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Glacial-fed and páramo lake ecosystems in the tropical high Andes

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Abstract

The effects of climate change in the tropical Andes are predicted to be devastating. While changes altering hydrology are already occurring, our knowledge of high-altitude lentic ecosystems is limited. Therefore, we carried out a survey of 16 small (0.06–7.1 ha) and shallow (≤ 6.5 m) fishless lakes, above the treeline in the Ecuadorian Andes (≤ 3863 m). Our objectives were (a) to provide baseline data of representative lakes for future monitoring and research and (b) to identify environmental variables driving taxon richness and plankton biomass. We hypothesised that both would decline along the altitudinal gradient. A range of geographical, physical and chemical data and samples of phytoplankton, zooplankton and benthic macrofauna were collected. We found that the lakes are cold, oligotrophic and have a low plankton diversity and biomass. We were able to show that altitude, depth, water chemistry and inflow of glacial meltwater are the most important variables controlling the lake biota. Furthermore, we identified two distinct types of lakes: highly turbid due to glacial runoff and clear watered lakes. These may represent different stages of lake development from newly formed, ultraoligotrophic pro-glacial lakes to oligotrophic páramo lakes.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by Grant 2013-01-0431 from Carlsberg Fonden, Oticon Fonden and PLAN Danmark. We thank Anne J. Jacobsen and Ayoe Lüchau for assistance with water chemistry analysis and for processing chlorophyll and particulate organic matter samples. We are grateful to Trine W. Perlt for assistance with the identification and quantification of phytoplankton and zooplankton. We are thankful to Bernadett Gaal for her invaluable feedback and suggestions. The Instituto Geográfico Militar del Ecuador kindly provided the orthophotographs. We thank Lars Båstrup-Spohr for providing access to the Primer software. Finally, we are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Freshwater Biological Laboratory, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Barbara Barta, Claire Mouillet, Dean Jacobsen & Kirsten S. Christoffersen

  2. Laboratorio de Entomología, Escuela de Ciencias Biológicas, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, Quito, Ecuador

    Rodrigo Espinosa, Patricio Andino & Dean Jacobsen

  3. Department of Arctic Biology, University Center in Svalbard, Longyearbyen, Norway

    Kirsten S. Christoffersen

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  1. Barbara Barta
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  6. Kirsten S. Christoffersen
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Correspondence to Barbara Barta.

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Barta, B., Mouillet, C., Espinosa, R. et al. Glacial-fed and páramo lake ecosystems in the tropical high Andes. Hydrobiologia 813, 19–32 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-017-3428-4

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