Uniform Temperature Dependency in the Phenology of a Keystone Herbivore in Lakes of the Northern Hemisphere

作者：Straile Dietmar^*; Adrian Rita; Schindler Daniel E

来源：PLos One, 2012, 7(10): e45497.

DOI：10.1371/journal.pone.0045497

Spring phenologies are advancing in many ecosystems associated with climate warming causing unpredictable changes in ecosystem functioning. Here we establish a phenological model for Daphnia, an aquatic keystone herbivore based on decadal data on water temperatures and the timing of Daphnia population maxima from Lake Constance, a large European lake. We tested this model with long-term time-series data from two lakes (Muggelsee, Germany; Lake Washington, USA), and with observations from a diverse set of 49 lakes/sites distributed widely across the Northern Hemisphere (NH). The model successfully captured the observed temporal variation of Daphnia phenology in the two case study sites (r(2) = 0.25 and 0.39 for Muggelsee and Lake Washington, respectively) and large-scale spatial variation in the NH (R-2 = 0.57). These results suggest that Daphnia phenology follows a uniform temperature dependency in NH lakes. Our approach - based on temperature phenologies - has large potential to study and predict phenologies of animal and plant populations across large latitudinal gradients in other ecosystems.

• 出版日期2012-10-5