ALBERT

Notes: The zooplankton fauna of the Plover Cove Reservoir has been investigated using two sampling series. The first series involving a 3-year investigation using 6-ft vertical hauls at three stations in the reservoir, revealed the presence of two copepod and four cladoceran species with little variation in terms of seasonal peak occurrence and abundance in any of the stations and so no evidence of the horizontal distribution patterns referred to by other authors. In all three stations Diaptomus gracilis was the dominant copepod species and Diaphanosoma leuchtenbergianum the dominant cladoceran species.The second series, involving a 13-month investigation of vertical sets of water samples collected both day and night at 4-h intervals for 24-h periods, revealed that in terms of seasonal vertical distribution, all six species occurred at all depths during the survey, but with a tendency to be concentrated in the surface waters.In terms of diurnal vertical distribution, differences in the migration pattern occurred from season to season in the case of Diaptomus gracilis. Thus, during spring, summer and autumn, concentrations occurred at the surface at 10.00 and 22.00 hours followed by migration to greater depth, whereas in winter, surface accumulations persisted even into the daylight hours. However, both Cyclops hyalinus and Diaphanosoma leuchtenbergianum showed surface accumulations at night and a movement away from the surface by day during all seasons.Investigations of the seasonal variation in environmental parameters conducted during both sampling series revealed that, as in the case of similar surveys, water temperature was the major controlling factor governing the seasonal variation in composition of the zooplankton fauna as well as its seasonal vertical distribution since in the case of Diaptomus gracilis and Ceriodaphnia reticulata low water temperatures corresponded with peak seasonal occurrence whereas in the case of the other species high water temperatures corresponded with peak seasonal occurrence, and since Diaptomus gracilis and Diaphanosoma leuchtenbergianum showed maximum concentration near the surface when surface water temperatures were high, whereas the remaining species showed their maximum concentration near the surface when lower water temperatures prevailed.It would also appear, however, that seasonal changes in zooplankton densities closely followed algal densities since Diaptomus gracilis, Diaphanosoma leuchtenbergianum and Bosmina longirostris had their maxima in late spring and Cyclops hyalinus in late summer while algal densities in this reservoir were highest in early spring and early summer.With regard to the diurnal vertical distribution of the zooplankton, light appeared to be the only factor alternating by an amount likely to be correlated with such diurnal vertical changes in zooplankton density.