A PRELIMINARY COMPARISON OF MEIOBENTHIC CLADOCERAN ASSEMBLAGES IN NATURAL AND CONSTRUCTED WETLANDS IN CENTRAL FLORIDA

In Florida, phosphate mining companies that destroy natural wetlands a re required to construct mitigation wetlands. Comparisons of plant com munities are frequently used to determine the degree to which construc ted wetlands mimic natural wetlands, but efforts to address similarity based on fauna are rare. Studies in lake littoral zones suggest that meiobenthic cladocerans possess characteristics that may make their us e in wetland comparisons advantageous. In this study, meiobenthic clad ocerans were sampled from 8 natural freshwater wetlands and 11 freshwa ter wetlands constructed on phosphate-mined lands. The pulsed nature o f the cladoceran communities limits their value as a quantitative meas ure of the similarity of natural and constructed wetlands. Qualitative analyses based on the presence or absence of species suggest that cla doceran assemblages of some constructed wetlands mimic those of some n atural wetlands, but the range of assemblages found in constructed wet lands is narrower than that found in natural wetlands.