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The importance of herbivory by protists in lakes of a tropical floodplain system

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Abstract

Inland aquatic ecosystems play a critical role in the global carbon cycle, processing a great fraction of the organic matter coming from terrestrial ecosystems, and the microbial food web is crucial in this process. Thus, we aimed to evaluate whether the food resource of planktonic protozoa comes mainly from small primary producers or heterotrophic bacteria in tropical shallows lakes, assuming the hypothesis that, in general, picocyanobacteria would be the main food resource for protists. We also expected that the autotrophic fraction would be mainly related to protists at the surface of the environments, while the heterotrophic fraction would be more important at the lower strata of the water column. We performed size-fractionation experiments to evaluate the effects of predation of protists on heterotrophic bacteria and picocyanobacteria. We also sampled planktonic organisms at the subsurface and bottom of 20 lakes in a Neotropical floodplain. We found an herbivory preference of heterotrophic flagellates, while ciliates seem to exert a stronger impact on heterotrophic bacteria. We also found no relationship between heterotrophic bacteria and protists in the field data, whereas positive relationships between picocyanobacteria and protists were observed in environments where there was sunlight. Thus, both heterotrophic bacteria and picocyanobacteria were important components in the food webs of tropical shallow lakes. Moreover, the trophic cascade caused by zooplankton predation suggests that protists are efficient in transferring the energy from the base of microbial food webs to higher trophic levels.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Núcleo de Pesquisas em Limnologia, Ictiologia e Aquicultura (Nupelia) and the Graduate Program in Ecology of Continental Aquatic Environments for logistical support. This project is part of the Long-Term Ecological Project (LTER)—The Upper Paraná River floodplain: structure and environmental processes—supported by the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq). BRM, FALT, LFMV also have their researches continuously supported by CNPq.

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  1. Núcleo de Pesquisas em Limnologia, Ictiologia e Aquicultura (Nupélia), Universidade Estadual de Maringá, Av. Colombo 5790, Bloco G-90, Maringá, Paraná, CEP 87020-900, Brazil

    Bianca Ramos Meira, Fernando Miranda Lansac-Toha, Bianca Trevizan Segovia, Paulo Roberto Bressan Buosi, Fábio Amodêo Lansac-Tôha & Luiz Felipe Machado Velho

  2. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Tecnologias Limpas, Centro Universitário Cesumar - Unicesumar/Instituto Cesumar de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação (ICETI), Av. Guedner 1610, Maringá, Paraná, 87050-900, Brazil

    Luiz Felipe Machado Velho

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  1. Bianca Ramos Meira
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Correspondence to Bianca Ramos Meira.

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Meira, B.R., Lansac-Toha, F.M., Segovia, B.T. et al. The importance of herbivory by protists in lakes of a tropical floodplain system. Aquat Ecol 52, 193–210 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-018-9654-7

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