Differentiated fatty acid allocation of helped to maintain their population under food quality deterioration.

Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are vital to the physiological functioning of crustacean zooplankton. However, cyanobacteria blooms frequently lead to PUFA deficiencies, which poses a substantial challenge to population fitness. Therefore, we hypothesize that adapt to PUFA-deficient conditions by prioritizing PUFA allocation to somatic growth, and then to offspring during reproduction to ensure population persistence. To test this hypothesis, we applied (compound-specific) C labeling to compare the turnover of total carbon and certain groups of fatty acids in fed with for 6 days and then switching to a diet of C labeled for 6 days (with food quality deterioration) or to a diet of C-labeled (without food quality deterioration), respectively. Fatty acid profiles of mothers and offspring were also analyzed to reveal their PUFA allocation strategies. Life table parameters from -feeding switching to were compared with fed with only or to reveal the effect of PUFA allocation on performance. Our results showed that with food quality deterioration, exhibited a significantly lower PUFA and carbon turnover and higher offspring: mother ratios in their PUFA contents. Despite this reduced reproduction, the switching diets showed no significant different intrinsic increasing rate of populations with those fed only Meanwhile, the switching diets performed significantly better than fed only . These results suggest that differential fatty acid allocation of consumers may serve as an adaptive strategy for population maintenance in food quality deterioration and provide ecological implications with cyanobacterial bloom management and reproductive plasticity, which needs further explorations.