TY - THES A1 - Lischke, Betty T1 - Food web regulation under different forcing regimes in shallow lakes T1 - Nahrungsnetzregulation unter verschiedenen Einflussfaktoren in Flachseen BT - synthesis and modelling BT - Synthese und Modellierung N2 - The standing stock and production of organismal biomass depends strongly on the organisms’ biotic environment, which arises from trophic and non-trophic interactions among them. The trophic interactions between the different groups of organisms form the food web of an ecosystem, with the autotrophic and bacterial production at the basis and potentially several levels of consumers on top of the producers. Feeding interactions can regulate communities either by severe grazing pressure or by shortage of resources or prey production, termed top-down and bottom-up control, respectively. The limitations of all communities conglomerate in the food web regulation, which is subject to abiotic and biotic forcing regimes arising from external and internal constraints. This dissertation presents the effects of alterations in two abiotic, external forcing regimes, terrestrial matter input and long-lasting low temperatures in winter. Diverse methodological approaches, a complex ecosystem model study and the analysis of two whole-lake measurements, were performed to investigate effects for the food web regulation and the resulting consequences at the species, community and ecosystem scale. Thus, all types of organisms, autotrophs and heterotrophs, at all trophic levels were investigated to gain a comprehensive overview of the effects of the two mentioned altered forcing regimes. In addition, an extensive evaluation of the trophic interactions and resulting carbon fluxes along the pelagic and benthic food web was performed to display the efficiencies of the trophic energy transfer within the food webs. All studies were conducted in shallow lakes, which is worldwide the most abundant type of lakes. The specific morphology of shallow lakes allows that the benthic production contributes substantially to the whole-lake production. Further, as shallow lakes are often small they are especially sensitive to both, changes in the input of terrestrial organic matter and the atmospheric temperature. Another characteristic of shallow lakes is their appearance in alternative stable states. They are either in a clear-water or turbid state, where macrophytes and phytoplankton dominate, respectively. Both states can stabilize themselves through various mechanisms. These two alternative states and stabilizing mechanisms are integrated in the complex ecosystem model PCLake, which was used to investigate the effects of the enhanced terrestrial particulate organic matter (t-POM) input to lakes. The food web regulation was altered by three distinct pathways: (1) Zoobenthos received more food, increased in biomass which favored benthivorous fish and those reduced the available light due to bioturbation. (2) Zooplankton substituted autochthonous organic matter in their diet by suspended t-POM, thus the autochthonous organic matter remaining in the water reduced its transparency. (3) T-POM suspended into the water and reduced directly the available light. As macrophytes are more light-sensitive than phytoplankton they suffered the most from the lower transparency. Consequently, the resilience of the clear-water state was reduced by enhanced t-POM inputs, which makes the turbid state more likely at a given nutrient concentration. In two subsequent winters long-lasting low temperatures and a concurrent long duration of ice coverage was observed which resulted in low overall adult fish biomasses in the two study lakes – Schulzensee and Gollinsee, characterized by having and not having submerged macrophytes, respectively. Before the partial winterkill of fish Schulzensee allowed for a higher proportion of piscivorous fish than Gollinsee. However, the partial winterkill of fish aligned both communities as piscivorous fish are more sensitive to low oxygen concentrations. Young of the year fish benefitted extremely from the absence of adult fish due to lower predation pressure. Therefore, they could exert a strong top-down control on crustaceans, which restructured the entire zooplankton community leading to low crustacean biomasses and a community composition characterized by copepodites and nauplii. As a result, ciliates were released from top-down control, increased to high biomasses compared to lakes of various trophic states and depths and dominated the zooplankton community. While being very abundant in the study lakes and having the highest weight specific grazing rates among the zooplankton, ciliates exerted potentially a strong top-down control on small phytoplankton and particle-attached bacteria. This resulted in a higher proportion of large phytoplankton compared to other lakes. Additionally, the phytoplankton community was evenly distributed presumably due to the numerous fast growing and highly specific ciliate grazers. Although, the pelagic food web was completely restructured after the subsequent partial winterkills of fish, both lakes were resistant to effects of this forcing regime at the ecosystem scale. The consistently high predation pressure on phytoplankton prevented that Schulzensee switched from the clear-water to the turbid state. Further mechanisms, which potentially stabilized the clear-water state, were allelopathic effects by macrophytes and nutrient limitation in summer. The pelagic autotrophic and bacterial production was an order of magnitude more efficient transferred to animal consumers than the respective benthic production, despite the alterations of the food web structure after the partial winterkill of fish. Thus, the compiled mass-balanced whole-lake food webs suggested that the benthic bacterial and autotrophic production, which exceeded those of the pelagic habitat, was not used by animal consumers. This holds even true if the food quality, additional consumers such as ciliates, benthic protozoa and meiobenthos, the pelagic-benthic link and the potential oxygen limitation of macrobenthos were considered. Therefore, low benthic efficiencies suggest that lakes are primarily pelagic systems at least at the animal consumer level. Overall, this dissertation gives insights into the regulation of organism groups in the pelagic and benthic habitat at each trophic level under two different forcing regimes and displays the efficiency of the carbon transfer in both habitats. The results underline that the alterations of external forcing regimes affect all hierarchical level including the ecosystem. N2 - Die Produktion neuer Organismenbiomasse bildet die Grundlage allen Lebens und hängt von zahlreichen Faktoren, wie den trophischen Interaktionen, ab. Diese limitieren Organismengemeinschaften entweder durch starken Fraß oder begrenzte Ressourcenverfügbarkeit, genannt top-down beziehungsweise bottom-up Kontrolle. Die Nahrungsnetzregulation umfasst die trophischen Interaktionen des Nahrungsnetzes. In dieser Dissertation wurde die Beeinflussung der Nahrungsnetzregulation durch die externen, abiotischen Einflussfaktoren (1) erhöhter Eintrag terrestrischen Kohlenstoffs und (2) lang anhaltende niedrige Temperaturen im Winter in Flachseen untersucht. Flachseen sind aufgrund ihrer Morphometrie sensitiv gegenüber diesen Einflussfaktoren, durch einen erheblichen Anteil benthischer Produktion an der Gesamtseeproduktion gekennzeichnet und treten im trüben oder klaren Zustand auf. Der erhöhte Eintrag terrestrischen Kohlenstoffs in Flachseen verringerte die Resilienz des klaren, Makrophyten dominierten Sees. Unter Nutzung eines komplexen Ökosystemmodells konnten verschiedene Wirkmechanismen dargestellt werden, die jeweils die Lichtverfügbarkeit für Makrophyten reduzierten. Dabei wirkte der zusätzliche terrestrische Kohlenstoff als Nahrungszuschuss für bottom-up kontrollierte benthische Konsumenten, wohingegen top-down kontrollierte pelagische Konsumenten autochthone Nahrungsquellen durch terrestrischen Kohlenstoff ersetzten. Niedrige Temperaturen im Winter verursachten lang anhaltende Eisbedeckung und somit ein Sauerstoffdefizit in beiden Untersuchungsseen. Dies führte zu einem Fischsterben, bei welchem der Anteil piscivorer Fische des Makrophyten dominierten Sees überproportional stark abnahm. Die Fischgemeinschaft beider Seen wurde ähnlicher und war insgesamt von 0+ Fischen gekennzeichnet, welche eine starke top-down Kontrolle auf die Crustaceen ausübten, was diese dezimierte und Ciliaten vom Fraßdruck befreite. Die Zooplanktongemeinschaft wurde von Ciliaten dominiert, welche durch hohe Fraßraten den Biomasseaufbau von Teilen des Phytoplanktons und den Bakterien limitierten. Die energetische Weitergabeeffizienz der pelagischen autotrophen und bakteriellen Produktion zu tierischen Konsumenten war trotz des erheblichen Einflusses des Fischsterbens um ein zehnfaches höher als im benthischen Nahrungsnetz, wie die Synthese von umfangreichen Messungen in Ganzseenexperimenten auf allen trophischen Ebenen zeigte. Die benthischen Konsumenten scheinen weder bottom-up, noch top-down und nur zum Teil Habitat limitiert zu sein, womit ihre Regulation noch unklar bleibt. Die untersuchten Einflussfaktoren wirkten regulierend auf der Art-, Gemeinschafts- und Ökosystemebene. Beide Seen waren resistent gegenüber der drastischen Nahrungsnetzrestrukturierung nach dem Fischsterben, wohingegen der Eintrag terrestrischen Kohlenstoffs die Resilienz des Makrophyten dominierten Zustands verringerte. Dies verdeutlicht die weitreichenden Folgen externer Einflussfaktoren und zeigt, dass methodisch diverse Analysen der Nahrungsnetzregulation entscheidend zum Verständnis der ablaufenden Prozesse beitragen. KW - lake food web KW - complex model KW - ciliates KW - benthic food web KW - allochthonous matter KW - particulate organic matter KW - plankton KW - winter fish kill KW - trophic transfer efficiency KW - bistability KW - Nahrungsnetz KW - Bistabilität KW - allochthoner Eintrag KW - Flachseen KW - Ciliaten KW - Phytoplankton KW - Zooplankton KW - benthische Nahrungskette KW - pelagische Nahrungskette KW - trophische Transfereffizienz KW - Winterfischsterben KW - Modellierung KW - Ökosystem Y1 - 2015 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-89149 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lischke, Betty A1 - Mehner, Thomas A1 - Hilt, Sabine A1 - Attermeyer, Katrin A1 - Brauns, Mario A1 - Brothers, Soren M. A1 - Grossart, Hans-Peter A1 - Koehler, Jan A1 - Scharnweber, Inga Kristin A1 - Gaedke, Ursula T1 - Benthic carbon is inefficiently transferred in the food webs of two eutrophic shallow lakes JF - Freshwater biology N2 - The sum of benthic autotrophic and bacterial production often exceeds the sum of pelagic autotrophic and bacterial production, and hence may contribute substantially to whole-lake carbon fluxes, especially in shallow lakes. Furthermore, both benthic and pelagic autotrophic and bacterial production are highly edible and of sufficient nutritional quality for animal consumers. We thus hypothesised that pelagic and benthic transfer efficiencies (ratios of production at adjacent trophic levels) in shallow lakes should be similar. We performed whole ecosystem studies in two shallow lakes (3.5ha, mean depth 2m), one with and one without submerged macrophytes, and quantified pelagic and benthic biomass, production and transfer efficiencies for bacteria, phytoplankton, epipelon, epiphyton, macrophytes, zooplankton, macrozoobenthos and fish. We expected higher transfer efficiencies in the lake with macrophytes, because these provide shelter and food for macrozoobenthos and may thus enable a more efficient conversion of basal production to consumer production. In both lakes, the majority of the whole-lake autotrophic and bacterial production was provided by benthic organisms, but whole-lake primary consumer production mostly relied on pelagic autotrophic and bacterial production. Consequently, transfer efficiency of benthic autotrophic and bacterial production to macrozoobenthos production was an order of magnitude lower than the transfer efficiency of pelagic autotrophic and bacterial production to rotifer and crustacean production. Between-lake differences in transfer efficiencies were minor. We discuss several aspects potentially causing the unexpectedly low benthic transfer efficiencies, such as the food quality of producers, pelagic-benthic links, oxygen concentrations in the deeper lake areas and additional unaccounted consumer production by pelagic and benthic protozoa and meiobenthos at intermediate or top trophic levels. None of these processes convincingly explain the large differences between benthic and pelagic transfer efficiencies. Our data indicate that shallow eutrophic lakes, even with a major share of autotrophic and bacterial production in the benthic zone, can function as pelagic systems with respect to primary consumer production. We suggest that the benthic autotrophic production was mostly transferred to benthic bacterial production, which remained in the sediments, potentially cycling internally in a similar way to what has previously been described for the microbial loop in pelagic habitats. Understanding the energetics of whole-lake food webs, including the fate of the substantial benthic bacterial production, which is either mineralised at the sediment surface or permanently buried, has important implications for regional and global carbon cycling. KW - bacterial production KW - benthic food chain KW - pelagic food chain KW - quantitative food webs KW - trophic transfer efficiency Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/fwb.12979 SN - 0046-5070 SN - 1365-2427 VL - 62 SP - 1693 EP - 1706 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER -