The ability of communities to withstand stress or maintain their species composition over extended periods of environmental changes is a matter of major concern. Here, we utilize a dataset where microcrustacean communities were related to water chemistry in 82 boreal-alpine lakes over a 50-yr time span (1968 and 2016), with the same person involved in sampling both times ensuring identical sites and sampling protocols. Over this time span, there has been a 1–2°C increase in mean annual temperatures and prolonged growing seasons. Also, the strong changes in SO₄ deposition and acidification, peaking in the early 1980s, followed by a recovery period, have caused not only an increase in pH but also a pronounced browning (elevated DOC) and reduced levels of Ca over the past three decades. Despite this, the microcrustacean diversity and community composition have remained remarkably stable, and this holds both for the species-rich larger, boreal sites and the species-poor alpine sites. While likely there are interannual fluctuations in species abundance, and perhaps species may also be missing for certain periods, a combination of local refugia, resting egg seed-banks and a regional recolonization that may occur at the meta-population level, aims at maintaining a strong stability in community composition.

中文翻译：

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尽管环境发生了变化，但微甲壳动物群落的长期恢复力

社区在长期环境变化中承受压力或维持其物种组成的能力是一个主要问题。在这里，我们利用了一个数据集，其中微甲壳动物群落与 82 个北方高山湖泊在 50 年的时间跨度（1968 年和 2016 年）中的水化学有关，同一个人参与两次采样以确保相同的地点和采样协议。在这段时间里，年平均气温上升了 1-2°C，生长季节延长。此外，SO ₄的强烈变化沉积和酸化在 1980 年代初达到顶峰，随后是恢复期，在过去的 30 年中，不仅导致 pH 值升高，而且导致显着的褐变（DOC 升高）和 Ca 水平降低。尽管如此，微甲壳动物的多样性和群落组成仍然非常稳定，这对于物种丰富的较大的北方地区和物种贫乏的高山地区都适用。虽然物种丰度可能存在年际波动，并且可能在某些时期物种也可能缺失，但当地避难所、休眠卵种子库和可能在元种群水平上发生的区域重新定殖的组合旨在维持一个群落组成稳定性强。