ZooSize: Crustacean zooplankton community size distributions across a worldwide set of freshwater lakes

ZEYNEP ERSOY; MARIA CALDERÓ-PASCUAL; LAUREN BARTH; JASON STOCKWELL; LIA IVANICK; STEPHANIE FIGARY; MICHAEL MEYER; WARREN CURRIE; MARIA ANTON-PARDO; MARJOHN BALUDO; MIREIA BARTRONS; JESSICA BEYER; FERNANDO CHAGUACEDA; HUIHUANG CHEN; KIRSTEN CHRISTOFFERSEN; ZORKA DULIć; JONATHAN DOUBEK; ELVIRA DE EYTO; JANET FISCHER; ELENA FORASACO; GIDEON GAL; JORGE GARCÍA-GIRÓN; KEMAL ALI GER; EMMA GRAY; GUTIERREZ, MARÍA FLORENCIA; ET AL.

Congreso; GLEON 2022 Meeting; 2022

Body size is a key ecological trait that plays a significant role in determining the functioning of size-structured freshwater communities (e.g., predator-prey interactions, energy transfer). Furthermore, body size change has been posited as a universal response to global warming. Despite previous research efforts, most studies on zooplankton body size are either geographically restricted or consider average sizes for each species instead of individual body size measurements. This limits our ability to consider and compare the ecological importance of both intra- and interspecific trait variation. In ZooSize, we will create a new global database of individual crustacean zooplankton body length measurements from freshwater lakes, to address the following questions: (1) How do zooplankton size structure metrics (e.g., size diversity, mean size) change across lake thermal regions? (2) How do other biotic and abiotic factors (e.g., fish predation, resource availability) modulate changes in zooplankton size structure globally? We expect that the responses of size structure to environmental stressors will vary across geographical and ecological gradients. Specifically, we hypothesize that: (i) mean population and community body size and intra-specific size variation will decrease at lower latitudes as temperature increases; (ii) mean population and community body size and size diversity will decrease with increased nutrient concentrations, increased cyanobacteria blooms, and fish predation; and (iii) lower community body size variation will lead to lower trophic transfer efficiency. Overall, our unique large-scale harmonised dataset and associated results will help understand climate change impacts on global patterns of freshwater zooplankton communities and how body size can be used as an indicator for ecological status in the conservation and restoration of lakes worldwide.