Aquatic food webs in deep temperate lakes: Key species establish through their autecological versatility

Microbial planktonic communities are the basis of food webs in aquatic ecosystems since they contribute substantially to primary production and nutrient recycling. Network analyses of DNA metabarcoding data sets emerged as a powerful tool to untangle the complex ecological relationships among the ke...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Molecular ecology 2021-02, Vol.30 (4), p.1053-1071
Main Authors: Qu, Zhishuai, Forster, Dominik, Bruni, Estelle P., Frantal, Daniela, Kammerlander, Barbara, Nachbaur, Laura, Pitsch, Gianna, Posch, Thomas, Pröschold, Thomas, Teubner, Katrin, Sonntag, Bettina, Stoeck, Thorsten
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aquatic ecosystems
Autecology
Climate change
climate stress
Datasets
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
ecosystem robustness
Environmental changes
Environmental conditions
Environmental stress
Epilimnion
Food chains
Food webs
functional diversity
Hypolimnion
Lakes
Microorganisms
network analyses
Networks
Plankton
Primary production
protistan plankton
Species extinction
Surface layers
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Summary:Microbial planktonic communities are the basis of food webs in aquatic ecosystems since they contribute substantially to primary production and nutrient recycling. Network analyses of DNA metabarcoding data sets emerged as a powerful tool to untangle the complex ecological relationships among the key players in food webs. In this study, we evaluated co‐occurrence networks constructed from time‐series metabarcoding data sets (12 months, biweekly sampling) of protistan plankton communities in surface layers (epilimnion) and bottom waters (hypolimnion) of two temperate deep lakes, Lake Mondsee (Austria) and Lake Zurich (Switzerland). Lake Zurich plankton communities were less tightly connected, more fragmented and had a higher susceptibility to a species extinction scenario compared to Lake Mondsee communities. We interpret these results as a lower robustness of Lake Zurich protistan plankton to environmental stressors, especially stressors resulting from climate change. In all networks, the phylum Ciliophora contributed the highest number of nodes, among them several in key positions of the networks. Associations in ciliate‐specific subnetworks resembled autecological species‐specific traits that indicate adaptions to specific environmental conditions. We demonstrate the strength of co‐occurrence network analyses to deepen our understanding of plankton community dynamics in lakes and indicate biotic relationships, which resulted in new hypotheses that may guide future research in climate‐stressed ecosystems.
ISSN:0962-1083
1365-294X
DOI:10.1111/mec.15776