Fish, being an important consumer in aquatic ecosystems, plays a significant role by affecting the key processes of aquatic ecosystems. Omnivorous fish consume a variety of food both from pelagic and benthic habitats and may directly or indirectly affect the plankton community as well as the lake trophic state. We conducted a 72-day outdoor experiment in mesocosms with and without Prussian carp (Carassius auratus) to evaluate the effect of this often-stocked omnivorous fish on the plankton community and water quality. We found that the presence of fish increased the biomass of planktonic algae, total and inorganic suspended solids, leading to decreased light intensity in the water and a lower biomass of benthic algae. Fish also prevented development of submerged macrophytes and the establishment of large-bodied zooplankton. However, the fish did not increase nitrogen concentrations and even was lowered total phosphorus levels, in part due to nutrient storage in the fish. We conclude that stocking of Prussian carp should be avoided, or removed where stocked and abundant, to obtain good ecological quality of shallow lakes, characterized by clear water and high abundance of macrophytes.

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Shallow waters, little-studied in Continental Antarctica, among other micrometazoans host bdelloid rotifers, which diversity, ecology, and distributional patterns in turn are poorly known. To address these issues, we analysed plankton samples collected during the 2018/2019 season in the Thala Hills oasis (East Antarctica), in shallow freshwater lakes and temporary ponds that formed during intense snow melting in December–January. Bdelloids were present in more than 90% of the sites with nine species revealed. The most frequent were Antarctic endemics [Philodina gregaria (P. gregaria), Adineta grandis (A. grandis), and Adineta coatsi (A. coatsi)], while some non-abundant bdelloids either provide characteristics of widely distributed taxa or require further taxonomy studies as they can be species new for the science. The abundance of bdelloids varied greatly across studied sites and localities, with a maximum of more than 700,000 ind m−3 and an increasing tendency to be more numerous in rock-basin temporary ponds, compared to larger lakes, with variability for different taxa. The environmental parameters strongly explain the bdelloid distribution (78.4% of the variation), with the most important factors being the type of bottom (9.9%), altitude (8.0%), TDS (6.6%), and salinity (6.5%). The cyanobacterial mats from the bottom didn’t contribute much to bdelloid distributional patterns, despite being known to be a preferred habitat for micrometazoans including rotifers. These results shape a perspective to study the processes of the formation of Antarctic seasonal aquatic habitats settled by organisms, which demonstrate an ecomorphological range from planktonic organisms to crawling ‘scrapers’.

Stoichiometric C : N : P ratios were compared between primary producers in littoral and pelagic ecosystems of mesotrophic relatively shallow lake Obsterno and shallow macrophyte covered low trophic lake Nobisto from May to October over the next two years. Elemental seston ratios of lake Obsterno revealed smaller differences between littoral and pelagic zones in comparison with lake Nobisto in 2017. During the studied period, in the both lakes, the seston C : N and C : P ratios were higher than the Redfield ratio (106 : 16 : 1 C : N : P) on most dates and N : P was always more than 16. Pelagic C : P and N : P ratios in lake Obsterno were the highest in May in 2017, July and September in 2018 with significant differences between littoral and pelagic zones. N : P ratios decreased in October but there were no significant differences among habitats. In lake Nobisto in 2018, seston C : P and N : P ratios increased from May to July in littoral and pelagic zones but then decreased in September to October. Our research shows differences in stoichiometric ratios in littoral and pelagic zones of these two lakes, which indicates food quality (seston C : N : P ratios) differences for zooplankton species depending on season and location.