Key Laboratory of Marine-Bioresources Sustainable Utilization, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
Ecotoxicology. 2012 Aug;21(6):1706-16. doi: 10.1007/s10646-012-0968-2. Epub 2012 Jul 6.
In this study, two types of sediment cores with different diameters were used to collect sediment samples from an intertidal mudflat in Hong Kong to investigate the influence of sampling unit on the quantitative assessment of benthic macroinfaunal communities. Both univariate and multivariate analyses were employed to detect differences in sampling efficiencies by the two samplers through total abundance and biomass, species richness and diversity, community structure, relative abundance of major taxa of the infaunal community. The species-area curves were further compared to find out the influence of the sampling units. Results showed that the two sampling devices provided similar information on the estimates of species diversity, density and species composition of the benthos in main part of the mudflat where the sediment was fine and homogenous; but at the station which contained coarse sand and gravels, the significant differences were detected between the quantitative assessments of macrobenthic infauna by the two samplers. Most importantly, the species-area curves indicated that more and smaller samples were better in capturing more species than less large ones when comparing an equal sampling area. Therefore, the efficiency of the sampler largely depended on the sediment properties, and sampling devices must be chosen based on the physical conditions and desired levels of precision on the organisms of the sampling program.
在这项研究中，使用了两种不同直径的沉积物岩芯从香港的潮间带泥滩采集沉积物样本，以研究采样单元对底栖大型无脊椎动物群落定量评估的影响。通过总丰度和生物量、物种丰富度和多样性、群落结构、底栖无脊椎动物群落主要类群的相对丰度，采用单变量和多变量分析来检测两种采样器的采样效率差异。进一步比较物种-面积曲线，以找出采样单元的影响。结果表明，两种采样装置在泥滩主要部分的底栖生物多样性、密度和物种组成的估计中提供了相似的信息，在该部分沉积物较细且均匀；但在含有粗砂和砾石的站位，两种采样器对大型底栖无脊椎动物的定量评估存在显著差异。最重要的是，物种-面积曲线表明，在比较相等的采样面积时，与较少的大样本相比，更多和更小的样本更能捕获更多的物种。因此，采样器的效率在很大程度上取决于沉积物特性，必须根据物理条件和采样计划中生物体的预期精度选择采样器。
