Effects of functional diversity and salinization on zooplankton productivity: an experimental approach

Freshwater salinisation: a research agenda for a saltier world

“…Community level FS impacts at community level have been intensively studied. However, the current literature mainly addresses community structure (e.g., species richness or composition [25,75,76]). Functional aspects related to trait diversity, food web structure, and trophic dynamics remain poorly explored.…”

“…As shown for other stressors [114], trait-based approaches can be useful tools to obtain a more mechanistic understanding of how FS impacts the structure and function of freshwater communities [75] since they focus on the functional roles of species within the ecosystem rather than their identities (e.g., litter decomposition [39]). Traits associated with tolerating osmotic stress, such as short lifespan, high number of generations per year, dormancy, plastron respiration, or ovoviviparity, might be beneficial for coping with FS (see traits listed in [59,115]).…”

Morphological diversity increases with decreasing resources along a zooplankton time series

“…More generally, it would be relevant to investigate how these phenotypic variations as such relate to functional diversity and ecosystem functioning, e.g. whether increasing morphological diversity has the same beneficial effects as taxonomic or functional diversity on ecosystem functions such as nutrient transfer [88], resource use efficiency [8], primary or secondary production [1,5]. A morphologically diverse community might, for example, harbour more specialized feeding strategies because of the large morphological range of prey, and changes in transparency and elongation might alter or indicate a modification of the trophic structure.…”

“…Numerous studies indicate that in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems biodiversity is positively linked to productivity, for example, reporting increasing primary production due to increased resource use efficiency [1,2]. Biodiversity is in turn influenced by the overall production of a system, as shown by the linear decline in taxonomic richness of phyto- and zoo-plankton when nutrient concentrations increase [3].…”

Effects of freshwater salinization on a salt‐naïve planktonic eukaryote community

“…Plankton communities are the resource base that supports higher trophic levels, such as fisheries, and essential ecosystem functions such as primary production, decomposition, and nutrient and carbon cycling (Kalff 2001). Recent studies have addressed the effects of anthropogenic salinization on zooplankton Hintz and Relyea 2019;Arnott et al 2020;Setubal et al 2020;Moffett et al 2021), but little research has addressed salinization effects on other planktonic groups, such as phytoplankton (Blinn et al 2004;Ballot et al 2009;Fay and Shi 2012;Porter-Goff et al 2013;, fungi (Schäfer et al 2012;Sauer et al 2016;Gonçalves et al 2019;da Silva et al 2021), and to our knowledge one other study has addressed ciliates and other unicellular eukaryotes (Mo et al 2021). We present one of the first studies to address freshwater salinization impacts using a DNA metabarcoding framework that considers all of these groups together within the same community.…”