Drivers of phytoplankton community structure change with ecosystem ontogeny during the Quaternary

TY - JOUR

T1 - Drivers of phytoplankton community structure change with ecosystem ontogeny during the Quaternary

AU - Cvetkoska, Aleksandra

AU - Jovanovska, Elena

AU - Hauffe, Torsten

AU - Donders, Timme H.

AU - Levkov, Zlatko

AU - Waal, Dedmer B. Van de

AU - Reed, Jane M.

AU - Francke, Alexander

AU - Vogel, Hendrik

AU - Wilke, Thomas

AU - Wagner, Bernd

AU - Wagner-Cremer, Friederike

N1 - 7227, AqE

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Freshwater species are particularly sensitive to climate fluctuations, but little is known of their response to the large-scale environmental change that took place during the Quaternary. This is partly due to the scarcity of continuously preserved freshwater sedimentary records with orbital chronology. We use a 1.363 Ma high-resolution fossil record of planktonic diatoms from ancient Lake Ohrid to evaluate the role of global and regional versus local-scale environmental change in driving temporal community dynamics. By using a Bayesian joint species distribution model, we found that communities were mostly driven by the local-scale environment. Its effects decreased over time, becoming less important than global and regional environment at the onset of the penultimate glacial, 0.183 Ma. Global and regional control over the environment became important with successive deepening of the lake at around 1.0 Ma, and its influence remained persistent until the present. Our high-resolution data demonstrate the critical role of lake depth and its thermal dynamics in determining phytoplankton response to environmental change by influencing lake mixing, nutrient and light availability. With this study we demonstrate the relative impact of various environmental factors and their scale-dependant effect on the phytoplankton communities during the Quaternary, emphasizing the importance of not only considering climate fluctuations in driving their structure and temporal dynamics but also the local environment.

AB - Freshwater species are particularly sensitive to climate fluctuations, but little is known of their response to the large-scale environmental change that took place during the Quaternary. This is partly due to the scarcity of continuously preserved freshwater sedimentary records with orbital chronology. We use a 1.363 Ma high-resolution fossil record of planktonic diatoms from ancient Lake Ohrid to evaluate the role of global and regional versus local-scale environmental change in driving temporal community dynamics. By using a Bayesian joint species distribution model, we found that communities were mostly driven by the local-scale environment. Its effects decreased over time, becoming less important than global and regional environment at the onset of the penultimate glacial, 0.183 Ma. Global and regional control over the environment became important with successive deepening of the lake at around 1.0 Ma, and its influence remained persistent until the present. Our high-resolution data demonstrate the critical role of lake depth and its thermal dynamics in determining phytoplankton response to environmental change by influencing lake mixing, nutrient and light availability. With this study we demonstrate the relative impact of various environmental factors and their scale-dependant effect on the phytoplankton communities during the Quaternary, emphasizing the importance of not only considering climate fluctuations in driving their structure and temporal dynamics but also the local environment.

KW - Environmental change

KW - Diatoms

KW - Community temporal dynamics

KW - Lake Ohrid

KW - international

KW - Plan_S-Compliant_OA

U2 - 10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107046

DO - 10.1016/j.quascirev.2021.107046

M3 - Article

SN - 0277-3791

VL - 265

JO - Quaternary Science Reviews

JF - Quaternary Science Reviews

M1 - 107046

ER -