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High temperature, predation, nutrient, and food quality drive dominance of small-sized zooplankton in Neotropical lakes

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Abstract

Body size plays a key role in the functioning of communities and ecosystems. However, this ecological trait is commonly under strong selection pressure by environmental drivers, such as temperature, nutrients, predation, and food quality. Understanding how environmental factors interact to shape the body size structure of communities is, therefore, of fundamental and applied interest. Using a unique database from 12 Neotropical lakes, we quantified the community-weighted mean trait (CWM) of zooplankton body size. We investigated how temperature, total phosphorus, abundance of predators (planktivorous fish) and food availability (abundance of edible and inedible algae) affect CWM of zooplankton body size. We also analyzed the interactions among these environmental predictors, and their cascading effects on zooplankton body size. We found that planktivorous fish, inedible algae, and edible algae had strong direct impacts on CWM of zooplankton body size. In particular, planktivorous fish and inedible algae decreased the CWM of body size, whereas edible algae increased it. Temperature and total phosphorus indirectly affected CWM of body size by increasing the abundance of planktivorous fish and inedible algae, and decreasing the abundance of edible algae. Our findings illustrate that environmental factors act in combination and affect zooplankton body size through multiple pathways. Therefore, focusing on the interaction between environmental predictors rather than just their isolated effects may provide a more mechanistic understanding of how environmental changes drive the body size structure of biotic communities.

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Availability of data and materials

The data sets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

Code availability

Statistic R codes for this study are available on request to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

DAC received a scholarship from the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES). DAM received a scholarship from the Brazilian National Council of Research and Development (CNPq). NRS, FA, and CCB received CNPq Brazil productivity research grants. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests.

Funding

This manuscript was supported by Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Programa de Pós-Graduação Em Ecologia de Ambientes Aquáticos Continentais (PEA), Departamento de Biologia (DBI), Nupelia, Centro de Ciências Biológicas (CCB), Universidade Estadual de Maringá (UEM), Maringá, Paraná, 87020-900, Brazil

    Donisete Aparecido das Candeias, Dieison André Moi & Claudia Costa Bonecker

  2. Centro de Formação Em Ciências Agroflorestais, Universidade Federal Do Sul da Bahia (UFSB), Itabuna, BA, Brazil

    Nadson Ressyé Simões

  3. Universidade Estadual Do Paraná (UNESPAR), Paranavaí, PR, Brazil

    Fábio Azevedo

  4. Departamento de Ecología Y Gestión Ambiental, Centro Universitario Regional del Este, Universidad de La República, Maldonado, Uruguay

    Mariana Meerhoff

  5. Department of BioScience, Aarhus University, Silkeborg, Denmark

    Mariana Meerhoff

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  1. Donisete Aparecido das Candeias
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  2. Dieison André Moi
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  4. Fábio Azevedo
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  6. Claudia Costa Bonecker
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All authors contributed to study conception and design; DAC, NRS, and FA: collected data; DAM: analyzed data; all authors wrote the manuscript.

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das Candeias, D.A., Moi, D.A., Simões, N.R. et al. High temperature, predation, nutrient, and food quality drive dominance of small-sized zooplankton in Neotropical lakes. Aquat Sci 84, 49 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-022-00881-4

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