Temporal and ephemeral variations in copepod community in the estuaries of Mandovi and Zuari - west coast of India

In the tidal-dominated coastal plain estuaries, the magnitude of temporal and ephemeral variations in the abundance of the calonoid copepod community was evaluated over two annual cycles by two-way ANOVA. The species by species matrices mere subjected to hierarchical classification to delineate clusters of species varying in the same way through time. Complete coexistence was observed between the families Centropagidae, Pontellidae and Acartiidae, indicating that their species combined to form a group by themselves and do coexist. The ANOVA revealed that temporal and ephemeral variations varied with species to species and temporal variance predominated in total variance. The results of the present study indicated that no single factor acted in isolation and there may be several extrinsic factors which control the variations.