An Analysis Of The Zooplankton Communities Of Three Oxbow Lakes In The South Central United States

This book is based on the premise that the study of ecological communities should be a composite analysis of system properties (community structure, community energetics) and population properties (life history patterns, adaptive strategies) backed by a thorough understanding of the physical chemical environment. Too frequently community ecology takes a much narrower focus. This may partly be the result of perceived antagonisms between schools of thought in ecology. Despite their rather separate origins, the multiple theoretical and methodological tools that now exist must be applied synthetically to real communities if the progress of the past two decades is to continue into the next two. This book has a case history format, which increases the opportunity for detailed analysis, although I have attempted to maintain the general per spective of a community ecologist and to draw extensively from the literature whenever it seems profitable to do so. The case history data are for Lake Lanao, a large tropical lake. The main zooplankton data base used in the analysis is entirely original and unpublished, although the detailed support ing data on the physical-chemical environment and the phytoplankton com munity have been presented in numerous journal articles and are thus abstracted or used selectively to meet the needs of zooplankton community analysis.

The crustacean zooplankton communities in three small prairie lakes subject to varying degrees of anoxia were studied for 14 months from February 1976 to April 1977. Ten or twelve samples were collected with a tube in both the deep and shallow zones of each lake once weekly during summer, biweekly in spring and fall and monthly during winter. Local terrain was important to lake trophy and stratification. Physical and chemical observations indicated that shallow hypertrophic Lake 885 periodically stratified, exhibited winter and summer anoxia and had extreme nutrient and algal biomass levels. Shallow, meso-eutrophic Lake 255 was holomictic, displayed winter anoxia, and had lowest nutrient and phytoplankton amounts. Deeper, eutrophic Lake 019, stratified through summer, was not completely exhausted of oxygen and contained intermediate nutrient and algal concentrations. Dense populations of planktivorous fish Pimephales promelas and Culaea inconstans occurred in Lake 019 while Salmo gairdneri were stocked in Lakes 255 and 885 ... While large quantities of resting eggs were produced by D. siciloides in winterkilled Lake 255, considerably fewer eggs were carried by females surviving winter in oxygenated Lake 019. Relatively small differences in lake trophy and morphology appeared to effect considerable differences in oxygen conditions and seasonal crustacean plankton community composition and dynamics.

Researchers, instructors, and students will appreciate this compilation of detailed information on the crustacean zooplankton of the Great Lakes. The authors have gathered data from more than three hundred sources and organized into a useful laboratory manual. The taxonomic keys are easy to use, suitable for both classroom and laboratory identifications. Detailed line drawings are provided to help confirm the identification of the major species. Zoologists, limnologists, hydrobiologists, fish ecologists, and those who study or monitor water quality will welcome this dependable new identification tool. A concise summary of pertinent information on the ecology of these zooplankton is provided in the main body of the text. A check-list of all species reported from each of the Great Lakes and notes on the distribution and abundance of more than a hundred species were compiled from an extensive search of existing literature. In addition, the authors collected samples from several locations on Lake Superior, in order to provide information on the abundance and life histories of the major crustacean species.

This study describes the distribution of zooplankton communities in relation to hydrographic conditions in Sandy Hook Bay, New Jersey, as well as the adjoining Navesink and Shrewsbury Rivers during May and June 1962.

Zooplankton are of key importance in the structure and functioning of aquatic food webs. They contribute to a large part of the functional and structural biodiversity of predator and prey plankton communities. Promptly responding to long-term and seasonal changes in the physical and chemical environment, they are sensitive indicators of patterns and mechanisms of impact drivers, both natural and human induced. In this volume, we aim to present evidence for both long-term and seasonal changes in zooplankton community structure and dynamics, investigating different approaches from population dynamics to advanced molecular techniques and reconstructing past communities from subfossil remains in lake sediments.