Abstract
Submerged macrophytes are regarded as being hardly assimilated by zooplankton for their lack of essential nutrients such as polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) thus serve as poor quality food, contrary to field stable isotopic investigations with observed macrophyte carbon contributions to zooplankton. However, periphyton growing on them produces the PUFAs and is thus a nutrient supplement. We hypothesize that with this supplement, zooplankton can be supported by macrophyte carbon. To test this hypothesis, we fed zooplankton with (1) 13C enriched Vallisneria natans detritus, (2) periphyton and (3) a mix of the two. We compared growth and reproduction of zooplankton under these three food treatments and calculated zooplankton assimilation of macrophyte carbon when fed a mixed diet, using a stable isotope-mixing model. The fatty acid profile of the two carbon resources was also analyzed. Our results demonstrate that Daphnia magna can grow and reproduce well, and use V. natans carbon when a supplement of periphyton is available.
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Data availability
The data that support this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 32071566) supported this study financially. We are grateful for the work of numerous participants who collected and analyzed samples during the period of experiment.
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YT made substantial contributions to design, interpret the data and draft the manuscript; DZ contributed to design, acquire and analyze the data; LS contributed to conception. ZL, XZ and HJD revised the manuscript critically.
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Tang, Y., Zhou, D., Su, L. et al. Vallisneria natans detritus supports Daphnia magna somatic growth and reproduction under addition of periphyton. Aquat Ecol 55, 579–588 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-021-09846-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10452-021-09846-5