0000000001327029
AUTHOR
Kristiina Vuorio
Lake restoration influences nutritional quality of algae and consequently Daphnia biomass
AbstractFood quality is one of the key factors influencing zooplankton population dynamics. Eutrophication drives phytoplankton communities toward the dominance of cyanobacteria, which means a decrease in the availability of sterols and long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (EPA and DHA). The effects of different restoration measures on the nutritional quality of the phytoplankton community and subsequent impacts on zooplankton biomass have rarely been considered. We analyzed the nutritional quality of phytoplankton in the eutrophic Lake Vesijärvi in southern Finland over a 37-year period, and studied the impacts of two restoration measures, biomanipulation and hypolimnetic aeration, on th…
Climate change reshuffles northern species within their niches
Climate change is a pervasive threat to biodiversity. While range shifts are a known consequence of climate warming contributing to regional community change, less is known about how species' positions shift within their climatic niches. Furthermore, whether the relative importance of different climatic variables prompting such shifts varies with changing climate remains unclear. Here we analysed four decades of data for 1,478 species of birds, mammals, butterflies, moths, plants and phytoplankton along a 1,200 km high latitudinal gradient. The relative importance of climatic drivers varied non-uniformly with progressing climate change. While species turnover among decades was limited, the …
Lake eutrophication and brownification downgrade availability and transfer of essential fatty acids for human consumption
Article
Suitability of Phytosterols Alongside Fatty Acids as Chemotaxonomic Biomarkers for Phytoplankton
The composition and abundance of phytoplankton is an important factor defining ecological status of marine and freshwater ecosystems. Chemotaxonomic markers (e.g., pigments and fatty acids) are needed for monitoring changes in a phytoplankton community and to know the nutritional quality of seston for herbivorous zooplankton. Here we investigated the suitability of sterols along with fatty acids as chemotaxonomic markers using multivariate statistics, by analyzing the sterol and fatty acid composition of 10 different phytoplankton classes including altogether 37 strains isolated from freshwater lakes. We were able to detect a total of 47 fatty acids and 29 sterols in our phytoplankton sampl…
Eutrophication reduces the nutritional value of phytoplankton in boreal lakes
Eutrophication (as an increase in total phosphorus [TP]) increases harmful algal blooms and reduces the proportion of high-quality phytoplankton in seston and the content of ω-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (eicosapentaenoic acid [EPA] and docosahexaenoic acid [DHA]) in fish. However, it is not well-known how eutrophication affects the overall nutritional value of phytoplankton. Therefore, we studied the impact of eutrophication on the production (as concentration; μg L−1) and content (μg mg C−1) of amino acids, EPA, DHA, and sterols, i.e., the nutritional value of phytoplankton in 107 boreal lakes. The lakes were categorized in seven TP concentration categories ranging from ultra…
Size-fractionated δ15N and δ13C isotope ratios elucidate the role of the microbial food web in the pelagial of Lake Tanganyika
Food web structure of the pelagic community in Lake Tanganyika was studied using the stable nitrogen and carbon isotopes 15N and 13C. Size-fractionated seston, zooplankton, shrimps, medusae and fish were sampled in the northern part of Lake Tanganyika. Picoplankton fractions as well as cyanobacteria-dominated nano/microplankton fractions had very low nitrogen isotope signatures typical for nitrogen-fixing organisms. Fractions containing mainly dead organic matter (and associated bacteria) or nano/microalgae (chlorophytes and diatoms) had δ15N 2 to 4‰ higher. The low δ15N signatures of small cyclopoids and shrimps suggest they are feeding on nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria (picoplankton or lar…
The stoichiometry of particulate nutrients in Lake Tanganyika — implications for nutrient limitation of phytoplankton
We studied the potential nutrient limitation of phytoplankton by means of seston nutrient stoichiometry and nutrient enrichment bioassays in the epilimnion of Lake Tanganyika. In most cases, the particulate carbon to phosphorus (C:P) ratio was high and indicated moderate P deficiency, while the respective C:N ratio mainly suggested moderate N deficiency. The N:P ratios of seston indicated rather balanced N and P supply. In three two-day enrichment bioassays in April—May 1995, a combined addition of P, N and organic carbon (glucose) always increased primary production in comparison to untreated controls. Primary production also slightly increased after the addition of phosphate-P, while the …
Phytoplankton in Lake Tanganyika — vertical and horizontal distribution of in vivo fluorescence
Determinations of chlorophyll a and in vivo fluorescence of photosynthetic pigments were used to study vertical and horizontal distribution of phytoplankton in Lake Tanganyika (East Africa). Blue excited fluorescence (IVFb) was an approximate predictor of chlorophyll a at different depths and locations. Green excited fluorescence (IVFg), which reflects phycoerythrin in cyanobacteria, explained chlorophyll a variation equally well, and in combination with IVFb the degree of explanation was improved to 87% (n = 90). Particularly during the shallow stratification in March–May, the maxima of chlorophyll a, IVFb and IVFg were located within the thermocline. Such distribution may have resulted fr…
Consistency of Targeted Metatranscriptomics and Morphological Characterization of Phytoplankton Communities
The composition of phytoplankton community is the basis for environmental monitoring and assessment of the ecological status of aquatic ecosystems. Community composition studies of phytoplankton have been based on time-consuming and expertise-demanding light microscopy analyses. Molecular methods have the potential to replace microscopy, but the high copy number variation of ribosomal genes and the lack of universal primers for simultaneous amplification of prokaryotic and eukaryotic genes complicate data interpretation. In this study, we used our previously developed directional primer-independent high-throughput sequencing (HTS) approach to analyze 16S and 18S rRNA community structures. C…
Lake zooplankton δ13C values are strongly correlated with the δ13C values of distinct phytoplankton taxa
Analyses of carbon stable isotopes are often used to estimate the contributions of allochthonous and autochthonous dietary resources to aquatic consumers. Most pelagic food web studies assume that all phytoplankton taxa have a similar δ13C value. We studied pelagic food web compartments (dissolved inorganic carbon [DIC], phytoplankton, bacteria, seston, cladoceran zooplankton) in 12 small (< 0.1 km2) lakes in southern Finland. These lakes were classified as oligotrophic, mesotrophic, eutrophic, and dystrophic based on their concentrations of total phosphorus and dissolved organic carbon. Additionally, we studied phytoplankton photosynthetic carbon fractionation (εp) in laboratory conditions…
Original data for article: Comparison of epifluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry in counting freshwater picophytoplankton
The dataset is divided into four subfolders: 1) "SEM experiment data" contains Scanning Electron Microscopy data, epifluorescence microscopy data and flow cytometry data of cultured Synechococcus, Chroococcus and Snowella 2) "raw data" contains epifluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry data of picophytoplankton from Finnish lakes. This has two sub folders "flow cytometry raw" and "microscopy raw" 3) "flow cytometry calibration data" contains data for cell size calibration with latex beads and volumetric calibration for the flow cytometer 4) "processed flow and microscopy data" contains excel workbooks for the figures shown in the manuscipt