Taihu Laboratory for Lake Ecosystem Research, State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjing, 210008, PR China.
Taihu Laboratory for Lake Ecosystem Research, State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography and Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 73 East Beijing Road, Nanjing, 210008, PR China; School of Geography and Ocean Science, Nanjing University, 163 Xianlin Street, Nanjing, 210023, PR China.
Environ Res. 2020 Aug;187:109704. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2020.109704. Epub 2020 May 20.
In recent decades, freshwater ecosystems have been threatened worldwide by multiple simultaneous stressors, including eutrophication, climate change and competing demands for water sources. However, understanding of the long-term variation of zooplankton communities remains limited because long-term observations are lacking. Here, using a long-term (19 year) monitoring dataset, we demonstrate the spatio-temporal variation of zooplankton communities in Lake Taihu, a large, shallow, heterogenous lake in China. With the development of eutrophication, the abundance and biomass of zooplankton first increased from 1998 to 2004, and then exhibited a decreasing trend thereafter. Specifically, the population of rotifer dramatically declined after 2001, while the abundance of copepod and cladoceran showed an increasing trend even though their biomass decreased significantly after 2008. The dominance of small cladocerans (Bosmina coregoni and Ceriodaphnia cornuta) and copepod (Limnothora sinensis) significantly increased with decreasing rotifer density after 2014. Moreover, the zooplankton community structure exhibited heterogenous spatial population dynamics. Cladoceran and rotifer were predominant in cyanobacteria-dominated regions, while a higher proportion of copepod were found in macrophyte-dominated regions. Analyses revealed that zooplankton communities were strongly affected by climate warming and nutrients. These results reinforce previous work demonstrating that the development of eutrophication and climate warming could change the structure of zooplankton community and increase the dominance of small-bodied crustacean. Our findings address the recognized gap in understanding the variation of the zooplankton community in Lake Taihu, and provide an opportunity to evaluate ongoing changes in the zooplankton community related to future environmental change scenarios.
在过去几十年中，淡水生态系统受到多种同时存在的胁迫因素的威胁，包括富营养化、气候变化和对水源的竞争需求。然而，由于缺乏长期观测，对浮游动物群落的长期变化了解仍然有限。在这里，我们使用一个长期（19 年）监测数据集，展示了中国大型浅水异质湖泊太湖浮游动物群落的时空变化。随着富营养化的发展，浮游动物的丰度和生物量首先从 1998 年到 2004 年增加，然后在此后呈下降趋势。具体而言，轮虫的数量在 2001 年后大幅下降，而桡足类和枝角类的丰度呈上升趋势，尽管它们的生物量在 2008 年后显著下降。小型枝角类（Boscina coregoni 和 Ceriodaphnia cornuta）和桡足类（Limnothora sinensis）的优势随着 2014 年后轮虫密度的降低而显著增加。此外，浮游动物群落结构表现出不均匀的空间种群动态。枝角类和轮虫在蓝藻占优势的区域占主导地位，而桡足类在大型植物占优势的区域占更高的比例。分析表明，浮游动物群落受到气候变暖与营养物质的强烈影响。这些结果增强了先前的研究结果，即富营养化和气候变暖的发展可能改变浮游动物群落的结构，增加小体型甲壳类动物的优势。我们的研究结果解决了对太湖浮游动物群落变化认识不足的问题，并提供了一个机会来评估与未来环境变化情景相关的浮游动物群落正在发生的变化。
