Biogeography and environmental drivers of zooplankton communities in permafrost-affected lakes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

• Published in: Global Ecology and Conservation
• Main Authors: Ze Ren, Xuan Jia, Yitong Zhang, Kang Ma, Cheng Zhang, Xia Li
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2022
• Subjects: Thermokarst lakes; Zooplankton; Diversity; Latitude; Qinghai-Tibet Plateau; Ecology; QH540-549.5; permafrost; Thermokarst
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2022.e02191; https://doaj.org/article/1620e9f382694608ac1e87b188b4a744

Global warming is accelerating permafrost thaw, forming new thermokarst lakes and substantially influencing the old ones. However, the biological communities in thermokarst lakes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) are rarely studied. Here, we assessed the biogeographical patterns of zooplankton communities in 44 thermokarst lakes across the QTP. Across all lakes, 17 Cladocera and 13 Copepoda species were identified, with most of the lakes dominated by Cladocera. Chydorus sphaericus and Cyclops vicinus were the most frequently detected species. Both cladoceran and copepod communities had very low species richness and density, which lacked a clear spatial pattern but positively associated to dissolved oxygen. In general, species richness was negatively influenced by seston particle quantity while the density was positively influenced by water nutrient concentrations. Cladoceran and copepod communities had a high β-diversity (0.89 and 0.91, respectively), which was dominated by species turnover. However, Cladocera had significantly lower β-diversity and turnover component than copepod communities. β-diversity of Cladocera and Copepoda showed a significant but weak distance decay relationship and also significantly correlated with longitude, latitude, mean annual temperature, as well as concentrations of seston particle carbon and nitrogen. In addition, their β-diversities differentially correlated to other environmental variables. Overall, the results suggested that the geographical barriers, climate, and some local environmental variables are key factors in shaping the biogeography of zooplankton community. Although a general biogeographic pattern of zooplankton across the QTP cannot be drawn from this limited dataset, this study provided the first large spatial scale investigation and analyses of zooplankton biogeography in thermokarst lakes on the QTP. Given the important roles of zooplankton in aquatic ecosystems, this study could provide insights for understanding the influences of future environmental changes ...