Abstract
The dynamics of populations in lake food webs are driven by a combination of spatial, environmental, and trophic processes. Differences among taxa in their ability to disperse and respond to the environment impact the food web and will be reflected in their abundances over time at different sites within a lake. The level of synchrony among lake sub-basins (within and across populations in a lake) is critical for determining the importance of spatial resolution when sampling and developing models. Using 7 years of survey data in Lake George, New York State (USA), we provide a high-level overview of changes in the densities of key food web groups over time (phytoplankton, zooplankton, and macroinvertebrates) and the synchrony of their dynamics among sub-basins. Phytoplankton biomass (measured as chlorophyll a) and zooplankton densities showed strong seasonal and multi-year trends that were synchronous across space within each group. Several macroinvertebrate groups showed significant non-linear multi-year trends, but synchrony was lower. For phytoplankton and some macroinvertebrate groups, we found that densities were highest in the South Basin, likely reflecting the gradient of decreasing nutrients in the lake from south to north. Collectively, these results suggest that modeling the food web using sub-basins is a useful scale for better understanding species dynamics in large lakes.
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Data availability
Data used for these analyses are archived on Figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19294142.v1) and all code for figures and analyses may be found in the ESM files.
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Acknowledgements
We thank multiple funding sources that supported this work, including the FUND for Lake George, the Darrin Fresh Water Institute endowment fund, and in recent years the Jefferson Project at Lake George, which is a collaboration of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, IBM Research, and the Lake George Association. We would also like to acknowledge the many field and laboratory staff, undergraduate and graduate interns, and data managers and statisticians who have been involved with monitoring efforts on Lake George. We also thank multiple anonymous reviewers, whose comments contributed to improving this manuscript.
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All authors contributed to conceiving, designing, and implementing the study. JJB, MSS, WDH, LWE, and RAR analyzed and interpreted the data. All authors contributed to writing and reviewed the manuscript.
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Borrelli, J.J., Schuler, M.S., Hintz, W.D. et al. Considering sub-basins in the spatio-temporal dynamics of lake food webs. Aquat Sci 86, 8 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-023-01022-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00027-023-01022-1