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Is Zooplankton Body Size an Indicator of Water Quality in (Sub)tropical Reservoirs in China?

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Abstract

Large zooplankton can efficiently graze on algae and thereby improve water quality. However, zooplankton body size is considered to decrease with decreasing latitude because of the high fish predation and warm temperatures at lower latitudes. To explore how fish stocking has destabilized the trophic cascade and influenced water quality along a latitudinal gradient of reservoirs, we compared zooplankton body size and trophic cascades to water quality indicators in the subtropical Lake Qiandaohu and in tropical Guangdong reservoirs. The results showed that the body length and total biomass of the dominant zooplankton in Lake Qiandaohu were much larger than those of zooplankton in the Guangdong reservoirs. Moreover, fish predation was the key factor influencing the changes in zooplankton body size and total biomass in Lake Qiandaohu. In the Guangdong reservoirs, water temperature and total phosphorus were the pivotal drivers of zooplankton body size and biomass, respectively. In addition, structural equation models showed that the decreasing zooplankton body size and biomass under fish pressure weakened the grazing pressure on phytoplankton and indirectly contributed to the low water clarity in Lake Qiandaohu. However, fish had little influence on the inefficient algal grazing of zooplankton in the Guangdong reservoirs. Overall, zooplankton can function as an indicator of water quality in fish-controlled subtropical reservoirs but not in nutrient-controlled tropical reservoirs.

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Data Availability

Data used in this study have been made available at https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1ns1rn8tb.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for providing valuable comments on the manuscript and Chun’an County Fishery Administration and Port Administration for data on fish catches, as well as Hangzhou Bureau of Ecology and Environment, Chun’an Branch for data on environmental factors in Lake Qiandaohu. This work was jointly supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFA0605201), Hangzhou Municipal Ecology and Environment Bureau (0625-20216112), the State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology (2019FBZ03), and the Featured Institute Service Projects from the Institute of Hydrobiology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Y85Z061601).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Donghu Experimental Station of Lake Ecosystems, State Key Laboratory of Freshwater Ecology and Biotechnology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Li Wang, Jun Chen, Haojie Su, Hong Shen, Jia Yu, Jiarui Liu, Yao Wu & Ping Xie

  2. College of Fisheries, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China

    Li Wang & Xufa Ma

  3. Department of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Haojie Su

  4. Hangzhou Bureau of Ecology and Environment Chun’An Branch, Hangzhou, 311700, China

    Zhixu Wu

  5. College of Ocean, Hebei Agricultural University, Qinhuangdao, 066003, China

    Jia Yu

  6. CCCC Shanghai Waterway Engineering Design and Consulting Co., Ltd., Shanghai, 200120, China

    Yao Wu

  7. College of Animal Science, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, 434025, China

    Guangyi Ding

  8. Institute for Ecological Research and Pollution Control of Plateau Lakes, School of Ecology and Environmental Science, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650500, China

    Ping Xie

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  1. Li Wang
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Correspondence to Ping Xie.

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Author Contributions

LW conceived the study, ran the simulations and wrote the paper. LW, JY, JRL, GYD, YW and ZXW performed the experiment. JC, XFM and HJS ran additional simulations, produced the final figures and improved the text. HS contributed to initial simulations and discussions. PX contributed to discussions and improved the text.

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Wang, L., Chen, J., Su, H. et al. Is Zooplankton Body Size an Indicator of Water Quality in (Sub)tropical Reservoirs in China?. Ecosystems 25, 308–319 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-021-00656-2

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