Elevated pH regulates bacterial carbon cycling in lakes with high photosynthetic activity.

Bacteria are critically important for carbon (C) cycling and energy flow in aquatic environments. However, studies to date have largely focused on the role of substrate quality in the regulation of this important process. As such, we know little about the role of other ecological drivers in shaping bacterially mediated C cycling. Here we examine the manner in which planktonic bacterial abundance (BA), productivity (BP), respiration (BR), and growth efficiency (BGE), and thus C cycling are affected by elevated pH, an ecological factor that occurs commonly in highly productive aquatic systems. We undertook our study in lakes of the Mackenzie Delta region of Canada. These lakes routinely experience high pH caused by rapid macrophyte photosynthesis. Two different experiment types were employed: first, a series of short-term experiments was used to assess the direct effects of elevated pH on bacteria experiencing differing pH levels in situ. Second, long-term mesocosms were used to explore the effect of elevated pH on bacteria over longer time scales and in the presence of other trophic levels. Bacterial productivity and BR slowed dramatically with elevated pH over the short term, potentially uncoupling bacterial processing of organic matter from its in-lake production and causing a switch away from biomass creation and toward C mineralization. With longer term exposure, bacterial communities adapted to the direct stress of elevated pH, but responses at higher trophic levels caused a cascade that mediated the effect of alkalization on bacteria, in a manner that could well vary among aquatic ecosystems. Our study establishes elevated pH as a key driver of bacterial C cycling and energy flow in aquatic systems with high autotrophic productivity.

The Temporal Coherence of Zooplankton Population Abundances in Neighboring North-Temperate Lakes.

We investigated the temporal coherence (i.e., the correlation or synchrony between time series) of annual abundances among populations of freshwater zooplankton in eight lakes in Ontario, Canada, from 1980 to 1992. We estimated temporal coherence using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ri). While values of ri were relatively low among comparisons of all eight lakes, they were statistically significant for three of the seven common cladoceran and copepod taxa (Bosmina longirostris, Leptodiaptomus minutus, and Mesocyclops edax). These significant positive correlations imply that a portion of the interannual variation in abundance was produced by factors operating on a scale larger than the individual lake catchments. Because the eight-lake analysis might obscure strong, but conflicting, patterns among lakes in the region, we identified homogeneous and temporally coherent subsets of lakes for each species using an exploratory stepwise deletion procedure. The resultant homogeneous subsets exhibited much greater temporal coherence, accounting for 47% (Eubosmina) to 84% (Leptodiaptomus) of the interannual variation in abundance. Our results suggest that the factors affecting annual variation in zooplankton abundance must be sought both within lakes and beyond their watersheds.