The influence of emergent and submerged macrophyte beds on ciliate communities in a shallow lake

Relationships between ciliates and the presence of emergent and submerged vegetation were studied in a shallow lake in eastern Poland. Samples were collected in zones of Phragmites, Typha, Batrachium, Elodea, Stratiotes and from the open water zone. The abundance and biomass of ciliates were significantly higher at sites with structurally most complex plants than in the open water or sparsely vegetated sites. The redundancy analysis indicated that bacterial abundance and total organic carbon were the most influential variables that determine the distribution of ciliates. However, chlorophyll a and P_tot have a lesser influence on the distribution of these microorganisms. Based on differences in macrophyte structure, two groups of habitats with similar patterns of size-related ciliate distribution were distinguished. The first group consisted of three vegetation zones of sparse stem structure and the open water zone, the second group comprised submerged macrophyte species, which were more complex.