Testing the relationship between testate amoeba community composition and environmental variables in a coastal tropical peatland

We investigated the ecology of testate amoebae (TA) in a coastal tropical peatland to evaluate their potential as environmental indicators in these ecosystems. At 10 positions in five locations in a transect running into the peatland away from the coast, we measured pore-water pH, pore-water electrical conductivity, soil moisture content (MC), and water-table depth (WTD). The WTD data were collected using dipwells fitted with self-recording pressure transducers that logged at 10-min intervals over a 25-day period. Multivariate statistical analysis showed that hydrological metrics (WTD and MC) were the strongest environmental controls on TA (p 60 μm length) lives in wetter conditions. The difference in habitat preference of the two forms of Hyalosphenia subflava suggests that this taxon is most probably a species complex. We use the new high-quality dataset to test an existing transfer function from western Amazonia: the results show that the previous model has good predictive power for reconstructing past WTDs in tropical peatlands (r = 0.87; p