Conflict of interest
The authors declared that they have no conflicts of interest to this
work. We declare that we do not have any commercial or associative
interest that represents a conflict of interest in connection with the
work submitted.
Abstract Phytoplankton functional traits can represent
particular environmental conditions in complex aquatic ecosystems.
Categorizing phytoplankton species into functional groups is challenging
and time-consuming, and requires high-level expertise on species
autecology. In this study, we introduced an affinity analysis to aid
identification of candidate associations of phytoplankton from two
datasets comprised of phytoplankton and environmental information. In
the Huaihe River Basin with a drainage area of 270,000
km2 in China, samples were collected from 217 selected
sites during the low-water period in May 2013; monthly samples were
collected during 2006-2011 in a man-made pond, Dishui Lake. Our results
indicated that the affinity analysis can be used to define some
meaningful functional groups. The identified phytoplankton associations
reflect the ecological preferences of phytoplankton in terms of light
and nutrients acquisition. Advantages and disadvantages of applying the
affinity analysis to identify phytoplankton associations are discussed
with perspectives of their utility in ecological assessment.
Keywords Affinity analysis . Huaihe River Basin . Dishui Lake .
functional groups; phytoplankton association