Grazing by a resident macrozooplankton community and non‐resident Daphnia carinata King: A preliminary in situ incubation study

Abstract

A 24 h incubation study was conducted in situ in Manly Dam reservoir, Sydney, Australia. The study aimed to evaluate the relative effectiveness of grazing on phytoplankton by a resident macrozooplankton community, dominated by the cladoceran Ceriodaphnia and some copepods, in comparison with grazing by added, non-resident Daphnia carinata in the absence of the resident macrozooplankton community. Although there was some variability in the measured grazing rates among incubation bottles (volume: 1.28 L), D. carinata with a mean body size of 30.8 g dry weight were more efficient grazers than the reservoir macrozooplankton community with a mean body size of 2.5 g dry weight. The weight-specific clearance rate of D. carinata was 2-65 times higher than that of the resident reservoir community for five taxa of reservoir phytoplankton examined. In comparing the evidence from the literature on the limited ability of D. carinata to graze on cyanobacteria, a management strategy using D. carinata for the reduction of phytoplankton biomass may need to be considered separately from one designed to specifically control undesirable taxa, such as the cyanobacteria Microcystis and Anabaena.

Eutrophication in Australian Rivers, Reservoirs and Estuaries – A Southern Hemisphere Perspective on the Science and its Implications

“…In addition, D. carinata is able to feed on cyanobacteria (Kobayashi, 1993) while being resistant to certain cyanobacterial toxins (Matveev et al, 1994b). Kobayashi et al (1998) found that the weight specific clearance rate of D. carinata was between two and 65 times higher (0.27-3.83 l mgdw )1 d )1 ) than that of the resident zooplankton community in a reservoir in Sydney. This suggests that D. carinata is effective at reducing phytoplankton where planktivorous fish are absent or occur in low numbers and where phytoplankton production is sufficiently high to sustain large D. carinata populations (see also Burns, 1998).…”

“…There are now a number of studies from Australia that show the potential for zooplankton grazers to control phytoplankton. In particular, it has been shown that Daphnia carinata, a large cladoceran, can be present in high densities in Australian systems (Mitchell & Williams, 1982) and that it effectively grazes phytoplankton (e.g., Ganf & Shiel, 1985;Merrick & Ganf, 1988;King & Shiel, 1993;Kobayashi, 1993;Kobayashi et al, 1996Kobayashi et al, , 1998Matveev & Matveeva, 1997). In addition, D. carinata is able to feed on cyanobacteria (Kobayashi, 1993) while being resistant to certain cyanobacterial toxins (Matveev et al, 1994b).…”

Mechanism and control of lake eutrophication

“…Although traditional biomanipulation method has been successful in many applications, it is not applicable in the eutrophic lakes with algal blooms because the high concentration and large size of algae would inhibit the predation of zooplankton [49] . This technique would be limited in eutrophic lakes [50,51] . Aiming at the severe problem of algal bloom in eutrophic lakes in China, Chinese scientists suggested the non-traditional biomanipulation to reduce the algal biomass by growing planktivores fish such as silver Carp and bighead Carp [52] .…”