APPLICATIONS OF THE NEW NORTH AMERICAN NON-MARINE OSTRACODE DATABASE: NANODE VERSION 1

Non-marine ostracodes (microscopic crustaceans) are common microfossils of Quaternary lacustrine and playa/wetland records, with a thriving modern population living in almost all aquatic habitats. The modern population of common non-marine ostracodes has been extant through the Holocene and much of the Pleistocene. Research results of many workers have shown that on local to regional geographic scales, it is possible to track ground water and surface water interactions through ostracode ecology, isotopic composition and trace metal records, including changing source water, solute evolution, and cation exchange. Also, workers have shown that at continental scales, it is possible to track changes in air mass configuration and duration, using the distribution of cosmopolitan species. However, in North America, there has been little effort to develop a biogeographic database of nonmarine ostracodes, compared with the growth of database development for other microfossil groups, such as diatoms and pollen.

NANODe version 1 (Forester et al., 2005) is the first step in establishing a continent-wide biogeographic database of non-marine ostracode distributions, and can be found on line at (http://www.kent.edu/NANODe). NANODe v.1 consists of species distribution maps, species images, and graphs of hydrochemical data for approximately 600 sites and 89 species of modern ostracodes, collected almost entirely within the continental U.S. In order to maximize the diversity of the collection, the method for collecting focused on climate gradients, elevational gradients, and lithologic gradients. Version 1 is dominated by lacustrine sites (75% of database) with the remaining 25% composed of samples from springs, streams, and wetlands. Version 2, already underway, will include more samples from springs, streams, and wetlands, and samples from Alaska, portions of Canada, and the southeastern U.S., areas currently under-represented in the database.

Applications of the NANODe database include identification of common species for geochemical and isotopic analysis, biomonitoring, and paleoecological reference. Informed decisions as to which species would be most useful for analysis can be made on the basis of their cosmopolitan or endemic distributions, and on their hydrochemical preferences.