Characterization and predictors of the zooplankton community in the Veredas wetlands in Brazilian savanna

Vereda is a wetland ecosystem typical of the Cerrado biome characterized by diverse vegetation with dynamic and transitional areas of riparian forests, gallery forests, flooded forests, and humid grassland. In general, they are associated with controlling the flow of the water table, carbon storage, and high biodiversity and are essential to the maintenance of most rivers in the Cerrado biome. Besides that, Vereda is poorly studied, especially zooplanktonic groups. To lessen this knowledge gap, we evaluated the effects of seasonality and environmental predictors on the zooplanktonic community of Vereda . For that, we sampled zooplanktonic assemblages in the Veredas in the dry and wet seasons. We found environmental influence but not for the zooplankton community. The characteristic low conductivity seems to be an important environmental filter for zooplankton species occurrence in these systems, since the Veredas that registered major levels of richness and density were those with high electrical conductivity. Highlighting that some zooplankton species with a more restricted distribution were detected in this study: Acroperus tupinamba , which occurs in Brazil and Ecuador; Monospilus sp., for which only two species of this genus were registered in Brazil, both with restricted distribution, found thus far in only two protected areas of the Cerrado biome.