Multi‐scale biodiversity analyses identify the importance of continental watersheds in shaping lake zooplankton biogeography

Abstract

We wish to thank the many partners and supporters of the NSERC LakePulse Network, as well as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC, Canada) for funding the project and BEB in the form of a Discovery Grant. IGE also acknowledges support from the Canada Research Chair program. We thank the Group for Interuniversity Research in Limnology (Groupe de recherche interuniversitaire) and their funders, the Fonds de recherche -nature et technologie (FRQNT, Québec) and the Faculty of Science at the University of Québec at Montréal for PhD stipend and scholarship support to CP. We thank the field teams who put in a great effort to sample the lakes, and landowners, including several First Nations, who welcomed our sampling.We would like to thank BSA environmental services for the zooplankton identification.Thanks to all the students, post-doctoral fellows and research professionals who contributed to the project; particularly Katherine Velghe, Marie-Pierre Varin, Maxime Fradette and Jelena Juric for their significant contributions to data generation and analyses, field coordination and database management. Finally, we thank Yannick Huot for directing the LakePulse project. BIOSKETCH: CINDY PAQUETTE is a PhD student part of the NSERC LakePulse network undertaking her studies in the Department of Biology at UQAM, co-supervised by I.G.-E. (McGill University) and B.E.B. TITLE: Zooplankton biogeography across temperate to subarctic regions: taxonomic and functional perspectives RUNNING TITLE: Canadian zooplankton biogeography ABSTRACT Aim: We examined variation in crustacean zooplankton taxonomic and functional composition and diversity across Canadian lakes. In addition to α-diversity patterns, we also explore mechanisms behind β-diversity spatial variation, using taxonomic and functional metrics. Location: Canada.

Environmental drivers of taxonomic and functional variation in zooplankton diversity and composition in freshwater lakes across Canadian continental watersheds

“…On the other hand, richness in the Pacific and Arctic Ocean basins showed a positive correlation to sodium concentrations. A possible explanation for this positive effect is that the zooplankton communities from the associated ecozones (Boreal Cordillera, Taiga Cordillera and Taiga plains) were dominated by Leptodiatomus species (Paquette et al 2021), which are considered to be salt‐tolerant taxa owing to their marine origin (Sarma et al 2006). Nationwide, however, we observed that increased sodium concentrations were more strongly associated with D. pulicaria , a species known to be relatively resilient to high salinity (Wersebe et al 2021) and which dominated in the agricultural region of the Prairies (Hudson Bay basin).…”

“…All statistical analyses were performed in R v. 4.1.0 (R Core Team 2021). In the continental basin scale analyses, the Gulf of Mexico ( n = 2) and Hudson Bay ( n = 145) basins were combined based on species and traits similarity, in order to balance continental basin observational group sizes (as in Paquette et al 2021).…”

“…Functional diversity was estimated using functionally classed species‐specific traits from the literature (Demott and Kerfoot 1982; Barnett et al 2007; Griffiths et al 2019). The traits used were resource acquisition, habitat, trophic group, and size ( see Paquette et al 2021 for trait database). Functional evenness (FEve; Villéger et al 2008), functional dispersion (FDis; Laliberté and Legendre 2010), and functional richness (FRic; Villéger et al 2008) were estimated using all traits in the dbFD() function (FD R‐package) with Gower distances (Laliberté et al 2014).…”

“…Samples were preserved in 70% (final concentration) ethanol after an initial CO 2 narcotization, and stored at room temperature until identification to species and biomasses estimations using measured individual length and established size and weight relationships for each species by BSA Environmental Services (Ohio, USA). For additional details on zooplankton sampling and identification, see Paquette et al (2021). Our final dataset included 624 lakes (Fig.…”

“…In addition to the influence of environmental factors, spatial proximity can influence lake zooplankton community structure through dispersal (Beisner et al 2006; da Rocha et al 2020). Recently, we examined biogeographical patterns in the LakePulse cross‐Canada crustacean zooplankton communities, independently of environmental factors (Paquette et al 2021). In that study, we demonstrated the presence of important geographical gradients related to longitudinal dispersal limitation.…”