Cross-taxon congruence in lake plankton largely independent of environmental gradients

Date

2014-10-01

Author

Özkan, Korhan
Davidson, Thomas A
Sondergaard, Martin
Lauridsen, Torben L.
Bjerring, Rikke
Johansson, Liselotte S.
Svenning, Jens-Christian

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

193
views

0
downloads

Groups of organisms often have congruent patterns of diversity or community structure due to similar environmental requirements. However, ecological interactions across trophic levels may also promote congruence independent of environmental drivers through selective predation, niche partitioning, or facilitation. We examined congruence between phytoplankton and zooplankton communities using 20 years of monitoring data from 17 Danish lakes, most of which were subject to external nutrient loading reduction after a period of eutrophication. Linear mixed effect models and partial Mantel tests were used to elucidate the extent to which congruence in genus richness and composition was driven by environmental factors. Congruence not explained by environmental controls might indicate ecological interactions across trophic levels of lake plankton. Genus richness and composition of phyto- and zooplankton were significantly congruent. Environmental factors had limited power to explain the genus richness of phyto- and zooplankton (R-2: 6% and 12%, respectively). Including richness of the reciprocal group among the predictors markedly improved each respective model and explanatory power (R-2: 11% and 17%, respectively). Similarly, a large proportion of the congruence in genus composition was independent of environmental dissimilarity (Mantel r: 0.29 and partial Mantel r after accounting for environmental control: 0.17). The strength of the congruence varied among different groups of phyto- and zooplankton, likely reflecting that the different zooplankton groups differ in their grazing size spectra and thus in the strength of their coupling with the phytoplankton assemblages. Remarkably, congruence with phytoplankton was strongest for the smallest group of zooplankton, rotifers, which graze on a limited size spectrum of phytoplankton. Moreover, congruence was stronger in low-nutrient lakes, suggesting that the strength of the interactions between the two groups weakens with eutrophication. This is likely due to changes in trophic dynamics, where enhanced fish predation on large-bodied zooplankton with increasing nutrient levels results in reduced zooplankton grazing control of phytoplankton assemblages.

Subject Keywords

Biotic interactions, Coherence, Community composition, Diversity, Ecological interactions, Phytoplankton, Trophic interactions, Zooplankton, Community concordance

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/31692

Journal

ECOLOGY

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1890/13-2141.1

Collections

Graduate School of Marine Sciences, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Present and historical landscape structure shapes current species richness in Central European grasslands Scherreiks, Pascal; Gossner, Martin M.; Ayasse, Manfred; Bluethgen, Nico; Fischer, Markus; Klaus, Valentin H.; Kleinebecker, Till; Neff, Felix; Prati, Daniel; Seibold, Sebastian; Simons, Nadja K.; Weisser, Wolfgang W.; Wells, Konstans; Westphal, Catrin; Thiele, Jan; Ambarlı, Didem (2022-03-01) Context Current diversity and species composition of ecological communities can often not exclusively be explained by present land use and landscape structure. Historical land use may have considerably influenced ecosystems and their properties for decades and centuries. Objectives We analysed the effects of present and historical landscape structure on plant and arthropod species richness in temperate grasslands, using data from comprehensive plant and arthropod assessments across three regions in Germany ...
Ethics for industrial design : an ethico-political critique of sustaninability in industrial design Şişman, Osman; Kurtgözü, Aren Emre; Department of Industrial Design (2005) This thesis analyses the concept of sustainability as applied and reflected in industrial design practice in a theoretical way. The discourses on sustainability in general are explored in terms of ecology, economics and politics. The underlying motives resulting in unsustainable ways of production and consumption practices are attempted to be located in contemporary society.
Urban biodiversity and climate change Puppim De Oliveira, Jose Antonio; Doll, Christopher; Moreno Penaranda, Raquel; Balaban, Osman (Springer, 2014-08-01) Urban biodiversity refers to the variety and variability among living organisms found in a city and the ecological systems in which they occur. Overall, urban biodiversity responds to a combination of biogeographic and anthropogenic factors, with a strong influence of the latter. In a rapidly urbanizing world under the pressing threat of climate change, there is a growing interest in understanding how cities benefit from local biodiversity and how these benefits can be under threat due to climate change. Th...
Object-based classification of landforms based on their local geometry and geomorphometric context Gerçek, Deniz; Toprak, Vedat; Department of Geodetic and Geographical Information Technologies (2010) Terrain as a continuum can be categorized into landform units that exhibit common physiological and morphological characteristics which might serve as a boundary condition for a wide range of application domains. However, heterogeneous views, definitions and applications on landforms yield inconsistent and incompatible nomenclature that lack interoperability. Yet, there is still room for developing methods for establishing a formal background for general type of classification models to provide different di...
Object-based classification of landforms based on their local geometry and geomorphometric context GERÇEK, DENİZ; Toprak, Vedat; Strobl, Josef (Informa UK Limited, 2011-01-01) Terrain as a continuum can be categorized into landform units that exhibit common physical and morphological characteristics of land surface which may serve as a boundary condition for a wide range of application domains. However, heterogeneous views, definitions, and applications on landforms yield incompatible nomenclature that lacks interoperability. Yet, there is still room for developing methods for classification of land surface into landforms that can provide different disciplines with a basis of lan...

Citation Formats

K. Özkan et al., “Cross-taxon congruence in lake plankton largely independent of environmental gradients,” ECOLOGY, pp. 2778–2788, 2014, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/31692.