An approach to detecting species diversity of microfaunas in colonization surveys for marine bioassessment based on rarefaction curves

The objective of this study was to measure alpha-, beta- and gamma-diversity of microfaunas with different ages in colonization surveys using rarefaction-modeling methods. A dataset was complied based on a microperiphyton survey in coastal waters of the Yellow Sea, near Qingdao. The analyses showed that: (1) there was a strong residual influence of sampling effort on beta- and gamma-diversity after rarefaction, especially for the young communities; (2) the rarefaction curves were well fitted to the Michaelis-Menten equation, and allow modeling and removing the residual influence of sampling effort on beta- and gamma-diversity; and (3) the estimated values of alpha-, beta- and gamma-diversity of a community based on the rarefaction-modeling method were independent of the influence of sampling effort. The results suggest that this approach may be used as a feasible tool to detect alpha-, beta- and gamma-diversity without the influence of sampling effort in microfauna colonization surveys for marine bioassessment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.