Can space-for-time-substitution surveys represent zooplankton biodiversity patterns and their relationship to environmental drivers?

HORACIO ZAGARESE; VARIAS DECENAS

Berlín

Congreso; 36th Congress of the International Society of Limnology; 2023

Space-for-Time-Substitution surveys (SFTS) are commonly used to describe zooplankton community dynamics and to determinelake ecosystem health. SFTS surveys typically combine single point observations from many lakes to evaluate the response ofzooplankton community structure and dynamics (e.g., species abundance and biomass, diversity, demographics and modeledrate processes) to spatial gradients in hypothesized environmental drivers (e.g., temperature, nutrients, predation), in lieu oftracking such responses over long time scales. However, the reliability and reproducibility of SFTS zooplankton surveys have notyet been comprehensively tested against empirically-based community dynamics from long-term monitoring efforts distributedworldwide. We use a recently compiled global data set of more than 100 lake zooplankton time series to test whether SFTSsurveys can accurately capture zooplankton diversity, and the hypothesized relationship with temperature, using simulatedSFTS surveys of the time series data. Specifically, we asked: (1) to what degree can SFTS surveys capture observed biodiversitydynamics; (2) how does timing and duration of sampling affect detected biodiversity patterns; (3) does biodiversity ubiquitouslyincrease with temperature across lakes, or vary by climate zone or lake type; and (4) do results from SFTS surveys producecomparable biodiversity-temperature relationship(s) to empirical data within and among lakes? Testing biodiversity-ecosystemfunction (BEF) relationships, and the drivers of such relationships, requires a solid data basis. Our work provides a globalperspective on the design and usefulness of (long-term) zooplankton monitoring programs and how much confidence we canplace in the zooplankton biodiversity patterns observed from SFTS surveys.