CBCGDF Jinan University Wangwenbo adineta archive

A total of 20 samples were collected in October 2020, including 10 moss and 10 leaf litter habitats in Changde, a city with an urban plain and adjacent hills covering an area of some 14 square kilometres in Hunan Province, Southern China. In this study, 64 morphological species (including subspecies) were found, accounting for 65.3% of the bdelloid rotifers recorded in China. The species richness of bdelloid rotifers was significantly (Student’s t-test, p<0.01) lower on moss than on leaf litter, and bdelloid rotifer communities were significantly (ANOSIM, p<0.01) different between moss and leaf litter habitats. And we found 10 species without preference, 6 moss-preferring species, and 7 leaf litter-preferring species based on Indicator species analysis. These findings indicate high bdelloid rotifer biodiversity with strong habitat preferences between moss and leaf litter habitats at the morphological taxonomy level, implying that bdelloid species can be used as an indicator of heterogeneous habitats and provide an ecological basis for the discovery and conservation of bdelloid rotifer species diversity.