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Seasonal effects of food quality and temperature on body stoichiometry, biochemistry, and biomass production in Daphnia populations

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posted on 2018-12-17, 14:46 authored by Clay Prater, Nicole D. Wagner, Paul C. Frost
Food quality and temperature can affect zooplankton production in lakes by altering organismal metabolism. However, the influence of these factors on consumer nutritional physiology and population biomass remains relatively understudied in natural populations. Here, we examined seasonal changes in body stoichiometry, biochemistry, and population biomass in two Daphnia species collected from two separate lakes differing in dietary phosphorus (P) supply. Food quality, measured as seston carbon:P (C:P) ratios, varied throughout the study in each lake, and water temperatures generally increased across the growing season. Daphnid elemental composition was correlated with food quality in both populations, but relationships between daphnid body stoichiometry and temperature were consistently stronger as Daphnia body C:P ratios and content of major biochemical pools declined simultaneously throughout the summer, which largely coincided with increased water temperatures. Warmer temperatures were associated with relaxed %P-RNA coupling as daphnid body RNA content declined and P content remained relatively high. These responses combined with temperature related decreases in Daphnia body %lipids and %C appeared to explain declines in daphnid body C:P ratios in both lakes over the growing season. Seasonal changes in population biomass were related to both food quality and water temperature in the lower nutrient lake. Biomass production under more eutrophic conditions however was unrelated to food quality and was instead associated with seasonal temperature changes in the higher nutrient lake. Overall, our study shows that seasonal changes in temperature and resource quality may differentially affect consumer stoichiometry and biomass production in lake ecosystems by altering consumer elemental metabolism.

Funding

This work was supported by a NSERC Discovery Grant to PCF and by OGS scholarships to CP and NDW.

History

School

  • Social Sciences

Department

  • Geography and Environment

Published in

Limnology and Oceanography

Citation

PRATER, C., WAGNER, N.D. and FROST, P.C., 2018. Seasonal effects of food quality and temperature on body stoichiometry, biochemistry, and biomass production in Daphnia populations. Limnology and Oceanography, 63(4), pp. 1727-1740.

Publisher

© Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography. Published by Wiley

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-03-04

Publication date

2018

Notes

This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: PRATER, C., WAGNER, N.D. and FROST, P.C., 2018. Seasonal effects of food quality and temperature on body stoichiometry, biochemistry, and biomass production in Daphnia populations. Limnology and Oceanography, 63(4), pp. 1727-1740 which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/lno.10803. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.

ISSN

0024-3590

Language

  • en

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