中国是世界上南北纬度跨度最大的国家之一。复杂的气候、水文和地形因素形成了我国海洋环境的多样性,也造就了浮游动物多样性的格局。我国浮游动物多样性的研究经历了分类、分布为主、环境变化对浮游动物的影响和浮游动物环境适应研究等阶段。在我国,地形、季风和水团是形成海洋环境格局的三大驱动力,因此不同环境对浮游动物的影响是较为活跃的研究方面。无论在我国还是在世界上,浮游动物对环境适应的研究是薄弱环节,研究方法的缺乏是重要的原因。近年来,已经解决了利用现场调查获得的多学科观测数据和资料(field data)结合统计方法求得种类最适温度、最适温度区间等生态学参数的技术难点。yield-density函数模型,麦夸特(Marquardt)法曲线拟合,中值定理,龙贝格(Romberg)积分法计算等数学方法得到应用。这些研究方法应用在生态类群划分是一项创新,对于浮游动物多样性成因分析有重大意义,未来浮游动物多样性应从不同生境、不同时空尺度、不同分类单元、不同粒径谱、不同生态类群和不同测度方法等多个方向展开,而这些领域的应用研究是浮游动物多样性最具前景的方向。
China has among the largest latitudinal ranges of any country on Earth.Environmental factors such as diverse climate,hydrology and topography jointly determine levels of marine environmental diversity and therefore patterns in zooplankton diversity in China seas.Studies of zooplankton diversity in China pro-gressed through different stages from a main focus on species taxonomy,diversity of distribution pattern,to a focus on environment influences on the ecological group,and finally a focus on zooplankton adaptations to various environments.Topography,water mass,and monsoon occurrence were determined to be three deter-minate factors of marine environmental patterns in China seas.Based on this knowledge,studies on the in-fluence of different environmental factors on zooplankton diversity have attracted more interest.The absence of consistent research protocols has led to a global bottleneck in research on environmental adaptations of zooplankton.Past difficulties in estimating ecological parameters such as the optimum temperature and sa-linities of species' distributions have been alleviated with improved field data and statistical methods.Many mathematical methods such as the yield-density model,levenberg-marquardt curve fitting,mean value theo-rem,and Romberg integral calculation have also been widely applied.These methods have proven useful for delineating and differentiating ecological groups as well as elucidating the factors contributing to zooplank-ton diversity.Future studies on zooplankton diversity should attack these questions from multiple angles in-cluding studies in different habitats,at various spatial and temporal scales,and of different taxonomic groups,biomass size spectra,and ecological groups.Finally,we predict that applied studies will become an increas-ingly significant field within zooplankton diversity research.