Abstract: Dajiuhu wetland is a rare subtropical alpine in the central China. The Dajiuhu wetland is the source of the Du river, a first-grade tributary of the Han River, and the wetland also serves as one of the important water conservation area of the middle routes of South-to-North Water Diversion Project. The human activities such as ditches digging, holes dredging and bog draining have led to severe degradation of ecological function and the shrinking of lake surface area in Dajiuhu wetland since 1986. After the implementation of ‘the Dajiuhu wetland protection and ecological restoration project’ from 2005 until present, we conducted a field survey on the metazooplankton community and lake saprobity status from November 2014 to September 2015 to reveal the status quo post the restoration project.A total of 36 metazooplankton species were observed, including 29 rotifer species, 2 copepod species and 5 cladoceran species. Keratella cochlearis and Asplachna sp. were the common dominant species in November 2014, and Keratella cochlearis,Filinia maior, Keratella cochlearis tecta, Polyarthra vulgaris, and Brachionus calyciflorus in May 2015; Brachionus diversicornis,Filinia maior, and Brachionus forficula in September 2015. The dominant species were o-βmesosaprobity in November 2014, o-β and β-mesosaprobity in May 2015, and β-mesosaprobity in September 2015. Redundancy analyses indicated that CODMn were the key drivers behind this difference of metazooplankton saprobity distribution.
Key words：Dajiuhu wetland; metazooplankton; saprobity; alpine wetland