Are the controls of species composition similar for contemporary and sub-fossil cladoceran assemblages? A study of 39 shallow lakes of contrasting trophic status

Abstract

To assess the similarity, not only in community structure, but also in the factors that shape cladoceran assemblages, we analysed the contemporary zooplankton populations and their sub-fossil remains in 39 shallow UK and Danish lakes. Contemporary zooplankton populations sampled from both the lake edge and the open water in August were compared with surficial sediment assemblages. The sedimentary assemblage data combined counts of both ephippial and chitinous remains in order to provide some representation of Daphnia and Ceriodaphnia. A relatively large volume of sediment (>5 cm3) was analysed for ephippial remains so as to include those species best represented by the larger ephippia. Ephippia were identified to species level in the case of Daphnia magna, and to species aggregates for other groups such as Daphnia hyalina agg., Daphnia pulex agg. and Ceriodaphnia spp. In accordance with previous work several species found in contemporary samples (copepods and the cladocerans Polyphemus pediculus, Scapholeberis mucronata and Diaphanosoma brachyurum) were absent from the surface sediments. There were extensive supporting environmental data sets for the 39 sites. It was therefore possible to determine the factors which influenced assemblage composition for the two datasets by a combination of constrained ordination, in this case redundancy analysis (RDA), partial RDA and Procrustes rotation. The same two factors, zooplanktivorous fish density and submerged macrophyte abundance, were not only the main structuring forces for both data sets, but also explained very similar amounts of the variation in the different assemblages. Thus, we conclude that the living communities and their sedimentary remains reflect the environment they are shaped by in broadly similar ways. Calibration of sub-fossil cladoceran assemblages against modern environmental data to reconstruct environmental change can, therefore, validly employ principles elucidated by contemporary studies to determine the most appropriate modelling technique.