Rhabdostylid Ciliates (Ciliophora, Peritrichia, Epistylididae) as Epibionts on Chironomid Larvae: Evidence of High Specificity and Association with Organic Pollution.

Although epibiont ciliates make up a significant part of the biomass in aquatic ecosystems and may cause perceptible alterations in the population dynamics of their hosts, studies on the extrinsic and intrinsic factors that control the abundance of these microorganisms are scarce in literature. In the present study, we investigated the colonization site and intensity of rhabdostylid epibiont upon chironomid larvae and assessed the influence of organic pollution and chironomid communities on the prevalence and abundance of epibiont ciliates at five sampling stations (two in rural areas and three in urban areas) along a neotropical urban stream over a period of 12 months. Among the 24 genera of chironomids found and the 31,976 larvae analyzed, 96.

Protist Biodiversity and Biogeography in Lakes From Four Brazilian River-Floodplain Systems.

The biodiversity and biogeography of protists inhabiting many ecosystems have been intensely studied using different sequencing approaches, but tropical ecosystems are relatively under-studied. Here, we sampled planktonic waters from 32 lakes associated with four different river-floodplains systems in Brazil, and sequenced the DNA using a metabarcoding approach with general eukaryotic primers. The lakes were dominated by the largely free-living Discoba (mostly the Euglenida), Ciliophora, and Ochrophyta.

Common and Rare Taxa of Planktonic Ciliates: Influence of Flood Events and Biogeographic Patterns in Neotropical Floodplains.

After much discussion about the cosmopolitan nature of microbes, the great issue nowadays is to identify at which spatial extent microorganisms may display biogeographic patterns and if temporal variation is important in altering those patterns. Here, planktonic ciliates were sampled from shallow lakes of four Neotropical floodplains, distributed over a spatial extent of ca. 3000 km, during high and low water periods, along with several abiotic and biotic variables potentially affecting the ciliate community.

Anthropogenic disturbances influencing ciliate functional feeding groups in impacted tropical streams.

Anthropogenic disturbances change the trophic structure of streams, ultimately affecting ecosystem functioning. We investigated the effects of human disturbances, mainly organic pollution, on ciliate functional feeding groups (FFG) in 10 tropical streams near agricultural and urban habitats, in the dry and rainy seasons. We hypothesised that the organic pollution would affect the ciliate composition and that the richness and abundance of ciliate FFG would be associated with different disturbances, such that an increase in the load of organic matter would result in an increase in the percentage of bacterivores ciliates, while streams with low organic matter concentration and wide canopy openness will determine a higher contribution of algivorous ciliates.

Effects of Seasonality and Dispersal on the Ciliate Community Inhabiting Bromeliad Phytotelmata in Riparian Vegetation of a Large Tropical River.

This study evaluated the influence of rainfall amount on the abundance, species richness, and species occurrence and abundance distribution of the ciliate community associated with the bromeliad Aechmea distichantha. The plants were collected from a rock wall of about 10-km long at the left bank of Paraná River. We assessed the effects of both spatial and temporal variables on the community attributes, as well as whether plants geographically closer have a similar abundance distribution and species composition.

Multiple lines of evidence shed light on the occurrence of paramecium (ciliophora, oligohymenophorea) in bromeliad tank water.

Phytotelmata are vegetal structures that hold water from the rain, and organic matter from the forest and the soil, resulting in small, compartmentalized bodies of water, which provide an essential environment for the establishment and development of many organisms. These microenvironments generally harbor endemic species, but many organisms that are found in lakes and rivers, are also present. Here, we report, for the first time, the occurrence of the ciliate genus Paramecium in the tank of the bromeliad species Aechmaea distichantha.