The fate of cyanobacterial detritus in the food web of Lake Taihu: a mesocosm study using 13C and 15N labeling |
| |
Authors: | Jinlei Yu Yanmin Li Xiaoling Liu Kuanyi Li Feizhou Chen Ramesh Gulati Zhengwen Liu |
| |
Affiliation: | 1. Department of Ecology and Institute of Hydrobiology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510630, China 2. Hua Zhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China 3. State Key Laboratory of Lake Science and Environment, Nanjing Institute of Geography & Limnology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210008, China 4. Department of Aquatic Ecology, The Netherlands Institute of Ecology, 6708?PB, Wageningen, The Netherlands 5. Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research, Beijing, China
|
| |
Abstract: | The ecosystem of the highly eutrophic Lake Taihu (China) is seriously affected by recurrent cyanobacterial blooms, but little is known about the contribution made by cyanobacteria to the food web. In this study, we investigated the fate of detritus of the cyanobacterium Microcystis in the food web of Lake Taihu through a 19-day mesocosm experiment using stable-isotopic tracers of carbon (13C) and nitrogen (15N). 13C- and 15N-labeled Microcystis detritus was added to the mesocosm tanks and tracked through different elements of the food web. We found clear enrichment with both 13C and 15N in some zooplankton species, including Daphnia, Diaphanosoma, and Sinocalanus, which suggests that these zooplankters can utilize cyanobacterial detritus as a food source. Benthic animals, chironomid larvae and Limnodrilus, also showed pronounced increases in 13C and 15N, but the isotope increase was relatively smaller in the gastropods, Radix sp. and Bellamya sp., implying that they either exploited this food source differently or responded slower than the zooplankton, which apparently grew faster than the snails. Our study suggests that cyanobacterial detritus, originating almost wholly from the bloom-forming Microcystis, is an important food source for both planktonic and benthic food webs in eutrophic lakes such as Lake Taihu. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|