Application of Lacustrine Ostracodes to the Study of Environmental Changes

Paleoecological characteristics of fossil ostracod shells buried in the lake sediment sequences are increasingly studied and used to indicate the past environmental changes.The hydrological state and water chemistry of a lake,particularly the salinity,ionic composition,water temperature and depth,exert important controls not only on the taxonomy,assemblage,abundance and diversity of ostracod species,but also on the size,morphology,ornamentation,structure and thickness of ostracod shells.Changes in paleohydrological and paleolimnolgical conditions of a lake may be reconstructed based on the paleoecological information of the ostracod shells.Specialists in this field have been focusing their attention on (1)the taxonomy and controls of the salinity and ionic composition of a lake on the changes of ostracod species,(2)the life history and ecological procedure of the ostracod species concerned,to accumulate the ecological data of ostracod species(3)identifying field regular collections of ostracod shells and analyzing samples of lake waters,to learn the controls of the salinity and depth on the ecological characteristics of ostracod shells.