ARTÍCULO
TITULO

Distribution and habitats of Burnupia mooiensis in South Africa: (Walker 1912 [Gastropoda: Ancylidae])

Kenné N. de Kock    
Cornelius T. Wolmarans    

Resumen

Burnupia mooiensis was already described in 1912 from specimens from the Mooi River, Potchefstroom while the oldest sample in the National Freshwater Snail Collection (NFSC) dates back to 1956. There are currently 14 species on record; however, to date the geographical distribution and habitat requirements of only two species were published. The geographical distribution of the 224 samples of B. mooiensis on record in the database of the NFSC and certain aspects of their sampling sites were analysed and the frequency of occurrence in different waterbodies, water conditions and substrata presented in tables. Data was statistically treated to determine habitat requirements. The largest percentage of samples came from rivers (57.59%), streams (18.30%) and the majority was collected in perennial habitats with stony substrata. Burnupia mooiensis is distributed mainly in the south-eastern areas of North-West, central areas of Gauteng and the south-western areas of Mpumalanga. In contrast to this, the distribution of B. capensis and B. stenochorias covers a much wider area, in spite of the fact that all three were already described by 1912 from sites in South Africa and that they share similar habitat requirements. The 14 species of Burnupia are spread over 556 different loci (0.0625°<sup>2</sup>) and therefore is one of the most widespread freshwater snail genera in South Africa. In view of its wide distribution, largely sessile, benthic lifestyle and the fact that they feed on epilithon, it is recommended that the feasibility to utilise them as bio-indicators of heavy metal pollution in waterbodies in different areas of South Africa be confirmed.

 Artículos similares

       
 
Diego Carreira-Flores, Puri Veiga, Jesús Fernández-Gutiérrez, Pedro T. Gomes and Marcos Rubal    
Scavenging fauna plays an integral role in ecosystem functioning, nutrient cycling and circulating organic matter. Thus, baseline data of scavenger assemblages on the NW coast of the Iberian Peninsula that provides information on the abundance of species... ver más

 
Ivelina Zlateva, Petya Ivanova, Nina Dzhembekova, Valentina Doncheva, Ivan Popov, Violeta Slabakova, Yordan Raev, Violin Raykov and Dimitar Dimitrov    
The present study examined the genetic diversity and spatial distribution of turbot (Scophthalmus maximus), an economically important species on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. Maximum entropy (MaxEnt) modeling software Version 3.4.4. was utilized to deve... ver más

 
Caterina Stamouli, Vasilis Gerovasileiou and Eleni Voultsiadou    
Sponge assemblages play a significant role in the functioning of the Mediterranean benthic ecosystem. The main goal of this study was to investigate the diversity and distribution of poorly known sponge communities in the mesophotic and deep-sea substrat... ver más

 
Xiaoyu Huang, Mingming Liu, Samuel T. Turvey, Mingli Lin and Songhai Li    
Marine mammals are a diverse group of aquatic animals that exhibit wide variation in body size, living conditions, breeding habitat, social behaviour and phylogeny. Although case studies about prenatal investment in cetaceans and pinnipeds have been inve... ver más

 
Rong Wan, Pengbo Song, Zengguang Li, Xiangyu Long, Dong Wang and Lu Zhai    
Estuaries, as important fish nursery habitats, usually include a variety of larval fishes of different ecological guilds and exhibit complicated changing environmental conditions. We carried out a survey to examine the spatiotemporal dynamics of differen... ver más