“…Moreover, the ciliate importance to the food web increases with higher primary productivity (Sherr and Sherr, 2002), although it remains to be shown if this relationship holds true for tropical lakes, such as Catemaco. The nature of lacustrine trophic microbial web components and their interactions have been studied for temperate lakes with different trophic statuses (Straškrabová et al, 1999;Pfister et al, 2002;Auer et al, 2004;Chróst et al, 2009;Agasild et al, 2013;Van Wichelen et al, 2013), including eutrophic temperate lakes affected by cyanobacterial blooms (Moustaka-Gouni et al, 2006;Zingel et al, 2007;Zingel and Nõges, 2010), shallow soda lakes of Africa (Burian et al, 2013), relatively shallow eutrophic lakes, deep oligotrophic tropical lakes of Eastern Africa (Yasindi and Taylor, 2003), deep athalassohaline lakes of North America Peštová et al, 2008), and shallow subtropical lakes with differing trophic statuses (Beaver and Crisman, 1989;Beaver and Crisman, 1990;Gomes and Godinho, 2003;MachadoVelho et al, 2005;Havens et al, 2007;Bagatini et al, 2013;Machado-Velho et al, 2013). These studies have demonstrated that microbial food webs, particularly the composition, abundance, biomass and diversity of ciliates, present specific responses to the geographic, climatic and ecological features of different lakes and reservoirs.…”