Aquatic mesocosms to study the influence of zooplankton migration on predator-prey dynamics

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Freshwater zooplankton are a model system for studying the interaction between ecological and evolutionary processes because they have both asexual and sexual models of reproduction that enables the study of how competition influences the maintenance of diversity, and the role that sexual recombination plays in generating life-history diversity. Laboratory studies using zooplankton have proven very successful at resolving specific biological processes by linking individual life-history to population and community dynamics, but they lack the temporal and spatial variation in abiotic (e.g., temperature) and biotic (e.g., algal density) factors found in nature. In particular, they ignore the vertical migration that exposes individual zooplankton to a strong gradient of environmental conditions. In this application, I am requesting a set of six mesocosms designed to study the dynamics of zooplankton genotypes and species, whose life-history has been studied in the laboratory, in a field setting. To accomplish this, the mesocosms utilize a 'bioassay' approach whereby communities of lab-reared zooplankton are exposed to ambient water and prey densities along the water column, and whose dynamics can be followed with high temporal resolution over several weeks. To disentangle the influence of spatial heterogeneity from migration, the mesocosms are designed to control vertical migration. These novel mesocosms will enable us to test how various ecological and evolutionary processes studied in the laboratory influence biological dynamics in nature. Over the lifespan of the equipment (~10yrs), the requested mescosms will be used to train approximately 10 undergraduate research assistance and 6-8 graduate students in field-based experimentation, enumeration, and analysis.