TY - JOUR A1 - Weisse, Thomas A1 - Berendonk, Thomas U. A1 - Kamjunke, Norbert A1 - Moser, Michael A1 - Scheffel, U. A1 - Stadler, P. A1 - Weithoff, Guntram T1 - Significant habitat effects influence protist fitness evidence for local adaptation from acidic mining lakes JF - Ecosphere : the magazine of the International Ecology University N2 - It is currently controversially discussed if the same freshwater microorganisms occur worldwide wherever their required habitats are realized, i.e., without any adaptation to local conditions below the species level. We performed laboratory experiments with flagellates and ciliates from three acidic mining lakes (AML, pH similar to 2.7) to investigate if similar habitats may affect similar organisms differently. Such man-made lakes provide suitable ecosystem models to test for the significance of strong habitat selection. To this end, we analyzed the growth response of three protist taxa (three strains of the phytoflagellate Chlamydomonas acidophila, two isolates of the phytoflagellate Ochromonas and two species of the ciliate genus Oxytricha) by exposing them to lake water of their origin and from the two other AML in a cross-factorial design. Population growth rates were measured as a proxy for their fitness. Results revealed significant effects of strain, lake (= habitat), and strain X habitat interaction. In the environmentally most adverse AML, all three protist taxa were locally adapted. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that (1) the same habitat may affect strains of the same species differently and that (2) similar habitats may harbor ecophysiologically different strains or species. These results contradict the 'everything is everywhere' paradigm. KW - allopatric speciation KW - Chlamydomonas acidophila KW - ciliates KW - everything is everywhere KW - flagellates KW - freshwater microbes KW - habitat-species interaction KW - local adaptation KW - Ochromonas spp. KW - Oxytricha spp. Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1890/ES11-00157.1 SN - 2150-8925 VL - 2 IS - 12 PB - Wiley CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hartwich, Melanie A1 - Straile, Dietmar A1 - Gaedke, Ursula A1 - Wacker, Alexander T1 - Use of ciliate and phytoplankton taxonomic composition for the estimation of eicosapentaenoic acid concentration in lakes JF - Freshwater biology N2 - 1. The polyunsaturated fatty acid eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) plays an important role in aquatic food webs, in particular at the primary producerconsumer interface where keystone species such as daphnids may be constrained by its dietary availability. Such constraints and their seasonal and interannual changes may be detected by continuous measurements of EPA concentrations. However, such EPA measurements became common only during the last two decades, whereas long-term data sets on plankton biomass are available for many well-studied lakes. Here, we test whether it is possible to estimate EPA concentrations from abiotic variables (light and temperature) and the biomass of prey organisms (e.g. ciliates, diatoms and cryptophytes) that potentially provide EPA for consumers. 2. We used multiple linear regression to relate size- and taxonomically resolved plankton biomass data and measurements of temperature and light intensity to directly measured EPA concentrations in Lake Constance during a whole year. First, we tested the predictability of EPA concentrations from the biomass of EPA-rich organisms (diatoms, cryptophytes and ciliates). Secondly, we included the variables mean temperature and mean light intensity over the sampling depth (020 m) and depth (08 and 820 m) as factors in our model to check for large-scale seasonal- and depth-dependent effects on EPA concentrations. In a third step, we included the deviations of light and temperature from mean values in our model to allow for their potential influence on the biochemical composition of plankton organisms. We used the Akaike Information Criterion to determine the best models. 3. All approaches supported our proposition that the biomasses of specific plankton groups are variables from which seston EPA concentrations can be derived. The importance of ciliates as an EPA source in the seston was emphasised by their high weight in our models, although ciliates are neglected in most studies that link fatty acids to seston taxonomic composition. The large-scale seasonal variability of light intensity and its interaction with diatom biomass were significant predictors of EPA concentrations. The deviation of temperature from mean values, accounting for a depth-dependent effect on EPA concentrations, and its interaction with ciliate biomass were also variables with high predictive power. 4. The best models from the first and second approaches were validated with measurements of EPA concentrations from another year (1997). The estimation with the best model including only biomass explained 80%, and the best model from the second approach including mean temperature and depth explained 87% of the variability in EPA concentrations in 1997. 5. We show that it is possible to predict EPA concentrations reliably from plankton biomass, while the inclusion of abiotic factors led to results that were only partly consistent with expectations from laboratory studies. Our approach of including biotic predictors should be transferable to other systems and allow checking for biochemical constraints on primary consumers. KW - ciliates KW - diatoms KW - eicosapentaenoic acid KW - light KW - temperature Y1 - 2012 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2427.2012.02799.x SN - 0046-5070 VL - 57 IS - 7 SP - 1385 EP - 1398 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - 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 -