Nelson Hairston

• PhD
• Professor Emeritus at Cornell University

Despite global evidence of lake deoxygenation, its duration, timing, and impacts over decadal to centennial timescales remain uncertain. This study introduces a novel model approach using 150 yr of limnological and paleolimnological data to evaluate the anthropogenic impacts on deep oxygen in Lake Geneva. Results highlight an increase in oxygen con...

Studies of eco‐evolutionary dynamics have integrated evolution with ecological processes at multiple scales (populations, communities and ecosystems) and with multiple interspecific interactions (antagonistic, mutualistic and competitive). However, evolution has often been conceptualised as a simple process: short‐term directional adaptation that i...

Climate change is altering thermal stratification in lakes worldwide. Reduction in winter mixing lead to prolonged oxygen depletion, lasting for years to centuries, potentially becoming permanent. Although there is convincing evidence of lake deoxygenation globally, its duration, timing, and impacts over decadal to centennial timescales remain unce...

Studies of eco-evolutionary dynamics have integrated evolution with ecological processes at multiple scales (populations, communities, and ecosystems) and with multiple interspecific interactions (antagonistic, mutualistic, and competitive). However, evolution has often been conceptualized as a single process: short-term adaptive genetic change dri...

Animals often shape environmental microbial communities, which can in turn influence animal gut microbiomes. Invasive species in critical habitats may reduce grazing pressure from native species and shift microbial communities. The landlocked coastal ponds, pools, and caves that make up the Hawaiian anchialine ecosystem support an endemic shrimp (H...

Environmental management involves the complex interaction between identifying the causes of problems and implementing solutions. Our exploratory study draws on attribution theory to analyze the causal attributions among community members experiencing frequent and intensifying harmful algal blooms in a lake of western New York State. Our interviews...

Exploring the capability of organisms to cope with human-caused environmental change is crucial for assessing the risk of extinction and biodiversity loss. We study the consequences of changing nutrient pollution for the freshwater keystone grazer, Daphnia , in a large lake with a well-documented history of eutrophication and oligotrophication. Exp...

The biomass ratio of herbivores to primary producers reflects the structure of a community. Four primary factors have been proposed to affect this ratio, including production rate, defense traits and nutrient contents of producers, and predation by carnivores. However, identifying the joint effects of these factors across natural communities has be...

Eco-evolutionary dynamics encompasses the simultaneous reciprocal interactions between ecological and evolutionary processes. We discuss how eco-evolutionary dynamics can be detected, and showcase five key examples of eco-evolutionary dynamics in freshwater systems as assessed in the laboratory, in the field, and in unconfined nature. We demonstrat...

https://www.authorea.com/users/329417/articles/456419-a-unified-framework-for-understanding-biomass-ratio-of-herbivores-to-producers-with-a-field-test-of-plankton?commit=bbb4ee2ea165ed7361f897c1879a63902933f9ea

Egg banks are accumulations of dormant propagules (eggs, cysts and spores) produced by organisms, especially plankton, living in lakes and ponds. These propagules can survive for decades and still hatch when exposed to light and oxygen. Dormant propagules allow a population to persist during periods when survival and reproduction in the active stag...

Ecosystem engineering can control the spatial and temporal distribution of resources and movement by engineering organisms within an ecosystem can mobilize resources across boundaries and distribute engineering effects. Movement patterns of fishes can cause physical changes to aquatic habitats though nesting or feeding, both of which often vary in...

When traits affecting species interactions evolve rapidly, ecological dynamics can be altered while they occur. These eco-evolutionary dynamics have been documented repeatedly in laboratory and mesocosm experiments. We show here that they are also important for understanding community functioning in a natural ecosystem. Daphnia is a major planktoni...

Aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems are connected through reciprocal fluxes of energy and nutrients that can subsidize consumers. Past research on reciprocal aquatic–terrestrial subsidies to consumers has generally focused on subsidy quantity while ignoring major differences in the nutritional composition of aquatic and terrestrial resources. Becaus...

In life histories with generation overlap, selection that acts differently on different life-stages can produce reservoirs of genetic variation, for example, in long-lived iteroparous adults or long-lived dormant propagules. Such reservoirs provide “migration from the past” to the current population, and depending on the trend of environmental chan...

Light is a fundamental driver of ecosystem dynamics, affecting the rate of photosynthesis and primary production. In spite of its importance, less is known about its community-scale effects on aquatic ecosystems compared with those of nutrient loading. Understanding light limitation is also important for ecosystem management, as human activities ha...

Predators can alter nutrient cycles simply by inducing stress in prey. This stress accelerates prey's protein catabolism, nitrogen waste production, and nitrogen cycling. Yet predators also reduce the feeding rates of their prey, inducing food deprivation that is expected to slow protein catabolism and nitrogen cycling. The physiology of prey under...

Recognition that evolution operates on the same timescale as ecological processes has motivated growing interest in eco-evolutionary dynamics. Nonetheless, generating sufficient data to test predictions about eco-evolutionary dynamics has proved challenging, particularly in natural contexts. Here we argue that genomic data can be integrated into th...

The seasonal dominance of cyanobacteria in the phytoplankton community of lake ecosystems can have severe implications for higher trophic levels. For herbivorous zooplankton such as Daphnia, cyanobacteria have poor nutritional value and some species can produce toxins affecting zooplankton survival and reproduction. Here, we present another, hither...

Effler SW, Prestigiacomo AR, Hairston NG, Auer MT, Kuczynski A, Chapra SC. 2016. Dissolved phosphorus concentrations in Cayuga Lake system and differences from two analytical protocols. Lake Reserve Manage. 00:1–10. Differences in the concentrations of dissolved forms of phosphorus (P) measured with 2 widely used spectral protocols were documented...

Population genetics largely rests on a 'standard model' in which random genetic drift is the dominant force, selective sweeps occur infrequently, and deleterious mutations are purged from the population by purifying selection. Studies of phenotypic evolution in nature reveal a very different picture, with strong selection and rapid heritable trait...

Natural systems harbor complex interactions that are fundamental parts of ecology and evolution. These interactions challenge our inclinations and training to seek the simplest explanations of patterns in nature. Not least is the likelihood that some complex processes might be missed when their patterns look similar to predictions for simpler mecha...

The supply and demand of omega‐3 highly unsaturated fatty acids (ω‐3 HUFA) in natural ecosystems may lead to resource limitation in a diverse array of animal taxa. Here, we review why food quality in terms of ω‐3 HUFAs is important, particularly for neural tissue, across a diversity of animal taxa ranging from invertebrate zooplankton to vertebrate...

We evaluated the influence of Daphnia grazing on water clarity in Onondaga Lake, New York, by testing 2 related hypotheses: (1) that the high clarity (Secchi disk depth [SD]) events observed in 18 years of a 27-year record were occurrences of the clear water phase (CWP) associated with elevated levels of Daphnia grazing, and (2) that reductions in...

We explore the role of rapid evolution in the community dynamics of a three-species planktonic food web with intraguild predation. Previous studies of a two-species predator-prey system showed that rapid evolution of an anti-predator defence trait in the prey results in long-period antiphase predator-prey cycles (predator maximacoinciding with prey...

Fish populations are composed of a mixture of sedentary and mobile individuals, but it is not clear whether movement behavior is plastic or fixed for individuals and what proportion of the population exhibits mobile behavior. To investigate the mobility and movement patterns of two common species of suckers, the Sonora Sucker Catostomus insignis an...

Although cyanobacterial blooms are typically found in eutrophic lakes, where they are able to exert inhibitory effects on other plankton, they are also reported from oligotrophic and mesotrophic lakes. Here, we explored whether trophic state mediates the effects of Gloeotrichia echinulata blooms in freshwater ecosystems. This taxon is a large, colo...

Consumer–resource interactions are fundamental components of ecological communities. Classic features of consumer–resource models are that temporal dynamics are often cyclic, with a ¼-period lag between resource and consumer population peaks. However, there are few published empirical examples of this pattern. Here, we show that many published exam...

Many species survive stressful environmental periods in dormancy or diapause (a specific kind of dormancy), which is expressed by organisms ranging from bacteria to trees and vertebrates. Dormancy often lasts only about as long as the duration of harsh conditions, determining a species' persistence until the arrival of the next favorable period. ‘P...

Because we found previously that Chlamydomonas reinhardtii produces allelochemicals to which the rotifer Brachionus calyciflorus is sensitive, we explored its effects on other freshwater plankton. We used Chlamydomonas under light-, nitrogen- and phosphorus-limitation to test its allelopathic effect on Microcystis aeruginosa, Cryptomonas ozolinii,...

We used a metagenomic approach to identify viruses that may be involved in the ecology of Daphnia spp. in Oneida and Cayuga lakes (upstate New York). We identified several highly represented, putative eukaryotic, circular, single-stranded deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) viral genomes. Among these, we discovered a genotype similar in both sequence and g...

Benthic invertebrates mediate bottom–up and top–down influences in aquatic food webs, and changes in the abundance or traits of invertebrates can alter the strength of top–down effects. Studies assessing the role of invertebrate abun-dance and behavior as controls on food web structure are rare at the whole ecosystem scale. Here we use a comparativ...

The nature of the growth-rate response of grazing zooplankton to algal concentration depends critically upon food quality, which is often a plastic function of environmental conditions. Phytoplankton quality depends upon nutrient and light availability, which together affect cell C : P and C : N, so that the links from external environment to phyto...

Movement of organisms is an important mechanism controlling an array of processes within ecosystems. Recent analyses suggest that movement is composed of individual displacement (distance moved by individuals) and turnover (proportion of individuals moving). Turnover of individuals is important because it influences population size and structure, a...

Cyanobacterial blooms are increasing in lakes, both eutrophic and oligotrophic, in many parts of the world. Freshwater cyanobacteria generally have negative effects on eukaryotic phytoplankton in eutrophic systems because of their ability to form dense surface aggregations (scums) that reduce light availability. However, less is known about the eff...

1. Toxic compounds produced by many phytoplankton taxa are known to have negative effects on competitors (allelopathy), anti-predatory effects on grazers (mortality or impaired reproduction) or both. Although mixotrophs of the genus Ochromonas are known to be toxic to zooplankton, it has often been assumed in studies of plankton community processes...

Background/Question/Methods The effects of nutrient stoichiometry on primary producers have been extensively studied at the level of consumer physiology, but much less frequently at higher levels such as population dynamics. At the physiological level, the “growth rate hypothesis” has been largely accepted as a framework in which a nutrient limit...

Background/Question/Methods Cyanobacterial blooms are predicted to increase in aquatic systems worldwide due to climate change and eutrophication, and are expected to exert diverse effects on food webs and ecosystem processes. While cyanobacteria are typically found in high nutrient lakes, they are also increasingly reported from low nutrient lak...

Whether exotic species invade new habitats successfully depends on (i) a change in the invaded habitat that makes it suitable for the invader and (ii) a genetic change in the invading taxon that enhances its fitness in the new habitat, or both. We dissect the causes of invasions of Swiss lakes, north of the Alps, by Daphnia galeata (a zooplankter t...

Ecology Letters (2012) 15: 492–501 Feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary change may play important roles in community and ecosystem functioning, but a complete eco-evolutionary feedback loop has not been demonstrated at the community level, and we know little about molecular mechanisms underlying this kind of eco-evolutionary dynamics. In p...

How do genetic variation and evolutionary change in critical species affect the composition and functioning of populations, communities and ecosystems? Illuminating the links in the causal chain from genes up to ecosystems is a particularly exciting prospect now that the feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary changes are known to be bidirect...

Background/Question/Methods Rapid evolution of ecologically important traits is now known to be widespread in natural populations, resulting from changes in the direction or strength of selection. However, very little is known about how important these rapid evolutionary changes are for ecosystem structure and function. In this talk we present a v...

Background/Question/Methods Cyanobacteria are generally thought to have strong negative effects on aquatic food webs due to their scums, toxins, poor food quality for zooplankton grazers, and post-bloom anoxia. In oligotrophic lakes, however, cyanobacteria may stimulate plankton food webs by increasing nutrient availability. Gloeotrichia echinula...

Rapid contemporary evolution due to natural selection is common in the wild, but it remains uncertain whether its effects are an essential component of community and ecosystem structure and function. Previously we showed how to partition change in a population, community or ecosystem property into contributions from environmental and trait change,...

Visual resolution of juvenile sunfish (Lepomis spp.) (8–33 mm standard length (SL)), although extremely poor in comparison with the larger individuals (38–160 mm SL) used in previous studies, improves rapidly as they grow. Histologically and behaviorally determined (mean reaction angle) visual angles of fish between 10 and 33 mm SL decrease by appr...

A la difference de ce qu'on observe chez les conspecifiques de plus grande taille (>35 mm LS), la resolution visuelle comportementale des jeunes de l'annee de crapet arlequin (Lepomis macrochirus) (11-32 mm LS) mesuree en tant qu'angle visuel, n'est pas independante de la taille des proies. Les angles visuels calcules a partir des distances maximal...

Diel migration is a common predator avoidance mechanism commonly found in temperate water bodies and increasingly in tropical systems. Previous research with only single day and night samples suggested that the endemic shrimp, Halocaridina rubra, may exhibit diel migration in Hawaiian anchialine pools to avoid predation by introduced mosquito fish,...

Suckers are often the most abundant large-bodied native fish in southwestern U.S. streams, yet little is known about their ecosystem impacts, growth, or movement. The species Catostomus insignis and Catostomus clarki act as “ecosystem engineers” modifying the physical structure of these streams. In summers 2008 and 2009, 550 C. insignis and C. clar...

Ecology Letters (2010) 13: 989–997 Abstract Adaptive variation in the traits determining ecological interactions can lead to evolution so rapid that ecological dynamics change course while in progress (i.e., ‘eco‐evolutionary dynamics’). However, little is known about how the qualitative properties of eco‐evolutionary dynamics (e.g., cycling, equi...

Background/Question/Methods We study rapid contemporary evolution in a bottle: aquatic microcosms where predator-prey cycles drive and are in turn driven by evolutionary changes in prey defense traits. The resulting population dynamics depend not only on the presence or absence of coupled evolutionary change, but also on the nature and magnitude of...

Background/Question/Methods Fish are important biotic controls in many stream systems, and may be crucial in arid land streams. This study aimed to assess the importance of fish in Southwestern streams by investigating the influence on ecosystem function of an abundant sucker species, Catostomus insignis, in the upper Gila River in southwest New M...

Background/Question/Methods Rapid contemporary evolution can alter the temporal dynamics of predator-prey interactions, and the amount of genetic variance determines the rate of response to selection. How, then, does the amount of genetic variance affect predator-prey dynamics? In this talk we present theory and experimental results showing that c...

Character evolution that affects ecological community interactions often occurs contemporaneously with temporal changes in population size, potentially altering the very nature of those dynamics. Such eco-evolutionary processes may be most readily explored in systems with short generations and simple genetics. Asexual and cyclically parthenogenetic...

In the Hawaiian Islands, intentionally introduced exotic fishes have been linked to changes in native biodiversity and community composition. In 1905, the mosquito fish Gambusia affinis was introduced to control mosquitoes. Subsequently, G. affinis spread throughout the Islands and into coastal anchialine ponds. Previous studies suggest that presen...

It is only recently that ecologists, including limnologists, have begun to appreciate the potential for organisms to evolve rapidly in response to environmental change. The resulting changes in the mean characteristics of the evolving populations have the potential to alter population, community and ecosystem responses to environmental changes – wh...

A retrospective analysis of long-term data sets of Secchi disc depth (SD, 40 years), the diffuse light attenuation coefficient for downwelling irradiance for photosynthetically available radiation (kd(PAR), 23 years), and chlorophyll-a ([Chl], 28 years), is presented for culturally eutrophic and industrially polluted Onondaga Lake, New York. The ef...

Using in situ mesocosm experiments, we compared grazing rates, food-selection patterns and nutrient mineralization rates of a daphniid cladoceran and a diaptomid copepod to determine their influence on phytoplankton composition and the prevalence of N-fixing cyanobacteria. We show that grazing and nutrient mineralization may act synergistically wit...

By differentially manipulating external nutrient inputs and grazer assemblages (through the presence or absence of fish that fed preferentially on daphniids) in replicate experimental ponds, we explored the potential for grazers to affect phytoplankton composition, particularly the abundance of N-fixing cyanobacteria, the concentration of fixed N,...

Trophic relationships, such as those between predator and prey or between pathogen and host, are key interactions linking species in ecological food webs. The structure of these links and their strengths have major consequences for the dynamics and stability of food webs. The existence and strength of particular trophic links has often been assesse...

Examples of the General Model (1) (147 KB DOC)

Analysis of PRESS Experiments (60 KB DOC)

Natural and human mediated perturbations present challenges to the fate of populations but fuel contemporary evolution (evolution over humanly observable time‐scales). Here we ask if such evolution is sufficient to make the difference between population extinction and persistence. To answer this question requires a shift from the usual focus on tra...

Prolonged diapause (extended dormancy) is thought to greatly influence evolution in freshwater invertebrates by lengthening generation time, promoting higher levels of dispersal among populations by wind or animal vectors, and increasing effective population size. However, empirical tests of these predictions are relatively rare. Comparative studie...

Using rotifer–algal microcosms, we tracked rapid evolution resulting from temporally changing natural selection in ecological predator–prey dynamics. We previously demonstrated that predator–prey oscillations in rotifer–algal laboratory microcosms are qualitatively altered by the presence of genetic variation within the prey. In that study, changes...

A variety of mechanisms can theoretically produce competitive coexistence in nature, making it hard to identify a single explanation for the maintenance of diversity in any particular system. Based on laboratory experiments with a consumer-resource system of crustacean Daphnia eating algae, Nelson et al. suggest that maintenance of genetic diversit...

We used microcosm systems to test whether simple mathematical models can be valid descriptions of population and community dynamics. Our conclusion is that a priori mathematical formulations of interacting populations are unlikely to produce completely satisfying predictions because they tend to ignore important biological mechanisms. We employed t...

Recent studies have documented rates of evolution of ecologically important phenotypes sufficiently fast that they have the potential to impact the outcome of ecological interactions while they are underway. Observations of this type go against accepted wisdom that ecological and evolutionary dynamics occur at very different time scales. While some...

Phenotypic differences among species, even closely related species, may translate into distinct effects on ecosystem dynamics. In lakes, the generalist grazer genus Daphnia often has marked effects on the abundance of primary producers, the rate of primary production, and rates of nutrient cycling. The effects are particularly distinct during the c...

Trade-offs between defence and other fitness components are expected in principle, and can have major qualitative impacts on ecological dynamics. Here we show that such a trade-off exists even in the simple unicellular alga Chlorella vulgaris. We grew algal populations for multiple generations in either the presence ('grazed algae') or absence ('no...

In 2001, Simon Levin remarked at a National Science Foundation meeting on biocomplexity that scientific disciplines are belief systems that progressively nurture memes by establishment of societies and journals (a meme being a unit of intellectual or cultural information—a key idea—that passes from mind to mind, spreading through colleagues and ove...

Nature is the international weekly journal of science: a magazine style journal that publishes full-length research papers in all disciplines of science, as well as News and Views, reviews, news, features, commentaries, web focuses and more, covering all branches of science and how science impacts upon all aspects of society and life.

Ecological and evolutionary dynamics can occur on similar timescales. However, theoretical predictions of how rapid evolution can affect ecological dynamics are inconclusive and often depend on untested model assumptions. Here we report that rapid prey evolution in response to oscillating predator density affects predator-prey (rotifer-algal) cycle...

Microevolution is typically ignored as a factor directly affecting ongoing population dynamics. We show here that density-dependent natural selection has a direct and measurable effect on a planktonic predator-prey interaction. We kept populations of Brachionus calyciflorus, a monogonont rotifer that exhibits cyclical parthenogenesis, in continuous...

An autonomous Remote Underwater Sampling Station (RUSS) on Cayuga Lake, New York is described. RUSS is a versatile unit with respect to remote communication, multiparameter measurements, meteorological measurements, and programming. Temperature, wind speed, and wind direction data show the presence of strong nonlinear internal wave dynamics. Turbid...

Human society has used freshwater from rivers, lakes, groundwater, and wetlands for many different urban, agricultural, and industrial activities, but in doing so has overlooked its value in supporting ecosystems. Freshwater is vital to human life and societal well-being, and thus its utilization for consumption, irrigation, and transport has long...

Fussmann et al . (2000 ) presented a simple mechanistic model to explore predator–prey dynamics of a rotifer species feeding on green algae. Predictions were tested against experimental data from a chemostat system housing the planktonic rotifer Brachionus calyciflorus and the green alga Chlorella vulgaris . The model accurately predicted qualitati...

Zooplankton egg banks are the accumulation of diapausing embryos of planktonic animals buried in the sediments of many aquatic ecosystems. These eggs, which are analogous life history stages to the seeds of many plants, can survive in a ready-to-hatch state for periods ranging from a few years to greater than a century. Their presence in ponds, lak...

Lakes are bodies of nonmarine standing water connected by water flow and aerial inputs to their surrounding landscapes (watersheds). As relatively discrete ecosystems, the interplay between physical, biogeochemical and organismal processes in them is especially clear, and can be studied, understood and put to use in effective management. Sunlight p...

Human society has used freshwater from rivers, lakes, groundwater and wetlands for many different urban, agricultural, and industrial activities, but in doing so has overlooked its value in supporting ecosystems. Freshwater is vital to human life and societal well-being, and thus its utilisation for consumption, irrigation, and transport has long t...

We studied the selection response of the freshwater grazing zooplankter, Daphnia galeata, to increased abundance of cyanobacteria in its environment. Cyanobacteria are a poor-quality and often toxic food. Distinct genotypes of D. galeata were hatched from diapausing eggs extracted from three time horizons in the sediments of Lake Constance, Europe,...

Our field observations on submersed macrophytes in the littoral zone of Cayuga Lake, N.Y., USA indicate that the shift in dominance from Myriophyllum spicatum L. to Elodea canadensis Michx. may be explained by the high abundance of an aquatic lepidopteran larva, Acentria ephemerella Denis & Schiffermüller. Experimental evidence for the preference o...

Population biologists have long been interested in the oscillations in population size displayed by many organisms in the field and laboratory. A wide range of deterministic mathematical models predict that these fluctuations can be generated internally by nonlinear interactions among species and, if correct, would provide important insights for un...

Cladocerans possess traits such as resistant diapausing eggs and rapid parthenogenetic reproduction that make them efficient invaders of new habitats. Nearly all known invasions have been successful, perhaps because failed invasions are difficult to detect. It is possible, however, to identify past failed invasions, by studying the diapausing egg b...

Food-chain length is an important characteristic of ecological communities: it influences community structure, ecosystem functions and contaminant concentrations in top predators. Since Elton first noted that food-chain length was variable among natural systems, ecologists have considered many explanatory hypotheses, but few are supported by empiri...

A study of aquatic plant biomass within Cayuga Lake, New York spans twelve years from 1987-1998. The exotic Eurasian watermilfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum L.) decreased in the northwest end of the lake from 55% of the total biomass in 1987 to 0.4% in 1998 and within the southwest end from 50% in 1987 to 11% in 1998. Concurrent with the watermil- foil...

The variation in life-history patterns that allow closely related species to co-exist has been an important theme in ecology for decades. We examined intra- and interspecific variation in a key life-history trait - diapause - for two congeneric copepods (Eudiaptomus gracilis and Eudiaptomus graciloides) inhabiting three lakes in Northern Germany. D...

Natural selection can lead to rapid changes in organisms, which can in turn influence ecosystem processes. A key factor in the functioning of lake ecosystems is the rate at which primary producers are eaten, and major consumers, such as the zooplankton Daphnia, can be subject to strong selection pressures when phytoplankton assemblages change. Lake...