Evolution of ancient Lake Ohrid: a tectonic perspective

Hoffmann, N.; Reicherter, Klaus; Fernández-Steeger, Tomás Manuel; Grützner, Christoph

doi:10.5194/bg-7-3377-2010

Cited by 46 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Nevertheless, the Ohrid Basin has a complex geological and limnological structure. Different bedrock types, active tectonics (for details see Hoffmann et al, 2010), steep-sided mountain ranges, and water-discharge by lake-side and sublacustrine spring fields (Matzinger et al, 2006a) cause the characteristics of different habitats (Fig. 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatially explicit analysis of gastropod biodiversity in ancient Lake Ohrid

et al. 2011

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Abstract. The quality of spatial analyses of biodiversity is improved by (i) utilizing study areas with well defined physiogeographical boundaries, (ii) limiting the impact of widespread species, and (iii) using taxa with heterogeneous distributions. These conditions are typically met by ecosystems such as oceanic islands or ancient lakes and their biota. While research on ancient lakes has contributed significantly to our understanding of evolutionary processes, statistically sound studies of spatial variation of extant biodiversity have been hampered by the frequently vast size of ancient lakes, their limited accessibility, and the lack of scientific infrastructure. The European ancient Lake Ohrid provides a rare opportunity for such a reliable spatial study. The comprehensive horizontal and vertical sampling of a speciesrich taxon, the Gastropoda, presented here, revealed interesting patterns of biodiversity, which, in part, have not been shown before for other ancient lakes.In a total of 284 samples from 224 different locations throughout the Ohrid Basin, 68 gastropod species, with 50 of them (= 73.5%) being endemic, could be reported. The spatial distribution of these species shows the following characteristics: (i) within Lake Ohrid, the most frequent species are endemic taxa with a wide depth range, (ii) widespread species (i.e. those occurring throughout the Balkans or beyond) are rare and mainly occur in the upper layer of the lake, (iii) while the total number of species decreases with water depth, the proportion of endemics increases, and (iv) the deeper layers of Lake Ohrid appear to have a higher spatial homogeneity of biodiversity. Moreover, gastropod communities of Lake Ohrid and its feeder springs are both distinct from each other and from the surrounding waters. The analysis also shows that community similarity of Lake Correspondence to: T. Hauffe (torsten.hauffe@bio.uni-giessen.de) Ohrid is mainly driven by niche processes (e.g. environmental factors), but also by neutral processes (e.g. dispersal limitation and evolutionary histories of species). For niche-based mechanisms it is shown that large scale effects such as type of water body or water depth are mainly responsible for the similarity of gastropod communities, whereas small scale effects like environmental gradients affect gastropod compositions only marginally. In fact, neutral processes appear to be more important than the small scale environmental factors, thus emphasizing the importance of dispersal capacities and evolutionary histories of species.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatially explicit analysis of gastropod biodiversity in ancient Lake Ohrid

et al. 2011

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“…In contrast, sudden disturbances with a short and clearly defined duration (< few decades) are called "pulse disturbances" (Niemi et al, 1990). Examples include landslides , earthquakes (Hoffmann et al, 2010;Wagner et al, 2012b;Lindhorst et al, 2015), and volcanic ash depositions D'Addabbo et al, 2015).…”

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Differential resilience of ancient sister lakes Ohrid and Prespa to environmental disturbances during the Late Pleistocene

et al. 2016

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Abstract. Ancient lakes, such as lakes Ohrid and Prespa on the Balkan Peninsula, have become model systems for studying the link between geological and biotic evolution. Recently, the scientific deep-drilling project Scientific Collaboration on Past Speciation Conditions in Lake Ohrid (SCOP-SCO) was initiated to better understand the environmental, climatic, and limnological evolution of the lake. It revealed that Lake Ohrid experienced a number of environmental disturbances during its ca. 2.0 million year long history. These are comprised of disturbances that lasted over longer periods of time ("press events") such as glacial-interglacial cycles and Heinrich events, as well as sudden and short disturbances ("pulse events") like the deposition of landslides, earthquakes, and volcanic ash depositions. The latter includes one of the most severe volcanic episodes during the Late Pleistocene: the eruption of the Campanian Ignimbrite (known as Y-5 marine tephra layer) from the Campi Flegrei caldera, dated to 39.6 ± 0.1 thousand years ago. The event is recorded by the deposition of a ca. 15 cm thick tephra layer in sediment cores of lakes Ohrid (DEEP-5045-1) and Prespa (Co1204). Coincidently, this pulse event is superimposed by the Heinrich H4 event, 40.4-38.4 thousand years ago.In the current paper, diatoms were used as proxies to compare the responses of these lakes to the Y-5 (pulse) and the H4 (press) disturbances. Based on stratigraphically constrained incremental sum of squares cluster (CONISS) and unconstrained Partitioning Around Medoids (PAM) analyses, we found little evidence that diatom community compositions in either lake responded to the H4 event. However, the Y-5 influx caused clear and rapid diatom community changes. After the initial response, community compositions in Lake Ohrid and, to a lesser extent, in Lake Prespa slowly returned to their quasi pre-disturbance state. Moreover, there is no evidence for disturbance-related extinction events. The combined evidence from these findings suggests that lakes Ohrid and Prespa likely did not experience regime shifts. It is therefore concluded that both lakes show resilience to environmental disturbance. However, it seems that Lake Ohrid is more resilient than Lake Prespa, as the recovery of diatom communities is more pronounced and its estimated recovery time is only ca. 1100 years vs. ca. 4000 years in Lake Prespa. The reasons for the differential responses remain largely unknown, but differences in geology, lake age, limnology, and intrinsic parameters of the diatom proxies may play an important role.

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“…Accordingly, the lake can be subdivided into five different horizontal zones that differ from each other by their geology, substrate and vegetation types, and the occurrence of sublacustrine springs [13, 89]. The combination of these different abiotic factors may explain why the eastern part shows a generally high habitat and mollusc diversity, while the western part is characterized by less diverse habitats and a depauperate mollusc fauna [90].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One remarkable exception is the lack of A. macedonicus in shallower sandy stretches in the littoral of the northern and southern part. We here assume that these long stretches of soft substrate (see [89] and Fig. 1) represent unsuitable habitats for hard substrate-dwelling species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Origin and diversification of Lake Ohrid’s endemic acroloxid limpets: the role of geography and ecology

et al. 2016

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BackgroundAncient Lake Ohrid, located on the Albania-Macedonia border, is the most biodiverse freshwater lake in Europe. However, the processes that gave rise to its extraordinary endemic biodiversity, particularly in the species-rich gastropods, are still poorly understood. A suitable model taxon to study speciation processes in Lake Ohrid is the pulmonate snail genus Acroloxus, which comprises two morphologically distinct and ecologically (vertically) separated endemic species. Using a multilocus phylogenetic framework of Acroloxus limpets from the Euro-Mediterranean subregion, together with molecular-clock and phylogeographic analyses of Ohrid taxa, we aimed to infer their geographic origin and the timing of colonization as well as the role of geography and ecology in intra-lacustrine diversification.ResultsIn contrast to most other endemic invertebrate groups in Lake Ohrid, the phylogenetic relationships of the endemic Ohrid Acroloxus species indicate that the Balkan region probably did not serve as their ancestral area. The inferred monophyly and estimated divergence times further suggest that these freshwater limpets colonized the lake only once and that the onset of intra-lacustrine diversification coincides with the time when the lake reached deep-water conditions ca 1.3 Mya. However, the difference in vertical distribution of these two ecologically distinct species is not reflected in the phylogeographic pattern observed. Instead, western and eastern populations are genetically more distinct, suggesting a horizontal structure.ConclusionsWe conclude that both geography and ecology have played a role in the intra-lacustrine speciation process. Given the distinct morphology (sculptured vs. smooth shell) and ecology (littoral vs. sublittoral), and the timing of intra-lacustrine diversification inferred, we propose that the onset of deep-water conditions initially triggered ecological speciation. Subsequent geographic processes then gave rise to the phylogeographic patterns observed today. However, the generally weak genetic differentiation observed suggests incipient speciation, which might be explained by the comparatively young age of the lake system and thus the relatively recent onset of intra-lacustrine diversification.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12862-016-0826-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Evolution of ancient Lake Ohrid: a tectonic perspective

Cited by 46 publications

References 35 publications

Spatially explicit analysis of gastropod biodiversity in ancient Lake Ohrid

Spatially explicit analysis of gastropod biodiversity in ancient Lake Ohrid

Differential resilience of ancient sister lakes Ohrid and Prespa to environmental disturbances during the Late Pleistocene

Origin and diversification of Lake Ohrid’s endemic acroloxid limpets: the role of geography and ecology

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