Body Size and Feeding Ecology as Alternatives to Taxonomy for the Study of Limnetic Zooplankton Community Structure

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Three different characterizations of limnetic zooplankton communities from lakes of the Bruce Peninsula, Ontario are compared with respect to their usefulness in limnological studies: a conventional taxonomic one, one based on the body size and feeding ecology of the organisms, and one based on image analysis of the particle size spectrum. In comparison with the taxonomic characterization, the ecological and image analysis characterizations reflect zooplankton community features which are more closely related to the efficiency and nature of energy flow through pelagic ecosystems. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that these features have stronger statistical relations to morphometric and hydrological properties of lakes. The ecological and image analyses are thus not only more useful in studies seeking to make predictions about lake function from lake type but actually require less time, money and expertise in the acquisition of zooplankton data. In comparisons of zooplankton communities from the disparate faunal regions of the Bruce Peninsula, Ontario and southeast Asia, particularly Sri Lanka, more useful functional insights emerge from a body size-feeding ecology characterization than from a taxonomically based one. Key words: community structure, image analysis, Bruce Peninsula, tropical zooplankton, zoogeography, multivariate analysis

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: