Wj. Streever et Tl. Crisman, A PRELIMINARY COMPARISON OF MEIOBENTHIC CLADOCERAN ASSEMBLAGES IN NATURAL AND CONSTRUCTED WETLANDS IN CENTRAL FLORIDA, Wetlands, 13(4), 1993, pp. 229-236
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.