ZooST: Zooplankton over Space and Time

Conference Year

January 2021

Abstract

Climate change is rapidly altering the magnitude and phenology of ecological processes and communities. Single observation “snapshots” from multi-lake surveys over a wide geographic range are typically used to evaluate plankton dynamics and their responses to environmental change. The environmental gradients resulting from the differing conditions of the multiple lakes are assumed to be reliable proxies for time (Space-for-Time-substitutions (SFTS)), useful due to the lack of detailed temporal datasets. SFTS surveys, however, have been critiqued for their assumption that spatial and temporal scales can be coupled. In SFTS lake studies, zooplankton are commonly used as indicators of ecosystem change by modeling how community structure is influenced by environmental conditions (e.g., temperature, nutrients, pH, chlorophyll-a), or by using processed-based models (e.g., secondary production estimates). However, the ability of large-scale snapshots to represent time-integrated patterns in zooplankton community structure and function remains untested. I am compiling long-term time series of zooplankton and associated lake data in order to simulate “snapshot” sampling. I propose to empirically re-sample the data sets under different SFTS permutations and compare results among those permutations using a suite of typical analyses (e.g., diversity indices, production models based on production:biomass ratios). I hypothesize that results will not be reproducible across different SFTS survey permutations and will not capture long-term changes and patterns in the lake data due to the confounding effect of temporal variation within each lake.

Primary Faculty Mentor Name

Jason Stockwell

Secondary Mentor Name

Ariana Chiapella

Graduate Student Mentors

Ariana Chiapella

Faculty/Staff Collaborators

Jason Stockwell (Faculty advisor) and Ariana Chiapella (Graduate Student Mentor)

Status

Undergraduate

Student College

Rubenstein School of Environmental and Natural Resources

Program/Major

Environmental Sciences

Primary Research Category

Food & Environment Studies

Abstract only.

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ZooST: Zooplankton over Space and Time

Climate change is rapidly altering the magnitude and phenology of ecological processes and communities. Single observation “snapshots” from multi-lake surveys over a wide geographic range are typically used to evaluate plankton dynamics and their responses to environmental change. The environmental gradients resulting from the differing conditions of the multiple lakes are assumed to be reliable proxies for time (Space-for-Time-substitutions (SFTS)), useful due to the lack of detailed temporal datasets. SFTS surveys, however, have been critiqued for their assumption that spatial and temporal scales can be coupled. In SFTS lake studies, zooplankton are commonly used as indicators of ecosystem change by modeling how community structure is influenced by environmental conditions (e.g., temperature, nutrients, pH, chlorophyll-a), or by using processed-based models (e.g., secondary production estimates). However, the ability of large-scale snapshots to represent time-integrated patterns in zooplankton community structure and function remains untested. I am compiling long-term time series of zooplankton and associated lake data in order to simulate “snapshot” sampling. I propose to empirically re-sample the data sets under different SFTS permutations and compare results among those permutations using a suite of typical analyses (e.g., diversity indices, production models based on production:biomass ratios). I hypothesize that results will not be reproducible across different SFTS survey permutations and will not capture long-term changes and patterns in the lake data due to the confounding effect of temporal variation within each lake.