Spatiotemporal heterogeneity of phytoplankton diversity and its relation to water environmental factors in the southern waters of Miaodao Archipelago, China

To study the water quality influenced by the anthropogenic activities and its impact on the phytoplankton diversity in the surface waters of Miaodao Archipelago, the spatiotemporal variations in phytoplankton communities and the environmental properties of the surface waters surrounding the Five Southern Islands of Miaodao Archipelago were investigated, based on seasonal field survey conducted from November 2012 to August 2013. During the survey, a total of 109 phytoplankton species from 3 groups were identified in the southern waters of Miaodao Archipelago, of which 77 were diatoms, 29 were dinoflagellates, and 3 were chrysophytes. Species number was higher in winter (73), moderate in autumn (70), but lower in summer (31) and spring (27). The species richness index in autumn (5.92) and winter (4.28) was higher than that in summer (2.83) and spring (1.41). The Shannon-Wiener diversity index was high in autumn (2.82), followed by winter (1.99) and summer (1.92), and low in spring (0.07). The species evenness index in autumn (0.46) and summer (0.39) was higher than that in winter (0.32) and spring (0.02). On the basis of principal component analysis (PCA) and redundancy analysis (RDA), we found that dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) and chemical oxygen demand (COD) in spring, COD in summer, pH in autumn, and salinity and oil pollutant in winter, respectively, showed the strongest association with the distribution of phytoplankton diversity. The spatial heterogeneity of the southern waters of Miaodao Archipelago was quite obvious, and three zones, i.e., northeastern, southwestern and inter-island water area, were identified by cluster analysis (CA) based on key environmental variables.