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Biodiversity effects on resource use efficiency and community turnover of plankton in Lake Nansihu, China

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Abstract

The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is a central issue in ecology, especially in aquatic ecosystems due to the ecophysiological characteristics of plankton. Recently, ecologists have obtained conflicting conclusions while analyzing the influence of species diversity on plankton resource use efficiency (RUE) and community turnover. In this study, both phytoplankton and zooplankton communities were investigated seasonally from 2011 to 2013 in Lake Nansihu, a meso-eutrophic and recovering lake in China. The effects of phytoplankton diversity on RUE of phytoplankton (RUEPP), zooplankton (RUEZP), and community turnover were analyzed. Results showed that both phytoplankton species richness and evenness were positively correlated with RUEPP. RUEZP had a negative relationship with phytoplankton species richness, but a weak unimodal relationship with phytoplankton evenness. Cyanobacteria community had the opposite influence on RUEPP and RUEZP. Thus, cyanobacteria dominance will benefit RUEPP in eutrophic lakes, but the growth and reproduction of zooplankton are greatly limited. The strong negative relationship between total phosphorus and RUEZP confirmed these results. Phytoplankton community turnover tended to decrease with increasing phytoplankton evenness, which was consistent with most previous studies. The correlation coefficient between phytoplankton species richness and community turnover was negative, but not significant (p > 0.05). Therefore, phytoplankton community turnover was more sensitive to the variation of evenness than species richness. These results will be helpful in understanding the effects of species diversity on ecosystem functioning in aquatic ecosystems.

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Acknowledgements

We extend our thanks to Peter Saunders and Yogesh Chander for their assistance with language editing. This study was financially supported by the Chinese National Special Water Programs (No. 2009ZX07210-009, No. 2015ZX07203-011, No. 2015ZX07204-007), Department of Environmental Protection of Shan Dong Province (SDHBPJ-ZB-08, Investigating and evaluating ecological security of Lake Nansihu), and the Chinese Natural Science Foundation (No. 39560023).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for Engineering Ecology and Nonlinear Science, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, 102206, People’s Republic of China

    Wang Tian, Huayong Zhang, Lei Zhao & Hai Huang

  2. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan, 250100, People’s Republic of China

    Jian Zhang

  3. College of Life Science, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, 250014, People’s Republic of China

    Mingsheng Miao

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  1. Wang Tian
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  2. Huayong Zhang
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Correspondence to Huayong Zhang.

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Tian, W., Zhang, H., Zhang, J. et al. Biodiversity effects on resource use efficiency and community turnover of plankton in Lake Nansihu, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 24, 11279–11288 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-017-8758-2

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