Laboratório de Ecologia Bentônica, PPGEcoBio, Instituto de Biologia, Rua Barão de Geremoabo s/n., Campus Ondina, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, BA, Brazil.
Mar Environ Res. 2012 Oct;81:43-52. doi: 10.1016/j.marenvres.2012.08.006. Epub 2012 Aug 31.
South American estuaries are frequently not included in the search for general ecological models and studies dealing with biological assemblages in estuaries frequently do not sample the entire salinity gradient. We sampled three tropical estuaries, two times each, on ten stations distributed along each system. Six replicates were collected in each station for the benthic macroinfauna and sediment samples for grain size and inorganic contaminant analyses. There were finer sediments at the lower than at the upper estuarine portions. There was a decrease in the diversity, at family level, from marine to freshwater and the differences on the structure of the benthic assemblages were mostly spatial. In spite of the many different characteristics of the three estuaries (e.g. catchment size, pollution levels, proximity with the inner continental shelf) several consistent patterns of benthic macrofauna distribution along these systems were still observed. It suggested a general empirical model regarding the distribution of different benthic invertebrates along tropical salinity gradients which can be tested in different estuaries around the world.
南美河口通常不包括在寻找一般生态模型的范围内，而经常研究河口生物组合的研究也没有对整个盐度梯度进行采样。我们在十个站位对两个热带河口进行了两次采样，每个系统都分布有十个站位。在每个站位采集了六个副本来进行底栖大型无脊椎动物和沉积物采样，以进行粒度和无机污染物分析。下游的沉积物比上游的更细。从海洋到淡水，多样性（在科水平上）呈下降趋势，底栖生物群的结构差异主要是空间上的。尽管这三个河口有许多不同的特征（例如集水区大小、污染水平、与大陆架内部的接近程度），但在这些系统中仍然观察到底栖大型动物分布的一些一致模式。这表明了一个关于热带盐度梯度中不同底栖无脊椎动物分布的一般经验模型，该模型可以在世界各地的不同河口进行测试。
