Impact of rainstorm on community structure of zooplankton in Jiaozhou Bay

With the landing of typhoon DAMREY at August 2nd, there was a rainstorm in Qingdao(the average rainfall was 69.9 mm).To study the effects of the rainstorm on zooplankton community structure in Jiaozhou Bay, samples were collected before and after the rainstorm(July 17 and August 5, 2012) respectively.Community structure including species composition, abundance as well as biodiversity of zooplankton were compared and analyzed based on the samples.The results showed that, although the species number was both 51, zooplankton mean abundance decreased after the rainstorm from 1003.4 ind/m3 to 659.4 ind/m3 due to physical impacts and rapid changes of the marine environmental.Distribution pattern of zooplankton also changed obviously but unevenly related to the topographic characteristics.Zooplankton abundance declined more conspicuously in the eastern and middle part compared with that in the western part and the bay mouth area, respectively.After the rainstorm, the replacement of dominant species occurred obviously, and the diversity index increased slightly.This research may provide useful information for further investigation of the impact of the extreme weather conditions on zooplankton community.