱中观测到的丰富度呈正相关。嵌套分析表明，这些部位的轮虫及其大部分子集高度嵌套（来自4个无效模型的支持）。在小空间尺度上，距离与物种组成的异同正相关。我们使用经验贝叶斯克里金法预测了未采样地点的物种丰富度。这些发现为干旱地区的轮虫多样性提供了更好的理解，并为水生科学家和资源管理者提供了有关潜在生物多样性热点的信息。