Limnetica, 37(2): 199-208 (2018)

An analysis of publications on Daphnia lumholtzi in freshwater ecosystems Biological invasions can threaten biodiversity worldwide through the loss of native species. Daphnia lumholtzi, Sars, 1885 is a native cladoceran from Australia, southwest Asia, and North Africa, and was recently recorded in the Neotropical region. We performed a scientometric analysis of scientific papers published between 1976 and 2016 to evaluate the studies that documented the occurrence of D. lumholtzi and assess the influence of local (temperature) and spatial factors (geographic distance) on the species distribution. Research articles were collected by the Thomson Reuters database (www.isiwebofknowledge.com) in December 2016. We observed that the number of articles increased over the years and that the species occurred in a great variety of environments, predominantly in reservoirs. Studies were performed using different approaches, most of them using descriptive and predictive designs. Furthermore, we observed that there was no significant relationship between D. lumholtzi abundance and both local (temperature) and spatial (geographic distance) factors. However, when we analyzed the occurrence of the species with temperature, we found that the species frequently occurred between 21 oC and 27 oC, and the greatest number of studies reported D. lumholtzi at 24 oC. We observed a tendency for D. lumholtzi to occur in aquatic environments with higher temperatures. Therefore, we suggest experimental studies that evaluate the effect of temperature changes on the survival of this species, which could be impacted by climate change.