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Effects of nutrient and water level changes on the composition and size structure of zooplankton communities in shallow lakes under different climatic conditions: a pan-European mesocosm experiment

Authors:
Ülkü nihan tavşanoğlu
Ülkü nihan tavşanoğlu
Michal Šorf at Mendel University in Brno
Michal Šorf
Konstantinos Stefanidis at Hellenic Centre for Marine Research
Konstantinos Stefanidis
Sandra Brucet at University of Vic - Central University of Catalonia
Sandra Brucet
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Abstract and Figures

Lentic ecosystems act as sentinels of climate change, and evidence exists that their sensitivity to warming varies along a latitudinal gradient. We assessed the effects of nutrient and water level variability on zooplankton community composition, taxonomic diversity and size structure in different climate zones by running a standardised controlled 6-months (May to November) experiment in six countries along a European north–south latitudinal temperature gradient. The mesocosms were established with two different depths and nutrient levels. We took monthly zooplankton samples during the study period and pooled a subsample from each sampling to obtain one composite sample per mesocosm. We found a significant effect of temperature on the community composition and size structure of the zooplankton, whereas no effects of water depth or nutrient availability could be traced. The normalised size spectrum became flatter with increasing temperature reflecting higher zooplankton size diversity due to higher abundance of calanoid copepods, but did not differ among depths or nutrient levels. Large-bodied cladocerans such as Daphnia decreased with temperature. Taxonomic diversity was positively related to size diversity, but neither of the two diversity measures demonstrated a clear pattern along the temperature gradient nor with nutrient and water levels. However, genus richness decreased at the warm side of the temperature gradient. Our experiment generally supports recent empirically based findings that a continuing temperature increase may result in lower genus richness and lower abundance of large-sized zooplankton grazers, the latter likely resulting in reduced control of phytoplankton.
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Effects of nutrient and water level changes
on the composition and size structure of zooplankton
communities in shallow lakes under different climatic
conditions: a pan-European mesocosm experiment
U
¨lku
¨Nihan Tavs¸anog
˘lu .Michal S
ˇorf .Konstantinos Stefanidis .Sandra Brucet .Semra Tu
¨rkan .
Helen Agasild .Didier L. Baho .Ulrike Scharfenberger .Josef Hejzlar .Eva Papastergiadou .
Rita Adrian .David G. Angeler .Priit Zingel .Ays¸e I
˙dil C¸akırog
˘lu .Arda O
¨zen .
Stina Drakare .Martin Søndergaard .Erik Jeppesen .Meryem Bekliog
˘lu
Received: 10 August 2016 / Accepted: 16 February 2017 / Published online: 28 February 2017
ÓSpringer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017
Abstract Lentic ecosystems act as sentinels of
climate change, and evidence exists that their sensi-
tivity to warming varies along a latitudinal gradient.
We assessed the effects of nutrient and water level
variability on zooplankton community composition,
taxonomic diversity and size structure in different
climate zones by running a standardised controlled
6-months (May to November) experiment in six
countries along a European north–south latitudinal
temperature gradient. The mesocosms were estab-
lished with two different depths and nutrient levels.
We took monthly zooplankton samples during the
study period and pooled a subsample from each
sampling to obtain one composite sample per meso-
cosm. We found a significant effect of temperature on
the community composition and size structure of the
zooplankton, whereas no effects of water depth or
nutrient availability could be traced. The normalised
size spectrum became flatter with increasing temper-
ature reflecting higher zooplankton size diversity due
to higher abundance of calanoid copepods, but did not
Handling Editor: Piet Spaak.
Electronic supplementary material The online version of
this article (doi:10.1007/s10452-017-9615-6) contains supple-
mentary material, which is available to authorized users.
U
¨. N. Tavs¸ anog
˘lu (&)A. I
˙.C¸akırog
˘lu
A. O
¨zen M. Bekliog
˘lu (&)
Limnology Laboratory, Department of Biological
Sciences, Middle East Technical University, C¸ ankaya,
Ankara 06800, Turkey
e-mail: unyazgan@gmail.com
M. Bekliog
˘lu
e-mail: meryem@metu.edu.tr
M. S
ˇorf
Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia,
370 05 C
ˇeske
´Bude
ˇjovice, Czech Republic
e-mail: michal.sorf@centrum.cz
M. S
ˇorf J. Hejzlar
Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences,
Institute of Hydrobiology, 370 05 C
ˇeske
´Bude
ˇjovice,
Czech Republic
K. Stefanidis E. Papastergiadou
Department of Biology, University of Patras,
University Campus, 26504 Rio, Greece
e-mail: kstefani@chi.civil.ntua.gr
S. Brucet M. Søndergaard E. Jeppesen
Department of Bioscience and Arctic Research Centre,
Aarhus University, Vejlsøvej 25, 8600 Silkeborg,
Denmark
S. Brucet
Aquatic Ecology Group BETA Technology Centre,
ICREA (Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced
Studies) and University of Vic, Vic, Catalonia, Spain
S. Tu
¨rkan
Faculty of Science, Statistic Department, Hacettepe
University, Ankara 06800, Turkey
123
Aquat Ecol (2017) 51:257–273
DOI 10.1007/s10452-017-9615-6
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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