Species richness of ciliates from a small swampy lake: common problems of conservation and protection of their biodiversity

This article presents the results of the first study of the species composition of ciliates from the polyhumous lake Mohovoye, located in the Volga-Kama State Natural Biosphere Reserve; discusses the general issues of the need to organize the conservation and protection of protozoa and their habitats; provides a brief overview of the experience accumulated in the world on this issue. The aim of the work was to identify new and rare species of ciliates, to describe their autecological and distributional features as a descriptive basis for further identification of potential diversity. 53 species have been recorded in the deep-water part of the lake, while there are species that have not even been identified to the genus level. Lacrymaria cf. sapropeliсa Kahl, 1927, Trichospira inversa (Claparède & Lachmann, 1858), two species from the family Spathidiidae, as well as the main dominant Pseudoblepharisma tenue var. viride (Kahl, 1926) have not previously been recorded in this region. Their detection is more likely due to the low level of study of such undisturbed habitats than to the endemism of these species. The uniqueness of the lake and the whole complex of ciliates species lies in the significant magnitude of the maximum abundance - 753.7 million cells/m3; 53-75% of the abundance was formed by P. tenue var. viride (Kahl, 1926), which is a rare species in other waterbodies. In general, mainly mixotrophic ciliares form a very narrow and high, like a “bacterial plate” abundance maximum. The problem of the conservation of the ciliates biodiversity lies in the underestimation of their importance, due to their inconspicuousness and cosmopolitanism; the low attractiveness of small reservoirs as “pockets of diversity” for limnologists and the lack of well-trained specialists in the systematics of ciliates who can be able to competently combine morphological and molecular genetic research methods.