Multiscale and muti-system perspectives of freshwater zooplankton structure and functionality

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Freshwater ecosytems are a dominant feature of the Canadian landscape. However, they are now facing important disturbances by anthropogenic land use, industrial and residential activities, and climate change. As plankton form the foundation of aquatic food webs, they are worth including in ecological research to better maintain ecosystem function and services. Our knowledge of the environmental control of distribution patterns in freshwater plankton diversity and functional traits is still limited. Zooplankton is an ideal model system to investigate how environmental features influence distribution patterns in species and traits using an integrative framework across multiple scales and systems. The goals of my proposed research is to provide a multiscale perspective of spatial patterns in freshwater zooplankton structure and function in different ecosystems. We aim to build predictive models of functional linkages between zooplankton species-traits and environment features using landscape metrics and multiscale data on distribution patterns of zooplankton.