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History of limnology in Ecuador: a foundation for a growing field in the country

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Abstract

Paul Colinvaux and his Ecuadorian student Miriam Steinitz-Kannan were the first modern scientists to study limnology in Ecuador in the 1960s and 1970s. Fifty years later, Steinitz-Kannan continues this research along with many collaborators, focusing on Andean, Amazonian, and Galapagos lakes, particularly their paleolimnology, physical/chemical parameters, and plankton communities. Historically, Ecuador’s inland and Pacific waters were studied and described by European explorers, including Juan de Velasco, Alexander von Humboldt, and Charles Darwin. In modern times, other Europeans followed Colinvaux and Steinitz-Kannan. In the 1990s, Dean Jacobsen extended limnologic studies to Ecuadorian stream ecology, focusing on macroinvertebrates from streams covering wide environmental gradients. In the 2000s, Günter Gunkel intensively studied several Andean lakes in northern Ecuador. In the 2010s, Willem Van Colen and Ecuadorian colleagues continued limnologic research in Andean lakes located in Azuay and Imbabura provinces. The Instituto Antárctico Ecuatoriano has, and continues to, conduct limnological research in Ecuador’s Antarctic territory on Greenwich Island. Going forward, Ecuadorian universities are training their students to take the research initiative, inspiring a limnologic renaissance at a critical time when the country’s water resources are increasingly threatened by climate change and human impacts.

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Acknowledgements

Most of the current knowledge of freshwater science in Ecuador is made possible by enthusiastic cooperation and support from Ecuadorian institutions, including the Ministerio del Ambiente de Ecuador, Servicio de Parques Nacionales de Ecuador, Parque Nacional Galápagos, Charles Darwin Research Station, and the Instituto Geográfico Militar. The idea of writing this article emerged during an organizational meeting of the Association of Ecuadorian Limnologists organized by Dr. Andrea Encalada. We thank Dr. Ramamurthi Kannan and Dr. Luz Marina Soto Quintana for helpful comments on this manuscript and Bonnie L. Maxton-Harvey for editorial help. Dr. Joshua Cooper provided Fig. 1 for this manuscript. Miriam Steinitz-Kannan acknowledges and recognizes Dr. Michael C. Miller as a valued member of limnological expeditions from the late 1970s until mid-2000s.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY, USA

    Miriam Steinitz-Kannan

  2. Grupo de Investigación en Biodiversidad y Ecología de Sistemas Acuáticos, Escuela de Acuicultura y Pesquería, Facultad de Ciencias Veterinaria, Universidad Técnica de Manabí, Bahía de Caráquez, 131401, Ecuador

    Carlos López

  3. Freshwater Biological Laboratory, University of Copenhagen, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Dean Jacobsen

  4. Instituto Antártico Ecuatoriano (INAE), Blvd 9 de Octubre 416 y Chile. Ed. Citibank piso 4, Quito, Ecuador

    María de Lourdes Guerra

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The first draft of the manuscript was written by Miriam Steinitz-Kannan; all the authors contributed draft sections and commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Steinitz-Kannan, M., López, C., Jacobsen, D. et al. History of limnology in Ecuador: a foundation for a growing field in the country. Hydrobiologia 847, 4191–4206 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-020-04291-1

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