In from the cold: how are winter plankton communities changing with the climate?

湖泊生态系统拥有不同的生物群落，它们在季节性、年际和年代际时间尺度上表现出很大的变化。越来越多的证据表明，这些社区已经受到气候变化的影响，但现有的许多研究都集中在春季和夏季社区的生态上，冬季社区受到的关注较少。我们知道冬季正在变得更温暖，因此了解冬季群落如何变化是很重要的，因为这些变化可能会“延续”到随后的季节并产生持久的影响。该项目将重点关注具有生态重要性的湖泊浮游生物群落，以解决这一知识鸿沟：1)回顾当前气候变化研究的最新进展，重点是冬季湖泊生态系统；2)使用野外和大型室外实验系统的样本，对具有重要功能的浮游动物消费者的丰度、多样性和大小结构进行显微和图像分析。3)使用通过国际合作提供的湖泊网络数据，将这些分析扩展到全球范围。4)利用稳定同位素分析，进行有针对性的调查，您将与英国生态与水文学中心和兰开斯特大学的专家团队合作，共同位于兰开斯特环境中心内。田野工作将在联合国教科文组织世界遗产英吉利湖区进行。在这个项目中，你将成为长期数据分析、生物样本图像分析和稳定同位素分析方面的专家，并有机会与其他研究人员和更广泛的公众交流你的科学。

Lake ecosystems host diverse communities of organisms which show great variation over seasonal, year-to-year and decadal timescales. Growing evidence demonstrates that these communities are already being impacted by climate change, but much existing research has focused on the ecology of spring and summer communities, with winter communities receiving less attention. We know that winters are becoming milder and so it is important to understand how winter communities are changing, as these changes may "carry over" into subsequent seasons and have lasting effects. Focusing on ecologically-important lake plankton communities, this project will address this knowledge gap, combining:1) Review of the current state-of-the-art in climate change research focused on lake ecosystems in winter2) Combined microscopic and image analysis of the abundance, diversity and size structure of functionally-important zooplankton consumers using samples from the field and large outdoor experimental systems.3) Extending these analyses to a global extent using data from a network of lakes, provided through international collaboration.4) Targeted investigation, using stable isotope analysis, of changing structural properties of winter planktonic food webs in response to environmental change.You will work with a team of experts based at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and Lancaster University, co-located within the Lancaster Environment Centre. Fieldwork will be conducted in the English Lake District; a UNESCO World Heritage Site. During the project you will become expert in the analysis of long-term data, image analysis of biological samples, and stable isotope analysis, with opportunities to communicate your science to other researchers and the wider public