History of limnology in Ecuador: a foundation for a growing field in the country

Abstract

Paul Colinvaux and his Ecuadorian student Miriam Steinitz-Kannan were the first modern scientists to study limnology in Ecuador in the 1960s and 1970s. Fifty years later, Steinitz-Kannan continues this research along with many collaborators, focusing on Andean, Amazonian, and Galapagos lakes, particularly their paleolimnology, physical/chemical parameters, and plankton communities. Historically, Ecuador’s inland and Pacific waters were studied and described by European explorers, including Juan de Velasco, Alexander von Humboldt, and Charles Darwin. In modern times, other Europeans followed Colinvaux and Steinitz-Kannan. In the 1990s, Dean Jacobsen extended limnologic studies to Ecuadorian stream ecology, focusing on macroinvertebrates from streams covering wide environmental gradients. In the 2000s, Gunter Gunkel intensively studied several Andean lakes in northern Ecuador. In the 2010s, Willem Van Colen and Ecuadorian colleagues continued limnologic research in Andean lakes located in Azuay and Imbabura provinces. The Instituto Antarctico Ecuatoriano has, and continues to, conduct limnological research in Ecuador’s Antarctic territory on Greenwich Island. Going forward, Ecuadorian universities are training their students to take the research initiative, inspiring a limnologic renaissance at a critical time when the country’s water resources are increasingly threatened by climate change and human impacts.