Experimentally decomposing phytoplankton community change into ecological and evolutionary contributions

Abstract

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Temporal variation in ecological and evolutionary contributions to phytoplankton functional shifts

“…However, based on observed timescales over which phytoplankton genotype diversity shifted in response to environmental change elsewhere (Lohbeck et al 2012;Wolf et al 2019), we assumed that even evolutionary changes in the form of selection of standing intraspecific diversity would require more time than shifts in species diversity. This assumption is further supported by the observation of low evolutionary contributions to community change after short-term exposure to CO 2 , as described in the method-oriented paper by Hattich et al (2022). Hence, we hypothesize that total phytoplankton community changes in response to CO 2 are dominated by ecological changes in the short-term, while evolutionary changes increase in importance with time.…”

“…The eco‐evo assay is an experimental protocol developed to quantify ecological and evolutionary contributions to total phytoplankton community changes ( see Hattich et al 2022). In short, the assay allows to separate and quantify the contributions of ecological and evolutionary shifts to total community changes by measuring the effects of different combinations of species and genotype diversity manipulations that mimic diversity changes observed in the sorting phase.…”

“…500 asexual generations (Lohbeck et al 2012). For further details on potential problems and possible extensions of the here used eco-evo assay see Hattich et al (2022). The assay communities were grown for one batch cycle and as a community response again the resulting cell abundance and mean size responses were measured (as described for the sorting phase above).…”

“…These assessments were realized by experimental assays in which species, genotype and both species and genotype diversities were manipulated based on changes we observed in the longer-term sorting experiment and their effects quantified. A previous method-oriented paper served to establish and validate the experimental assay used here to quantify the relative eco-evolutionary contributions to a total community change (Hattich et al 2022). For that purpose, a small portion of the data included here was already used, precisely data on total abundance changes in the short term until 80 d. Publishing the method-oriented paper separately from the rest of the collected data was chosen to focus on a detailed discussion on methodological issues and potential extended applications and thus to foster future use of the new experimental approach.…”

Seasonal Variation Characteristics and the Factors Affecting Plankton Community Structure in the Yitong River, China

“…Plankton, comprising phytoplankton and zooplankton, is an ecologically important group in aquatic ecosystems [ 1 ]. As primary producers in the food chain, phytoplankton are important in the material cycle and energy transfer process of the aquatic ecosystem [ 2 ], due to their short growth cycle and rapid response to aquatic environmental changes, thus enabling its community structure characteristics to directly reflect the changes of aquatic environment [ 3 , 4 ]. As primary consumers in aquatic ecosystems, zooplankton are important in transferring energy from lower to higher organisms, thereby regulating the growth of phytoplankton [ 5 ], whose community structure characteristics are mostly regulated by the composition and abundance of phytoplankton and their predators [ 6 ].…”